[TFA Career Day 2025] The Long Game: Strategic Management for Lasting Music Careers

Yes. Yeah. Well, that was, I don’t know, six months ago, a crazy idea. Saying, you know, and you know what I’m happy about? Is there’s just 12 hours and not, like, my first crazy idea, saying, “Let’s do 24 hours.” Good. Yeah, I think I do remember stepping in at that point and saying, “Uh, can we scale it down a bit?”

No, we’re just, we’re just joking. Okay, great. So, Bernhard, what would you like to talk about?

Um, I will actually pin the three of us for a second. The reason behind that is that, um, Deanna, Michelle, and I will be talking a bit about groups and how important it is, actually, to have these kind of groups and this collaboration, which Deanna and Michelle do wonderfully in the Fearless Artist Mastermind, uh, which many of you are part of. If not, you actually have a, an opportunity to try that out in about 30 minutes, and also the people in the Penguin Club who also have an idea about that.

Um, and what we suggested, what we actually will kind of plan a bit is that we switch the, um, groups so that if you have been to the Penguin Club, please, please, please go to one of the Fearless Masterminds with Isaac, Deanna, Michelle, and vice versa.

Now I have the joy of a bit introducing why groups are important, um, and why I am one of the biggest fans you can actually imagine of that. And my background to that is, as you might hear from my accent, I’m Austrian, so I speak with a bit of a German accent, like my daughter tells me all the time, and since she was six. Yeah. Um, and I did, um, later university in London and went through the whole kind of Anglo-Saxon way of education.

And when I was at business school in London, I was put into a study group for the first year, and over 50% of my grades were depending on our group performance. Now, I had the son of a Russian oligarch there. I had a Brazilian party person there. I had a very intellectual, uh, wonderful, uh, writer from the UK there. Um, I had a laid-back American there. I had a Japanese friend who didn’t talk much, and I had a Hong Kong Chinese who actually didn’t want to be there. That was the group. God. Um, it was really, really tough, but we made it through. And what I realized, actually, even until today, is that it helped me so much to develop.

Now, later, five years ago, I formed what is called Working Out Loud, a Working Out Loud, uh, circle with, um, three friends because we realized that we were all entrepreneurs, all starting our businesses, and that we lacked… yeah, didn’t have this kind of regular exchange. So we thought that’s a good idea to have. And we found, um, the book, Working Out Loud, by Tom Stepper, which is highly recommended. And you find a lot of resources also on his web page.

And the, the idea is you meet every week for 60 minutes, not more, with a very clear agenda of saying to bring your business forward. That’s the whole objective. And you really sign up for these 12 weeks. And you can imagine, some of you know me being Bernhard, signing up for every week, 12 weeks. God, really. But I did it, and I wouldn’t be where I am without that. And one of my best friends, um, Yvonne, is actually, we still work a lot together because of that experience. Funny enough, we tried it a second time because we just liked working together. It didn’t work. So the 12 weeks was really good.

Yeah. Um, I did it for others, uh, later on, and when I started researching that and getting into that, one of the names actually, which popped up was Mastermind, like what Michelle and Deanna actually are doing. Anyone knows where this term mastermind comes from? Where it was really used in literature first? There is, um, a guy called Napoleon Hill, who wrote a book called How to Get Rich. Good title. Interestingly enough, he wrote that in the thirties. And he looked at the American industrialists, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, and these kind of people, and thought, “Why the hell did they get so rich and so famous, and they’re so successful?” And one of the ingredients was that they regularly met, that they exchanged information, but they also pushed each other. They also had each other accountable, which then led to the fact that, um, they became so successful.

Now, when you think about groups and the success of groups, any idea, any examples which come to your mind? Something where you say, “These are really big organizations where groups actually work well, which really lead to a huge change in your behavior.” Lab of Rome. Very good example. Yes. Another one?

One of the ones you all don’t know, but you might know from television, is AA, Alcoholics Anonymous. Very good organization working exactly on that group principle, but you have accountability towards the group. You also get rewarded when you stay sober, and you hear and read people writing about it and speaking about it, um, honestly. So, an amazing example of that. Um, another great example are is the Catholic Church. Yeah, you come together every week on a Sunday, um, to pray, to worship. Yeah. But it also forms a strong community for further the development. You have Weight Watchers, you have, I don’t know, Freemasons, Club of Rome, um, social clubs. You have endless examples of that.

