Run it like a Business with Aubrey Bergauer – sell tickets and build your audience in classical music

Michelle Lynne: And welcome back to the Fris Artist Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Lynne, and today I am truly honored to have Aubrey Bergauer on. Aubrey, welcome. I’m a big fan, so excited to get to chat with you today.

Aubrey Bergauer: Thank you, Michelle. Thank you for having me. It’s good to be here.

Michelle Lynne: Yes. Your name has been widely spread throughout the arts industry for a long time. People have mentioned you to me multiple times, so I think there’s a lot of excited listeners on today. We’re here mostly to talk about this incredible book that you’ve released just over a year ago, Run It Like a Business. And this is so great because the arts world desperately needs business skills and how to make things successful. I love what you mentioned in the opening. You’re saying there’s no reason why we need to be unsuccessful as orchestras or arts businesses or, I run a concert music series, chamber series, so we’re here to learn from you. I’d love for you to intro yourself to the audience, and we can dive in.

Aubrey Bergauer: Amazing. Well, what can I say? My whole career has been in offstage arts management roles, which now is 20 years. It’s so hard to believe. I’m like, okay, here we are. And,

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Aubrey Bergauer: And, uh, I was very quickly, I was trained as a professional musician, have a degree from a top music performance program, and also have a degree in business. And so many people stumble into arts management later. You want to run an ensemble or found something as artistic director, or you decide, oh, you learn later in life. Oh, there are these off-stage roles. For me, I realized this in high school, and so since age, I don’t know, 16, 17, I was like, I want to run an orchestra someday. And fast forward, got the two degrees, and now here we’re 20 years later with work… just to very quickly share. Um, Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival, um, Chief Executive of the California Symphony, and then now the last six years, Chief Executive of my own business, Changing the Narrative.

Michelle Lynne: Oh, it’s amazing. And I know that you travel and speak pretty much full-time, is that correct?

Aubrey Bergauer: Full-time.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. I got the chance to hear you in Rotterdam, and I was so grateful to be part of the audience. ‘Cause I know it was a private event, but luckily I could get in there because it was so important for me to be able to hear. And I thought you were just an excellent speaker. I mean, I saw that you’ve done TEDx stuff, so I see why. But, um, just speaking to this audience that is maybe, um, not used to these ideas, I would love to hear about, yeah, you’re sharing how you got into it, but what are some of the concepts that you’re bringing to the arts world?

Aubrey Bergauer: I think painting with a very broad brush, we tend to be in classical music very, I, very insular. You know, we’re trained so often to do one thing exceptionally well, and that is perform. And no shame in the game. A thesis, I would say, maybe the thesis of the book is that our artistic product is so excellent because of that fantastic training so many of us experienced. And so, like I said, no shame in the game. However, and in this day and age, that’s not enough. So the whole book is about how do we—we’ve been optimizing the product for hundreds of years… literally hundreds of years. And then how do we optimize the rest of the experience, the rest of the business around that product? And that’s really what the book is about, and each chapter takes a look outside the arts. What can we learn from the quote unquote business world, for-profit world? And the good news is so many of the challenges facing arts and culture have been solved by other industries, like versions of those challenges. How do we grow our audience? How do we keep our loyal customers—we call them subscribers and donors—coming back? How do we develop strong company cultures? You know, all these things that are just, um, I think really, I was going to say hot topics, but really urgent topics in our industry have been vetted, tested, solved, proven with these other strategies. And so that’s really, I would say, central to a lot of my work over the years. And then the book was just codifying a lot of that, of what can we learn from these other businesses who’ve done it. And then I will say also, it’s not just theory. These are, they’re also in every chapter…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: Case studies, whether it’s work, I’ve done work with other client organizations, and or just other arts organizations I found through my research who are like crushing that particular subject. So I just want to say it’s not just theory. This is actual, like art organizations and artists are doing these strategies, and every single time, lo and behold, it works.

