Tap into Passion and Purpose: How to Ignite Your Creative Career

This past week, I had the privilege of speaking on Creative Success Now: How to Ignite Your Passion and Purpose for Successful Creative Careers” to students at Yale University. My talk attracted a variety of students who were intrigued about creativity and turning their passion and purpose into a successful career.  These included singers, composers, performers, an aspiring novelist, several …

Percussionist

“Thank you, Astrid! Your coaching really helped me figure out a way to approach the vast new career field [of music production] I was treading into. I was able to frame what I was doing very clearly and keep focused on where I was going with it in a way that was probably the most productive I’ve ever been.” – …

Innovation for Music Entrepreneurs: Get Creative with Implementation

One of the hallmarks of my class at the Yale School of Music, Creating Value Through Innovative Projects, is that students learn by taking action.  My seminar’s focus is how to generate innovative solutions to the most pressing problems in classical music today. Over the course of the past semester, my students worked collaboratively on four different creative projects. Three …

Debunking The Creativity Myths: 4 Reasons Why Creatives Will Thrive in the 21st Century

I love working with creatives to help you achieve success in today’s ever-changing landscape!  I firmly believe that we live in an age where creatives can not only make a living from their creativity but also thrive.  Yet, creativity myths pervade our culture. These myths cast doubt on the importance and sustainability of creativity in the 21st Century. Let’s examine …

Ideation and Incubation: How Music Entrepreneurs Expand and Improve Their Creative Ideas

When we last left the students in my Innovation and Collaboration class at the Yale School of Music, they identified the key problems of their audiences.  The next order of business was to come up with some creative ideas for solving these problems. We entered the phase of creative problem solving known as “ideation” where students have brainstormed using a variety of …

Creative Problem Solving for Music Entrepreneurs: What’s the Problem?

It’s exciting to observe the process of creative problem solving! Innovation can occur when you provide a solution to a problem that meets the deeper needs of your intended target audience. To do so, you need a good problem statement. In my Innovation and Collaboration Class at the Yale School of Music, my students have now coalesced around 4 project …

Creative Problem Solving for Music Entrepreneurs: Defining the Problems of Classical Music

My class at Yale on Creating Value Through Innovative Projects is off to a great start! The focus of my seminar is how musicians can generate innovative solutions to the most pressing problems facing classical music today and to work in collaborative groups to solve these problems. My goal is to make my students better thinkers so that they can lead …

Communicating Under Pressure: How to Leverage and Flex the 4 Communication Styles

This past week, I led two sessions with the management team and the ushers at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on how to leverage and flex the 4 communication styles for world-class customer service. It was a thrill for me to be at the theater because I have been a balletomane since high school. In fact, when …

How to Jumpstart Your Creative Success: Take the Creative Success Assessment

I am passionate about empowering creative success!  In fact, my mission is to help creative people achieve success so that the world is teeming with creativity. Why? Because I believe that when we put our passions and talents to work in the service of spreading creativity throughout the world, we are making the world a better place. The goal of …