Emotional Intelligence for Musicians and Arts Leaders Part I: 4 Ways to Build Success Through Emotional Self-Awareness

Lately, there has been a lot of press about the importance of emotional intelligence for successful entrepreneurs and leaders. Recent reports indicate that applicants to Yale’s School of Management will be tested on their emotional intelligence. An entrepreneur and investor with a Harvard MBA published an article in Forbes magazine about the importance of getting an “emotional education” in addition …

Career Planning for Music Entrepreneurs: Tapping Into Vision and Going for Plan A

The past two weeks, I have had a great time working with the future stars of concert music and talking a lot about how to create a successful career as a musician. First, I spent two days with the Fellows at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, located in the picture-perfect hills of Northwest Connecticut on a beautiful estate where the …

How Arts Leaders Manage Challenge: Change Your Perspective

Rising arts leaders face a host of challenges including too much to do with too little time, constant deadlines,  not enough money, time or staff to carry out the great work, conflicting priorities and having to respond to numerous constituencies.   In these situations, it’s easy to focus on the negatives.  Yet happily, there are some very effective strategies to …

Managing Challenge for Arts Leaders: How to Empower Your Leadership by Changing The Situation

This week, I had the honor to work with the 14 participants in Opera America’s Leadership Intensive, a program dedicated to identifying and forming the future leaders of opera by providing them with the skills and contacts that can help them advance in their careers. My role was to teach the “soft” skills of leadership:  how to empower yourself to lead …

Top 10 Public Speaking Tips for Arts Leaders and Music Entrepreneurs

What is the first thing that comes up for you when you think about addressing a group of people, whether it is a wedding toast, a speech to a live audience at a music performance or a presentation at your local charity? If the answer is “fear” or “dread”, you are not alone! Fear of public speaking or glossophobia is …

Living “in the Zone”: How Music Entrepreneurs Optimize Their Flow Experiences

Creative people know the feeling of being “in the zone”,  the state of effortless concentration and joy where your skill level meets the challenge at hand, you know what you want to achieve and you are receiving the feedback on how well you are doing, time whizzes by because you are doing something that you love, and you are thus inspired …

Entrepreneurial Projects: Creative Ways to Deliver Music and Engage Today’s Audiences

One of the hallmarks of my class at Yale School of Music is the entrepreneurial semester project that my students complete in order to gain experience with the skills that we learn in the class.  There are two rules: It has to be something that a student has never done before; and It has to be outside the student’s comfort zone. Yet …

Marketing for Music Entrepreneurs: 5 Steps to Connecting Your Music to Your People

 One of the biggest challenges for today’s musicians is marketing.   For many musicians, marketing feels manipulative and deceptive.  And marketing becomes even more challenging because as entrepreneurs, musicians are essentially marketing themselves.  All this in a world where the audience is aging, audiences are not as educated in classical music as they once were, there is a lot of …

Personal Branding for Musicians: How To Discover and Communicate What Makes You Unique

A personal brand is a powerful marketing tool for creative artists that communicates your authentic unique gift to the people you want to attract. It is a message to your ideal audience members •    that expresses what makes you unique and memorable
•    and distinguishes you from your competition
 •    so that your target audience connects with you emotionally and wants …