Michelle Lynne: That’s amazing. Yeah. One of the most compelling things about your speaking, I think, were the case studies that you brought to the presentation. I know you mentioned from the smallest things like how Duolingo took out the shaming element of the owl because they realized it was turning people off. Can you talk a bit about how you found these like real-world business examples and brought them into the arts world?

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah. I mean, some of it was, like I said, this has been so central to my work for years now, looking outside the industry, seeing what’s working elsewhere and applying that, and then having a lot of success in my own career by doing that. And so some of it, Duolingo is an example of a case study I had stumbled on probably a couple years before writing the book and had really been following them, and they’re so data-driven in what they do. And then I realized completely independently, and this is all in the, in the chapter, and you heard me speak about this. When I was running the California Symphony, we embarked on very similar user experience research to what Duolingo did, completely independent of each other. But I realized, I didn’t even know when we did this, that it was called user experience research. So, uh, but it’s really literally going to your users, your customers, your audience members, and asking them really about what they feel and what are their pain points. And that’s a really different question and approach than a lot of different, uh, arts organizations tend to approach their audience research. Oftentimes it’s a survey or tell us about your experience, instead of really trying to probe, like, how does somebody feel? And when you do that, you start uncovering frustrations, and then those are things that you can solve and address. And so Duolingo, for example, this is, you hear some commonalities you mentioned, they realized, oh, people feel ashamed with some of the language they were using on the app, and they used to have this line, you know, it was like part of their loading screen. “15 minutes. What is it? Something like 15 minutes a day can help you learn a language. What can 15 minutes of social media do?” Or something like…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, I, I had had that pop-up come. Yes.

Aubrey Bergauer: And so users told them, “I don’t like that. That makes me feel ashamed.” And…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: They, that and many other things, they started addressing those, those issues. Well, lo and behold, at the orchestra, shaming came up. You know, newcomers were saying, “When I applaud and I don’t, and it turns out it’s the quote unquote wrong time. And I get shushed by somebody else in the audience. I feel ashamed, I feel stupid. I feel like I don’t belong.” And so when you, this is why the feeling is so important, when you start uncovering that those are the emotions that people are experiencing, particularly newcomers when they come to, in our case, it was a symphony orchestra concert. We reproduced this research now with many different, uh, genres and artistic disciplines. When you start uncovering, those are the feelings, it’s like, wow, no wonder we have an audience retention problem. I don’t like going to places where I feel shamed and unwelcome either. Right? And…

Michelle Lynne: Right.

Aubrey Bergauer: That’s really, that’s the, that’s the beginning. I would, that’s chapter one of the book is like, how do we start to tap into, uh, this user experience research and, and Duolingo as an excellent gateway to learn about this work.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. That’s amazing. So to get to know your audience better, were you surveying them, sending emails after the first time that they come? Like how are you gathering this?

Aubrey Bergauer: We sought out in this research project. Gosh, this was now over 10 years ago, which is also hard to believe. The, the first one, like I said, we reproduced it several times now, but we put out kind of the call just on social media. It started off, I think as like a Facebook post for the orchestra. We want new people who quote unquote, “should go to the orchestra.” Meaning we said, if you self-identify as somebody who is culturally aware, um, smart, educated, has expendable income, you do frequent other live entertainment experiences, but for whatever reason, you just don’t go to the symphony. We said, we want to hear from you. And we, the deal we made was we said, you can come to as many concerts as you want in the season. It’s $5 each. This was not a moneymaking endeavor. This was a research project. And we charged $5 instead of free because free has no value. Free has a high drop-off rate…

Michelle Lynne: No commitment. Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: And we wanted people to go through the purchase path. We’re like, part of the experience is going online, finding what concerts you want to attend, going through that, selecting your seat, you know, going through the whole process. And so we said we got to charge something. So we said, not out to make money, just out to do the research. $5, you can come to whatever concerts you want. There was one concert in particular that was required so that there was a shared experience from which we could have basically a focus group discussion. And that discussion is where we really uncovered all of these difficult feelings towards the art form. But I will say, if I can just wrap this up with a positive note, the most wonderful thing that came out of that, you know, I will say it is hard to sit with a group for an hour and hear a lot of these pain points, right? You’re, it’s so hard to not be defensive and instead to just approach it with, no, this is going to make my organization better when we address these…

Michelle Lynne: Mm.

