TEM164: You are not the customer

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TEM164: You are not the customer

It is so easy to forget that we are not the person we are trying to serve!

What You'll Learn:

  • Why we sometimes unintentionally end up creating products and marketing to ourselves rather than to our customers

  • Why it is vital to learn the "rules" and customs of various social channels before you start plugging yourself there

  • You will never meet a customer who thinks your product is as important or vital as you do

  • Don't assume everyone knows something about you that you think is obvious

  • Some thoughts on optimizing your website and your bio

Links:

Want to help the show? Here's a couple of ways you can do that!

1. Help me get to my next goal of $100 per episode on Patreon by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. My next iTunes goal is 150 ratings and 75 reviews. Take just a minute to leave a rating and review on iTunes to help me get there. Thank you!

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Drake Domingue

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

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

TEM133: Alarm Will Sound Quotes (TEM Short)

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TEM133: Alarm Will Sound Quotes (TEM Short)

This TEM Short features thoughts on my favorite quotes from Michael Clayville and Gavin Chuck of Alarm Will Sound in TEM132.

Quotes:

  • "We basically made a commitment to each other to continue to grow with each other. And what that means I think is that, the sustainability of the group is very much about giving everybody in the group a stake.”

  • "Why is it that we stuck together and what's different between us and those trios and those, you know billions of other small ensembles that exist in colleges around the country? I think a lot of it comes back to communication and feeling that your voice is heard, and feeling respected and appreciated by the people around you, even if you don't always get your way.”

  • "The skills and talents that you've built up as a musician, working collaboratively, having disagreements that are productive you know, learning to actually harmonize music together, all those things and many more, are skills that translate into organizational culture. If you can take that kind of thinking, then you're essentially repurposing a set of skills that you already have, and refining them towards I think a goal that becomes a sustainable career model.”

  • "So it's an experience that we can share with people who may not have heard things like this before. They may come into our concert and not know what to expect, and come out maybe, you know, completely blown away by, you know, the fact that they never heard anything like that. Or, they come out scratching their heads but they still had an experience. They had something that they can say was not run of the mill, and I think that's generally what you get out of an Alarm Will Sound show.”

  • "I have a feeling I don't know if this is true that people ... musicians that go through conservatory music schools, tend to need to think about the experience of a concert much more than say somebody who studied theater or dance. I know that dancers and theater people are trained from the beginning that they are performing from the moment they are in the wing. Everything about that is a performance, and that takes into account what the audience is experiencing. By contrast, when you look at say a symphony orchestra, before the concert quote unquote begins, there's a bunch of people that are sitting there disengaged or when they stop playing, they disengage and it seems that they are not thinking about the fact that actually the experience is continuous over those two hours or whatever it is. And maybe that partly comes from the culture where we focus so much on the notes and the technique that we think are our art and our performance lies in just between the double bars. And one thing that I want to always stress when I talk to people just starting out in their careers as performers is to learn something from our colleagues in theater and dance and to think about the concert as an experience. And one that has to be shaped just as much as you're shaping phrases within a piece, you have to think about what happens between the pieces. What happens in the two minutes before the concert and the 30 minutes after the concert. Those are all important parts of the experiences. When you think that way, it's going to lead you to more innovative and more rewarding involvement with your audience."

  • "So it's a constant thing you know, I'm on it every day. Marketing is not going to do itself, there's nobody sitting at home at any given second thinking that they want to hear us play, but hopefully we're trying to build that. And so, they are thinking that more and more frequently. It's like ‘Oh, hey, I remember that tune, I want to listen to that again.' So I'm just trying to get some mental space, some brain space and say hey we're there, and take a listen and if you make it to a show that'd be great, come on out to a show, too.”

  • "I think there are so many interesting things happening in new music today, and really in performing arts across the board. It's a really great time to start something new and to come up with a new idea. I mean we have the incredible power of social media that can make the barriers to entry lower than they were maybe 30 years ago. At the same time, the digitally driven world, where everybody has something in their hands, I think makes live performance more valuable. Having an experience that you share with an audience is becoming more valuable. And I think that's the really interesting moment that we're living in right now, for young musicians to be really thoughtful and intentional.”

Links:

  • TEM132: Gavin Chuck and Michael Clayville of Alarm Will Sound on Having Conversations With Your Fans, Creative Collaborations and Sharing Meaningful Experiences With Your Audience (TEM Rewind)

  • Alarm Will Sound

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

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

1. Help me get to my goal of $50 per episode on Patreon (only $8 to go!) by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. I'm up to 69 ratings and 46 reviews on iTunes. Help me reach my goals of 75 ratings and 50 reviews (so close!) by taking just a couple of minutes on iTunes!

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Andrew Hitz

TEM132: Gavin Chuck and Michael Clayville of Alarm Will Sound on having conversations with your fans, creative collaborations and sharing meaningful experiences with your audience (TEM Rewind)

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TEM132: Gavin Chuck and Michael Clayville of Alarm Will Sound on having conversations with your fans, creative collaborations and sharing meaningful experiences with your audience (TEM Rewind)

Alarm Will Sound is a 20-piece chamber ensemble that challenges and reshapes musical conventions through performances of music by today's composers.