Interestingly enough, until I met Michelle and Deanna, I didn’t know that that actually existed also in the music world. So when I started teaching BYUM, um, during the pandemic, I put everyone in study groups and some of the study groups actually still connect sometimes, and it worked together, which I find really fantastic. But, so there’s a lot of well-researched evidence that working in a group, being together in a group, actually helps you, even if you know, you, you don’t work together, you don’t make any kind of music together or so. You’re not an ensemble. Yeah. You just come there, you share your goals, um, others might help you. They hold you accountable. And this kind of accountability from others is extremely helpful for us as individuals because, indeed, as individuals, to be honest, um, most of us, at least myself, I’m kind of lazy. So if I don’t have that accountability, nothing will happen. Yeah. To get out of that, these groups work well.

Now I would love to hear from Michelle and Deanna and perhaps Deanna to start with, as you are the freshest one, um, here from the three of us. Um, how did this idea of the masterminds, uh, the Fearless Mastermind come up and how is the session run normally?

Yeah. So first of all, how the Fearless Artist Mastermind came about is that, uh, well, as a backstory, Michelle and I both had moved from North America to Europe. We didn’t know each other, but we were both, um, in a new city, discovering new language, and starting over with our, with our connections. And that’s the most important one because we were freelancing. Um, first I was studying, but then I was freelancing and I was realizing like we, as a freelance, we are so isolated, and we don’t have the same structure and deadlines, and we’re not surrounded by the same people as we are when we’re in school. And when we’re out there, we might have ideas, things we wanna accomplish, but we’re like, “Either I don’t know where to start, or I just don’t have the accountability that I need. People to ask to problem solve different questions.”

And so we had participated in a mastermind for musicians and we thought, “Oh my gosh, the potential is huge here,” because we were accomplishing things that had been, um, just ideas or goals or things that we wanted to do, like Michelle’s concert series, becoming a nonprofit. Um, and we realized when you are surrounded by other people also working with that same energy and spirit towards something you can accomplish so much more. And having that accountability, that regular meeting makes it so that these ideas can blossom.

And then there’s, uh, just a ripple effect. We’ve seen that happen with so many of our clients who are like, are musicians who want to, maybe they start off saying, “I’d like to record a CD,” so, “But I don’t know where to start.” So they come into the mastermind. And when we’re talking through different goals, different obstacles that are happening, um, maybe they start realizing the importance of branding. So then they have higher visibility, and then that means that they get called to solo with an orchestra somewhere. And so there’s just this continuous rippling effect of expanding our careers, um, because I think so many goals that we are working towards are interlaced, the branding, the visibility, the, um, the performances, the creation of new, new performances, series organizations, things like that. So all of these things, um, it’s so powerful to come together. And have this group.

And that’s really, that’s really how it started. And masterminds are prevalent with the business world. Um, people know about those. I think also with authors, I’ve seen, um, a lot of masterminds for authors, but we have just seen how, um, amazing it is for musicians to come together, um, especially those like-minded ones because we all are surrounded by our colleagues at orchestras or teaching places or, but it’s not the kind of people that you can say, “Well, I’ve got this idea I really wanna accomplish and I wanna work towards it. Um, what can I do?” And that’s a special kind of person. So that’s the kind of people that we have in our community here. Um, and we found it to be so, so powerful.

Michelle, how is the Fearless Mastermind when I enter that? What’s kind of the points? How does it run? How often do I need to be there? All these details of things. Yeah. How does it work? Why you wanna sign up?

Yeah. Probably actually good idea. I should.

So what we learned this morning with Dominic was talking about, um, marketing to your audience. So the first thing we do is when we get to know our musicians and we say, “Who are you? What are you working on? What do you need right now? Where are you at in your journey?” And based on that, we’ll recommend a few things for you.

We have three programs. Um, one is our fast forward community, and that is really about building community and accountability and support. We come together, uh, monthly. There are two group calls per month and people set goals, share where they got stuck, get into small groups for discussions, and we do monthly trainings with that as well.

The higher level that we offer is a mastermind and that’s invite-only because we really, uh, align people that are working on multiple income streams. That’s where we do business strategy, consulting, coaching. Uh, we talk about branding, marketing, sales, social media, kind of take you through your entire business model. And, uh, we’re, that’s capped at 10.

And then on the side, we also have a social media program called the Social Media Sprint. And that’s really one of our favorite things that we do because within six weeks we will get you from stop overthinking and start posting and we’ll give you your entire brand strategy and what your content buckets should be based on how you wanna get hired. And this is where we really push that. Musicians should be using social media differently than the typical influencer because views and likes are not our priority metric. The metric is conversion rate, which is where you’re going to be getting calls to go play. That’s what we want. Or you want the parents calling you to teach their kid ’cause you wanna build your teaching studio. So based on whatever your goals are to make money, we will determine with you a content strategy. And we run that every three months. And it’s one of my favorite things that we do.

