10 Hard Lessons Learned in 2024 and preparing for a Fearless 2025 with Michelle Lynne

Michelle Lynne: Hey everybody, and welcome back to The Fearless Artist Podcast. My name is Michelle Lynne, and I’m the host of this podcast. If you’re new here, welcome! And if you tuned in last year, then welcome back. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the response we’ve had from this podcast—it was our 2024 project.

I just want to thank everybody who’s been sending in their feedback, messages of support, and encouragement. It helps me so much to know what’s important for musicians who are building their own careers as entrepreneurs—what we need to stay inspired, to encourage each other, to motivate each other, and how we can continue to serve you best with these episodes.

Last year, we had some amazing guests come on the show and so many highlights. For myself personally, I learned so much from bringing really wonderful, inspiring people onto the podcast. And this year, it’s more of the same—we’re only going up! I’m really excited to bring people on, introduce them to you guys, and share their wisdom, their experience, how they’ve been doing the thing, and just keep us all going in 2025.

So, this episode is just going to be a little bit of a welcome episode for the year. I also wanted to share 10 hard lessons that I learned myself in 2024. I made that an Instagram post, and it really resonated with a lot of you. So I thought it would be helpful to go a little bit deeper on that and discuss how we can continue setting the stage for 2025 to be the best year yet.

I mean, if you’ve followed us for any amount of time, you know we really believe that you have the power to choose your own career, to create your own career opportunities. It’s so easy to fall into victim mode and talk about how the odds are stacked against us as musicians, how there are limited spots, how the industry has its issues, and, you know, the politics at play or popularity contests or whatever it is. It’s very easy to fall into that victim mindset and think we don’t have the power to change things.

But we really believe in finding our own voice, finding our own power, and seeing what is possible for you. It’s about redefining success according to your goals and what a fulfilling career looks like for you. Many of you are balancing multiple responsibilities—students, gigs, concerts, families, partners, and travel. Our lives are different than a normal nine-to-five. We don’t have normal routines. Unless you have a community of like-minded people who understand your unique problems and know where you’re coming from, it can be very difficult and isolating to be a freelance musician.

That’s exactly why we created our membership—it’s called Fast Forward. I actually just got off a call today, and we had some new people join. They were so grateful to have a sounding board—a place to talk through issues and obstacles we’re all facing, realizing that first of all, you’re not alone. Other musicians are facing the exact same things as you in their own ways, and there are solutions out there.

Taking down these huge problems or goals we have and breaking them down into practical, actionable steps—that’s what we do. For example, people on the call today shared how some of their compositions were being performed locally, or how someone got a new student and was super inspired by what happened in the lesson, or how someone else got new grants for their projects because they wrote the grants, sent the emails, and pitched the ideas.

As musicians, there’s so much work that goes on behind the scenes of creating your own opportunities. This is really the place where we talk about how to organize your time, your energy, and even your finances. How do you write a good pitch to get a project going or land a gig? How do you decide when you’re ready to move—or if you should move at all? These are the kinds of questions that come up in the membership calls. It’s so life-giving to see people encourage each other and share their wisdom. I have the great honor of witnessing all of this happen.

So, yeah, I just wanted to share a little bit about that because it’s so life-giving.

Okay, so as I share a little bit about some of the things that I learned this last year, I just want to encourage you. And this goes with everything—to keep a learning mindset, to keep a growth mindset. Even if you already know what the information is, you might say, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard that before.” Then the next question is, “Okay, how are you applying it?” Because I’ve taught these concepts now for a few years, both in our mastermind and in the membership, and also in my entrepreneurship classes at the conservatory where I teach in the Netherlands.

And so, I mean, of course I know the answer, and all of you probably know what you’re supposed to do next. But the question is, are you doing it? And how are you doing it? And how are you applying it? There’s always a way to be more efficient, be more effective, find more purpose or joy in it. We’re talking about getting 1 percent better each time. Every time you walk on stage, you want to be 1 percent better. Every time you teach a lesson, you want to be 1 percent better. So, as you’re hearing these things, if it sounds familiar to you, the next step is, how can you make it applicable to your life? And if you do have an answer, I would love to hear from you as always. Just feel free to reach out anytime via Instagram @TheFearlessArtistMastermind.

So, I was reflecting on 2024. It was a big year for me. My career really upleveled and shifted. I ended up doing over 225 concerts, which is a whole monster of itself. I mean, the organization that it takes to do something like that—I’m across five countries regularly on rotation. The hotels, the trains, the concerts, walking on stage, the dresses, getting the rep ready. I mean, it’s like, as a musician, we’re trained to think music, but then to actually pull off something like a performing career, it’s like, okay, there’s way more that goes on behind the scenes than this.

