With the end of the school year fast approaching, our students are leaving Yale to pursue new ventures, including doctoral programs, joining a military band, studying abroad, and starting their new careers in the freelance world. These external changes signal the process of transition: an internal process that people go through and the emotions that they experience when faced with …
Building Social Support: 3 More Happiness Strategies for Musicians
I am fascinated by the research showing that happiness breeds success and have been sharing information with the students at the Yale School of Music on how to create life-long happiness. In my last post, we examined how to create the happiness habit by cultivating optimism. This week, I would like to share 3 happiness strategies that strengthen your ties …
Cultivating Optimism: How Musicians Can Create Life-Long Happiness
I had the privilege of participating in the Community Day at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music this past weekend, a day-long celebration of transformation through the arts, where I spoke about how musicians and artists can create long-lasting happiness. I am fascinated with this topic since research shows that happiness and optimism generate the positive emotions that make it possible to …
Community Engagement and The Future of Music: Lessons from Mozart in the Jungle and the NEA Report
I think a lot about the future of music and the arts. It’s my calling and my passion to help today’s musicians use their art in order to make their mark and have an impact on society in our changing landscape. It is also my job at Yale to inspire and empower our students to take their artistic training and …
Insights from 4 Yale Music Entrepreneurs: How To Create Success in The Changing Classical Music World
This year, I once again invited four enterprising recent alumni of the Yale School of Music to speak to our students about how they created their career success, as well as to hear how they are navigating the possibilities and opportunities in today’s ever-changing world. This year’s panel provided pithy insights and encouraging advice on how to create success in …
Networking for Music Entrepreneurs: Using Emotional Intelligence to Connect and Build Your Network
I enjoy teaching networking because it involves complex relationship building skills and requires a high degree of emotional intelligence. Rather than thinking of networking as trying to “get” something from others, it is, instead, a powerful way to make new business friends and expand your circle so that you can create a mutually-supportive community. At the heart of networking is …
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Public Speaking For Musician Entrepreneurs: Draw In Your Audience with an Enticing Theme
People love music. It has been around since the early days of human’s existence on the planet and it is not going away. But classical music is under attack for being too elitist, too difficult, too alien to the experience of today’s audiences. That’s why it is important to find ways to invite audiences into the world of classical music. …
Turning Arts Entrepreneurs into Inspired Leaders: Know Your WHY
My project in working with musicians and arts leaders is not only to teach arts entrepreneurship—the mindset, skillset and process of actualizing an innovative idea—but also to take entrepreneurship to the next level of cultural leadership To do so, I have my students articulate the greater purpose underlying WHY they make music, teach, perform and then communicate that purpose to the …
The Life-Long Journey of Music Entrepreneurship: Where are you now and how can you improve?
We hear a lot today about “arts entrepreneurship” but what exactly does that mean? Let’s start with “entrepreneurship”: the process of transforming an idea into an enterprise that creates value—economic, social, cultural, or intellectual– through innovation risk-taking and actualizing an idea. To me, “arts entrepreneurship” is: applying the entrepreneurial mindset (including taking risks, creating and recognizing opportunity, grit and growth) …
How to Develop the Growth Mindset: 4 Steps for Music Entrepreneurs To Achieve Success
My class has started and I am thrilled to have another wonderful group of budding music entrepreneurs! This year, I have framed my entrepreneurship course under the umbrella of change: How can you change over the course of this semester and learn the mindset, skills and tools to enable you to create your career success? One important element of success …