What You'll Learn:

  • How Alarm Will Sound began as a group at Eastman and what has enabled them to survive for so long when most student groups dissolve after college

  • The importance of communication and transparency in any group

  • Why they rely on a Strong Executive Model rather than a straight up democratic process

  • How working as a team in any healthy organization is a moving target as the amount of effort individuals are able to put forth shirts over time

  • Why groups like Alarm Will Sound are not only competing for gigs with other ensembles with similar missions but with any artists offering an experience which is literally everyone

  • How musicians can learn from dancers and actors who are taught to perform from the moment they are even on the wings of the stage

  • The details behind an initiative called Alarm System, where Alarm Will Sound does unconventional collaborates with a variety of musicians

  • Their collaboration with one of my favorite groups in the world, Medeski, Martin & Wood

  • The group’s overall approach to marketing and branding and how Michael goes about executing it

  • Why sharing an experience with your audience at concerts is more important than it’s ever been

Links:

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

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

1. Help me get to my goal of $50 per episode on Patreon (I'm getting close!) by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show: https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast.

2. I'm up to 67 ratings and 45 reviews on iTunes. Help me reach my next goal of 75 ratings and 50 reviews by taking just a couple of minutes on iTunes!

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Andrew Hitz

TEM56: Finding your blue ocean

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TEM56: Finding your blue ocean

A short episode about the importance of finding a blue ocean to present to the world.

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

TEM37: Would anyone miss your art? (TEM Short)

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One of the things Michael Harley of Alarm Will Sound discussed in Episode 36 was how loyal the audience of his Southern Exposure New Music Series is which reminded me of a question from the great Seth Godin: "If you stopped making your art tomorrow, would anyone miss it?"

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

TEM36: Michael Harley of Alarm Will Sound

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TEM36: Michael Harley of Alarm Will Sound

Michael Harley is the bassoonist for Alarm Will Sound as well as the Artistic Director of the Southern Exposure New Music Series. He is also Assistant Professor of Bassoon at the University of South Carolina.

Michael's career has had many twists and turns and many instances of him ending up doing things he never envisioned himself doing. His approach to both music and the music business are spot on. It is no wonder he has had such a successful career.

Topics Covered:

  • The importance of jumping right in and saying yes and then figuring it out

  • Why you have to be ready for the opportunities that will come your way

  • Why this might work is better for creating art than this better work

  • The importance of working your ass off

  • What he looks for in a group when booking his concert series

  • Contemporary classical music is an easy sell if it's great

  • How Alarm Will Sound was able to go from a student group to a professional

  • Finding something no one else is doing and that you can do better than anyone else

  • What it was like working with Medeski, Martin & Wood

Links:

Books Referenced:

Favorite Quote:

  • “You jump right in and you say yes and then you figure out how to do it. You say ‘Of course I can.’"

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.

Ignore the path and leave a trail

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“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm not sure you could get better advice in less than 20 words for someone making a go of it in the music business today than this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson (who obviously wasn't speaking about the music industry in 2015!)

If your plan is to play in a string quartet that is very similar to the Kronos Quartet that simply does it better than them, good luck to you.

If your plan is to write a book that basically mirrors the message of The Savvy Musician by David Cutler and simply write it better, good luck to you.

If your plan is to play in a brass quintet that mirrors the repertoire and persona of the Canadian Brass and simply do it a little better than they do, good luck to you.

To be clear, I'm not sarcastically wishing you luck because any of those three things are impossible. To the contrary.

You can absolutely do what Kronos does a little better. You can absolutely write a better book than Dr. Cutler did. You can absolutely be a better version of Canadian Brass. (Although all of these will be incredibly difficult to accomplish!)

The point is that the market place is not looking for a book that is 2% better than The Savvy Musician. Why was it such a wild success? Because there were no books like it. People talked about it. People shared it. People spread the word.

No one will get excited about a slightly improved version of anything that already exists and that's if they even notice in the first place.

But if you leave a brand new trail that is interesting, people will do your marketing for you. Just ask Time for Three, Gustavo Dudamel, Alarm Will Sound, and countless other artists and ensembles.

It's been done many times before and the beautiful thing is there's always room for more trails. Always.

TEM3: Alarm Will Sound's Gavin Chuck & Michael Clayville

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TEM3: Alarm Will Sound's Gavin Chuck & Michael Clayville

Alarm Will Sound's Gavin Chuck and Michael Clayville discuss all aspects of the group's cutting edge programming and business model.  They cover everything from their innovative partnerships to how they successfully navigate the music business as a performer-led ensemble.

They also share how they did the almost impossible: they took a college group and turned it into a money-making professional ensemble.  They are both passionate about the arts and share how that passion pervades every decision the ensemble makes.

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 and Buddy Deshler of FredBrass

The Entrepreneurial Musician Podcast: Alarm Will Sound's Gavin Chuck & Michael Clayville

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I was very excited to get to interview two people from one of my favorite ensembles for this episode of The Entrepreneurial Musician Podcast! Alarm Will Sound is an enormous force in the music business, both as artists and entrepreneurs.

Alarm Will Sound's Gavin Chuck and Michael Clayville discuss all aspects of the group's cutting edge programming and business model.  They cover everything from their innovative partnerships to how they successfully navigate the music business as a performer-led ensemble.

They also share how they did the almost impossible: they took a college group and turned it into a money-making professional ensemble.  They are both passionate about the arts and share how that passion pervades every decision the ensemble makes.