So, for me, it was really about learning healthy rhythms and routines on the road, taking care of myself, outsourcing. I have two assistants, two girls who help me with content, DMs, emails, bookings, trains—all of that stuff. So, I was trying to reflect and process this last year and say, “Okay, what’s working well? What do I want to take with me into 2025?” And I realized that there were about 10, well, 10 or 20 hard lessons that I learned. I thought that could be helpful to share here on the podcast. Sometimes I get really overwhelmed with how to process because everything can be kind of big or hard to define in my mind. So these questions helped me, and I hope that they can help you too.

On top of my performing career, I also run The Fearless Artist. Obviously, with Deanna, we do the podcasts. Um, obviously, there’s a huge team. Well, I shouldn’t say huge. I mean, we’ve got Constandina and Puck… And then Pokie, our podcast producer, making all of the magic happen. So I should say more phenomenal—they’re a phenomenal team helping to make all of this happen. And, uh, here are some things that I learned:

Number One: You need to take your gifts and your calling seriously. Commit to your work and be consistent. I just wish I could go back to myself, you know, four or five years ago, because I knew that I was kind of half-committed. There were a lot of doubts that I was struggling with, wrestling with comparing myself too much online to other people with performing careers playing beautiful venues. I just felt like that was a world that I could never tap into. And at the same time, I was kind of going for it, you know. So, can you commit in a bigger way today to what you want to do? Is there something that, you know, you’re not fully embracing? You’re not really going after the thing because you’re scared. You’re scared of failing. You’re scared of it not working out. You don’t want to be judged by people. You have your own self-doubt, own limitations. So that was really lesson number one: you’ve got to go for it, you’ve got to give everything that you have and believe it. That means you’re going to risk looking vulnerable, you’re going to risk maybe looking stupid, you’re opening yourself up to potential criticism by putting yourself online.

There’s a huge part of that as well, which is why we want to stay small and stay safe because it’s easier, right? But playing the small, easy game is not going to help you achieve the dreams that you have for your life. So, how can we get you more committed to your projects? That’s something that I really took seriously this year.

Number Two: If you don’t ask for what you want, you’re never going to get it. I’ve had some ideas in my mind for a long time, and because of, guess what, your best friend fear—it was like I was just struggling so much to pitch the email. How do I word it? What if they think this? Oh no. What if it goes sideways? All of these things. So, I have, um, I’m in a mastermind myself, and just being able to talk through these things monthly, hold myself accountable to like, “Hey, what does your ideal day actually look like? What do you want your career to look like? Where do you find fulfillment? Where do you feel like you’re making the biggest impact?”

I mean, these are big questions. And I managed to have so many days this year where I was like, “I’m teaching entrepreneurship during the day, either to my students or on our mastermind or Fast Forward calls. And then at night, I’m on stage.” It’s like, this is the dream. This is exactly how I want my day to look like. If I get time for a workout, like, you know, get outside. That’s the ideal day. Okay, great. That means that I’m actually glimpsing this ideal career that I want to have, and I’m doing the thing. And that was new for me. I mean, this is like years and years of trying to pursue, first of all, what do I want? And second of all, how can I make that happen? So I finally managed to send these pitches, these email pitches that I’ve been so worried about. And I managed to get quite positive answers and definitely moving things in the right direction.

A great coaching call that I had—the coach had said to me, “You’re stalling asking for what you want because you’re scared of getting a ‘no.’ It only means that you’re spending more time not able to take action because you don’t have the information required to move forward.” And that was kind of a wake-up call for me. It’s like, okay, you’re only adding time here by not asking for what you want. You can’t move forward. If they give you a ‘no,’ at least that’s information that you can then try to find a different solution, or you can negotiate, or you can find it and create a new story around it. But either way, you’re keeping yourself stuck by not doing that.

Okay. Lesson Number Three: Positivity. This is not a cliché. It is so crucial. There are so many things that will drain your energy—especially traveling. Can’t tell you how many times people love to just stand in the doorway, or they don’t move, or they’re grumpy, or somebody’s rude to you. And you’re just like, you know what? If I let this get to me and I think about it or complain, or the train’s delayed, all of that stuff is going to take energy that I desperately need to do what I need to do.

So, learning to have stronger blinders on, not letting stuff rattle me, staying calm under pressure—we need to create momentum, and complaining is a huge energy drain. There’s a difference between healthy venting, getting something off your chest, and really complaining about something over and over. I think that you guys will probably be able to know the difference. Also, just letting stuff go way faster. If somebody makes an off comment, you’re like, “You know what? They’re just having a bad day, and I don’t have time to react to that because I need my energy.”