Anyway, um, I think that a couple of people who posted about today went through your course because these posts were really beautiful. I love them and I happily shared them on Instagram. Really nice. Thanks everybody for posting.

It’s called the Social Media Sprint. And if that sounds like you, uh, would be interested, just send us a message after the Fearless Day.

Yeah, and the Penguin Club is, um, again, has probably a bit of different flavor. Um, we meet once a month. Um, you can choose between two options I offer at the moment, normally one, one in the morning, one, um, in the evenings so that all the time zones and so on work out. It’s always a small group. Um, it’s three to five to six people, uh, randomly, um, old members of the Penguin Club. Um, normally they know, at least some of them know each other. And, um, you can put in anonymously, um, topic you would like to discuss beforehand and then I’ll bring that in. Um, sometimes also the topic simply arises from the conversation we have.

And we are looking at some of the deeper topics, I guess. Yeah, this kind of psychological, uh, topics. Topics of what holds us back, um, how can we move forward, where do we get our energy from? Um, things like that. Um, I spoke in the morning about it. Um, one of the most fascinating conversation we had about feminism. Um, I really liked that very much and I learned a lot from it. And it’s a 60- to 90-minute conversation, um, which I lead through. But as I said, it’s one of the things I really learned a lot about.

Why I want to point out the things Deanna and Michelle and also I do is yes, I’m convinced the three of us doing a good job, I hope at least. Yeah. And there are a couple of people in here, um, whom you can ask about insights on that and seeing how it is. Um, and it’s not the only ones. Yeah. Um, but I believe strongly in the importance actually of doing that and of having a group of people, not your ensemble, not the people you work in, in a string quartet or something like that. That’s different because there everybody has also a bit of an agenda. Um, probably in the Fearless Mastermind, in the Penguin Club, people’s only agenda is actually finding different perspectives on the topic they bring in, getting ahead themselves, and supporting the others in getting ahead. So it’s a different structure there, um, from also team, um, perspective or a group perspective, um, than when you work together, um, with someone so. It’s important to keep that, um, in mind in there and in kind of the, the team terminology, this is a typical working group, um, not a team. If you were an ensemble, that’s a team and there different kind of things apply to that.

I just wondered before we break into these groups, if anyone from the audience would actually like to share. Um, their experiences with any group. That might be one of the groups just mentioned. Um, it doesn’t need to be AA, but it can be very happily the Penguin Club or the Mastermind. But, um, also any other groups are very welcome if anybody wants to share.

Yes. Pin, um, yes. I’m now with the Fearless Mastermind for four or five months. Um, and, uh, I, I got it from my friends also, book who is in this meeting, um, as a gift, as a graduation gift. Um, and it has been so helpful because when you graduate, you step into this world, which is so scary and like, “What do I do?” Uh, and only from like the first intake I had with, uh, I learned about, you need an Excel sheet for your network list and you get such specific tools. Um, you have a community which you build your network. People are very kind and it’s very scary to post a lot. And having people encourage you also doing the same, it really, um, you can step over your fear. Be fearless. Ah. Um, and, uh, yeah, it’s just really nice and, uh, I can highly recommend it to everyone who also just graduated or, um, we have a lot of people who also teach or have another job this, um, and also wants to do a performing, uh, job as well. Um, yeah, it really is a community. You’re so alone in this work field. You don’t have your classmates around you and yeah, only a lot of love and, uh, it’s been so helpful and I really am grateful. So please join. It’s not sponsored, but thanks so much, Deanna.

Yes, we did not pay her for this comment.

Other experiences of groups. Yes. Kirsten, I can share because I’m part of the Penguin club, so the other club and, um, to connect that to, uh, Felix, um, lecture before, it’s so amazing to get your ideas out there because you’ve got a safe space to talk about ideas and you get cooperation ideas and other thoughts. It’s, yeah, it’s amazing to have all these different thoughts, views, and I’m always looking forward to these meetings, um, in a month and, and make always space in my schedule for that.

Thank you, Ina, you.

Yes, I, same as Kirsten. Uh, we, I wanted to share, I’m also part of the Penguin Club and it’s really a joy to join these meetings every month. I also always make space for these meetings. It’s really a nice safe space to, to share ideas, but not only ideas, struggles, doubts and everything. And it’s a super supportive, um, environment that I really love.

