TAG: classical music careers

How Music Entrepreneurs Make Decisions: Play the Pain/Gain Game

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What happens when you are faced with two appealing alternatives and you do not know which one to chose? Now that festival offerings, graduate school acceptances and other training opportunities are rolling in, our students are often faced with making choices that affect their future. How does one decide, say, between going to New York to embark on a freelance …

Managing Transitions for Music Entrepreneurs: Articulate Your Fears To Generate Solutions

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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 …

The Power of Yet: How Music Entrepreneurs Are Inspired to Create Long-Term Success

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I greatly admire the groundbreaking work of Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University, who lays out her research on the type of mindset that leads to success in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.   Dr. Dweck identifies two mindsets:  the growth mindset and the fixed mindset. Those with a growth mindset do not simply rely on “talent” …

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 …

Great Career Materials for Musicians: How to Get Started

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Summer is here and for busy musicians, it often means having a little bit of down time in between festivals and tours.  For proactive music entrepreneurs, here is suggestion for using that extra time to move your career forward: create and/or spruce up your career materials! Your career materials are often the first contact that you will have with prospective …

How Smart Music Entrepreneurs Decide on Gigs: 3 Factors to Evaluate

As young musicians begin to develop their careers, they often wonder how to decide which gigs to take on. The advice from many professional musicians I know–including many of the alumni who have spoken at my class at Yale–is to consider how well an opportunity satisfies the following 3 criteria and to choose gigs that give you 2 out of 3: …

Group Coaching Lessons for Success-Oriented Music Entrepreneurs: Share, Learn and Grow

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This semester, I launched 3 career groups at the Yale School of Music as an experiment to see how group coaching could facilitate learning and growth for entrepreneurial musicians. My intentions were to provide: a positive, supportive, safe judgment-free environment that promotes learning through self-reflection and joint problem solving in which musicians can share with like-minded peers learn tools to help …