I can’t tell you how many musicians I see cut themselves short because they’re being negative and complaining. Also, being very aware of if you’re complaining about a project that you were hired to do, or you’re complaining about colleagues, or if there’s any kind of gossip. The world is very small, and you just want to make sure that you’re coming in as a contributor. What can you bring? A positive attitude, create momentum, make everything better when you’re in the room. All of that stuff will help you build your reputation. It’ll make it more fun for you, and you’ll definitely get hired more often. I want to talk more about this in the coming year because I see a lot of musicians harming themselves by being negative, especially online.

Number Four: People want you to show up as your highest authentic self. It’s a good thing to want to inspire others. Personally, I’ve had a big fear around coming across as arrogant—if I list any achievements of mine, people-pleasing problems, wanting people to like me, so making myself small. But then I finally realized that when I rise to my next level, it inspires others to do that for themselves. And that’s actually what’s better for everyone involved, including myself. So, I’ve been learning to take up more space, but that also allows other people to take up more space. I think that that’s been a huge shift for me this year. I’m aware that some people might not like that, or that might trigger jealousy in others. Maybe they’re going to unfollow or the friendship will take a step back. But again, you have to kind of see who are my key people in my life? Who are the ones having an impact on me, and who do I want to impact? I think there’s a big element of letting people go.

Number Five: You can pursue multiple passions at the same time and strive for excellence in all of them. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard musicians being told, “You can only pick one thing, or else you’re not serious enough.” Deanna shares this story that she didn’t pursue Baroque viola for a long time because it would give the appearance that she wasn’t serious enough about her classical viola. When we’re niching down to these tiny distinctions, it can just be very limiting. If you want to be a freelance musician who’s able to adapt to different demands and place yourself on the market as someone who’s able to do a variety of things and be hired for different projects, you’ve got to show that you’ve got lots to give and that you can pursue excellence in both areas.

Actually, there’s a very interesting article that came out this week in The New York Times about a conductor who is also now a pilot. He actually shares, “It’s not human to do the same thing 24/7… It’s better to do multiple.” And so, I mean, being a pilot is completely out of the music realm. We hear musicians struggling about, “Oh, can I also do a master’s in conducting? ‘Cause it might take away from my performance piano career.” Like, okay. Let’s try and get a little bit more zoomed out here. Make the box a little bit bigger.

Number Six: After almost burning out last spring, I take rest and recovery more seriously. A lot of you have already listened to the burnout episode that I did, so I won’t go into that here. However, I have been much more attentive to being self-aware about my needs and checking when the warning lights come on in me. For example, if I’m less patient or if I notice that I’m low energy—all of these things are kind of warning signs to me, like, “Hey, I think you need to take a step back. You’re giving too much energy. Pull back a little bit, protect yourself. What do you need right now?” Just being more aware internally has helped me a lot. I’m super proud of myself because I had, uh, I think 13 nights of concerts in December, and I also recorded my album finally in Brussels. That month was huge for me, and I finished it, and I felt awesome, and I wasn’t drained. So, I’m like, okay, I have figured out something that works where I could actually recover as I go, rather than burning out and then needing a vacation, which a lot of us don’t have time to do because the summers are full of masterclasses and summer programs.

So, like, can you create a life for yourself where you are replenishing yourself as you go? This is something we can talk a lot more about because there are different strategies and approaches to this, but it’s just definitely getting to think about what are the things that give me energy and how can I include them in my life on a weekly basis?

Number Seven: You’re allowed to stop and be really proud of yourself. It’s not arrogant to be proud of yourself; it’s a good thing. Of course, you might have to choose where you tell—if you tell the world or if you just tell your best friend. But take that time to look yourself in the mirror and be like, “Hey, you’re doing the thing.” Not everybody does the thing. Not everybody has the perseverance or the grit. The fact that you’re even listening to this episode shows that you have what it takes because you’re inspiring yourself, pursuing resources to help you, opening your mind up to new ideas, and building consistency into your life. So, um, you’re allowed to be proud of what you’ve been doing.

Number Eight: I learned to embrace the off mode. This is something that I’m like, “I’m not worried anymore. I don’t worry about what I look like when I go to the grocery store, or if I need to be on, you know, if somebody sees me in public. It’s not like I need to put on the public persona, like, ‘Oh, hi, I’m the performing artist that you saw on Instagram with the big glam shot,’ and now you see me looking like a normal person. I don’t worry about that stuff anymore. If people want to think what they want to think, it’s fine.” I’ve had people make weird comments to me before, and in the past, it might have upset me. They’re like, “Oh, we didn’t recognize you because you don’t look like your normal chic, whatever that we see on Instagram.” I’m like, “Well, that’s because that is one version of me that goes on stage for hundreds of people. And this is the version of me that’s walking my dog around the block, and I don’t need to perform right now or impress. I can just be me.”

I don’t know if maybe that’s common sense for a lot of you listening. Okay. But for me, it was like this revelation: I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I don’t gotta be on. I can be off right now and embrace that, wear my hoodie, cuddle up with Hannah, my dog, and just chill. And that’s a good thing. I really embrace that off time.