Anyone had an experience outside of, um, the field of mastermind or of, uh, the Penguin club where you say, “Wow, that was a really great crew where I learned so much and got, uh, ahead.” Perhaps Sophie, what you just wrote in the chat, would you care to share that?

Sure. Uh, I was just thinking of a chamber music group that I’m a part of that is also a group that we share the workload and having the accountability to one another. So I think you can find the accountability partners everywhere. And I’ve also just met with my friends online when they’ve studied all over the world to just say, “Let’s, uh, work for an hour,” and yeah, just do, do our thing so it doesn’t have to be the same project.

Thank you, Sophie, for sharing that. Um, I know actually friends of mine, they, they have these online working times together, coworking slots. Yeah. They say they meet on a Tuesday from 11 to one and everybody working on their thing and then exchanging sometimes, um, opinions or asking for help or something like that. Very simple way, um, which really move things forward.

Ela. Oh, yes. about, um, oh, four years ago I found a couple of other composers and maybe five years ago and, um, I had not, I had been adults the end of a long hiatus when I hadn’t been writing. I needed encouragement to start writing again. And, um, I just, um, said, “I need accountability partners,” and these two people volunteered and if it weren’t for the little group that we formed, I wouldn’t be writing. Now, unfortunately, after about a year, one of they both got sick. And the group that standed, but because of that era, I’m, you know, I’m a composer now.

So beautiful. Yeah, it really made a huge difference in my life. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, really beautiful. Any other examples?

Hey Anna. Welcome.

Hi. Thanks. Um, yeah, during the pandemic I joined a group of pianists, composers from around the country, and we met weekly and we would play whatever we were practicing on. Um, and for me, that became my first exposure to, actually, to contemporary music because most of them were working with new music. And we met for four years, and that became our accountability to bring new things and get immediate feedback from fantastic peers on a weekly basis, and we all prepped our concerts for multiple years with this group. Now we meet on a monthly basis, but that was probably one of the best groups I was in for maintaining my accountability with practicing and also getting out of my comfort zone for trying new repertoire.

Hmm. Thank you for sharing that. And how was it, how in what can you describe in which way it helped you to get outside of your comfort zone?

Well, when I joined the group, I was really only playing traditional classical repertoire and, um, everybody else was playing music from the late 20th century or recently composed pieces. So I started a Google Doc and I wrote down every single piece I heard for a year, and all of a sudden I had a huge new list of repertoire that I could listen to, study and just ask questions because they were all really great at contemporary music and knew the composers. And so it was my, my, um, ability to one-on-one, get to hear all this new music, um, in a way that I could, uh, excessively ask questions. That got me out of my comfort zones, and I started playing a lot of contemporary music and got a lot more concerts from that because they started inviting me to come to their concert programs once I branched out and did some more music.

Mm, beautiful. Beautiful. How did they behave when you started, um, playing the first pieces?

Oh, they were incredibly supportive. I was terrified because I was much younger than everybody and I thought, “I’m, you know, I’m this baby in the group and these are people with 50 years experience doing this,” and they were so kind and told me to take my time to really find what contemporary music spoke to me and were forever putting me in touch with new composers to talk to, giving me new ideas. And there wasn’t any pressure to conform in a certain way. It was, I was met with nothing but encouragement to explore on my own terms, and that was also probably the best lesson I could have received.

Beautiful. And I think it’s one of these things in the groups, which I love so much, is you see eye to eye. Yeah. You support each other. Um, there’s no judgment there or something, or no, I don’t know. Yeah. Uh, fighting about who is better also. It’s this kind of close relationship. The joy also. Yeah. Of how people develop. And if I go back to the Working Out Loud, I did with my three friends at that time, or actually, uh, not everybody was a friend at that time, um, everybody really did well and I’m very, very happy about it. Yeah, it’s kind of, it makes me proud of them and of the group. Yeah. So it’s good. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Um, Michelle, shall we slowly go into groups so. What we are going to do is, um, we run these groups now and I hope everybody’s happy, um, to join them and kind of get a bit out of their comfort zone. We won’t record what’s happening in the groups. Yeah. That stays within the groups, but it should give you an experience of that.

And while everybody is gone, because Michelle already put them in groups, right? Yeah. It’s about the secrecy you see. The best clubs are secret clubs. Okay. Goodbye everybody. Uh, we’re coming back in 50 minutes. 50 minutes? Yes. 50 minutes.

Alright, have fun. Go be awesome.