Number Nine: If you don’t stop and stay in the moment, it’s all going to be a blur. This is why I love to kind of document as I go. I take a lot of pictures and videos and then send them to my content creator, Constandina, who makes reels for me on Instagram with all of those shots. But it really helps me to remember how the day was going—what trains I was on, what cafés I visited, the people that I got to see in which cities. For me, it’s like learning to rest and be in the moment.

One of my friends, Adam, I had a great conversation with him recently, and he said, “Just be right here, right now.” He’s a conductor. He was having this great concert, and the energy in the room and the energy of the audience, and he was overwhelmed. It was like, “Just be present, fully present in your body and experience this moment.” These are the kinds of things that keep us grounded, rather than always thinking like next, next, next—like, “Got to jump through the hurdles. What’s the next thing on the list? Oh, I’m behind on this. I forgot this email.” It’s like, “Whoa, just take a second and let’s get grounded into our bodies.” You can try different techniques like even naming the colors that you see, going through all of your senses. Like, “What do you see? What do you smell? What do you hear?” Just really embracing the moment that you’re in has helped me so much to stay grounded, even through the traveling. No matter where I am, I’m like, “Okay, I’m right here, right now. I have a job to do, and this is good.”

Number Ten: There’s always time for coffee with a friend. This may seem obvious, but again, we’re really choosing the high-impact people in our lives. Who are the people that you’re keeping close to you? Who are the ones that inspire you? Who are the ones that are giving you life? When you talk to them, you leave that conversation knowing that you’ve gleaned information, gotten good feedback from them, and been inspired. That’s why, again, I love Fast Forward. Our community—people are constantly talking about the community aspect and how they come on and share life with each other over long periods of time. Some people have been in the membership now for three years. We started the membership three years ago this month, and we’ve had people leave and then come back because they missed the community so much. So, it’s so valuable to have the right people around you because that shapes your thinking and also shows you models of other people who are pursuing opportunities that you can also pursue.

We really want to make sure that we’re eliminating negative voices, people putting doubt in your minds, people misunderstanding or twisting things on you. We want to get rid of that and just put your blinders on, focus on the people in front of you, focus on who you’re called to reach. We really believe that every person has a unique purpose and a unique audience to reach, and that your gift was given to you to share and impact the world. That’s why we believe in and pursue this abundance mindset—there’s more than enough available to you. If you have this in your heart, it’s because you were given it to give.

This is also something that we want to teach in our social media sprint, which is coming up this month. Just wanted to mention that for anyone who’s looking to create a content strategy that will show who you are as an artist and be able to sell whatever you’re offering, whether that’s teaching or concerts. We’ve worked with over a dozen artists now through this program. It was highly effective. We create your content strategy, decide your brand as an artist, who your audience is, and what you want to say to them. For six weeks, we work with you to post consistently and create an easy strategy that’s something you can keep up after the program, over the accountability. We’ll keep you going, and this will pay for itself because you will get work because people see what you’re doing. Just today on the membership call, somebody said that because of an Instagram post she made, she got a new concert opportunity.

Seeing the correlation between the more you share with the world about what you’re doing, the more people know how they can hire you. They’ll be thinking of you and need someone to recommend you through word of mouth because you’re showing that you’re in shape, you’re active, you’re pursuing opportunities, and you’re networking. This is super crucial if you want to keep building as a freelancer—you’re building your network.

So, these are 10 things that I learned this year. I hope that was helpful for you. If any of them are sticking out to you, I’d love to hear from you. Send me a message anytime on the The Fearless Artist Mastermind Instagram.

I would also like to ask our long-term listeners—we mentioned already in this episode the importance of feedback. So, if you want to send me a message and tell me one thing that you like about the podcast and one thing that you would suggest to improve, that would help me so much. I really strive to create good content for you. I want you to leave feeling empowered, encouraged, and certainly motivated to pursue the career of your dreams. So, if you send me that message, I’m going to pick three winners and give away a three-month membership to our Fast Forward membership.

So, send me one thing you like about the podcast and one thing that can be improved, and I’m going to pick three winners to win three months. How great is that? How fun to start the year this way. Wish you guys all the best. 2025 is the best year ever. This is the year that we’re going next level. We’re going up and up.

Thank you for listening. Please share this to your story, send it to a friend, tag us. We would love to see it and hear from you. We’re going to have weekly episode releases in 2025, so keep an eye out. We’ve got some great guests coming on, as I already mentioned. Super grateful for this community.

Thank you to everyone who’s putting yourself out there. If you are sharing your art, you’re being vulnerable. You are doing the thing. We are so proud of you and honored to watch you build your career. We’re here to support you every step of the way. So, we’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening. And remember, be fearless.