Aubrey Bergauer: Issues. But then at the end, or toward the end, we’re talking about the, the program itself, the art itself, and all these difficult emotions that we had heard. Suddenly, the room temperature shifts and somebody says, “Wow. When I heard 70, 80 musicians playing together live, I felt awe.” And then everybody else in the room is like nodding their head and they’re like, “Yeah, I felt awe.” And… now this kind of full comes full circle to the very end of the book. There’s research on awe as an emotion, as an experience, and sure enough, um, artistic experiences. I mean, we’re, now I’m telling everybody things they already know, but artistic experience, research backed, science backed does elicit these feelings of awe. So here we go. To just put a bow on this, it goes right back to this thesis that the art is not the problem. The art is not what’s causing the challenges of our industry. However, there are some real pain points that we have to solve if we are going to grow, grow, period, but bring our institutions, um, into more, am I trying to say? Just cultural relevancy in, in 2025?

Michelle Lynne: Right. Yeah. Thank you for sharing all that. I mean, I think everyone who has the experience of seeing awe, I think of the Northern Lights, anything that makes you feel that you’re not the center of the world, right? Hearing an orchestra, it’s a completely new experience for so many people. I’ve had many people come out to me after a concert and say, “This was my first concert ever.” I’ve been playing with Candlelight. So that’s a different type of audience than the typical classical music audience. And that’s been such an experience for me to play for people who, this is their first time, they have no expectations, and they just love it. ‘Cause they didn’t know what to expect.

Aubrey Bergauer: Yes.

Michelle Lynne: They’re like, “Wow, this is so cool.”

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah.

Michelle Lynne: So when you talk about the pain points and some of the things that you’ve solved, can you share more? I mean, no clapping between movements. I know you have a T-shirt that says that, right? Yeah. Are you selling that as merch? I need that.

Aubrey Bergauer: Oh my gosh, I was at one point. I can send you the link.

Michelle Lynne: I love it.

Aubrey Bergauer: Um, let’s see, what else did we learn? We learned things. This goes back to the website. It start this, see, this is the thing. It’s everything but the product. This goes way back to people trying to like browse the website and figure out what concerts they want to attend. And this to…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: Opera. This applies to theater, this applies to dance. I mean, any genre or artistic discipline. But they said things like, “Wow, your website reads like inside baseball.” That’s a quote.

Michelle Lynne: Like jargony jargon, right? Yeah. Right, right.

Aubrey Bergauer: “What do you mean by that? Say more.” And they say, “I feel like there is so much technical language and jargon.” Those are the words they use. And it’s so funny, I’m in San Francisco, Silicon Valley’s right next door, and they’re not talking about a tech company, they’re talking about an orchestra. And they say there is so much technical language and jargon. I don’t know really what I’m Browse. And so the more we probed, it became very clear. This is true for almost every single orchestra and even opera company. Our program pages on our website, our production pages, are a list of artist names and repertoire generally, and they did not understand. This became so clear that every concert is pretty much the same format: overture, concerto, folk symphonic work, but they don’t know that. They also don’t know words like concerto and what that means. And so it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We got to zoom way out. And had to really think, are there ways we can talk about what we do without using this vocabulary we learned in music school or growing up as artists? And again, these were smart, educated adults, and so it just became clear that, you know, we say, I realized I had this moment. I was like, we, me included, preach that the decline in public music education, particularly in America, is one of the big reasons why we’ve seen a decline in our audiences over the last few decades. And yet I realized I have done nothing, at least at the time, I had done nothing to help grown adults who are now a product of that lack of education fill in those knowledge gaps. And I realize it is on me and my institution, like we have a choice. Basically we can fill in those knowledge gaps, use different words, try to help educate our audience, or I can stick my head in the sand and say, “Hmm, shame on the public school system. We need to fix this, rah.” And I was like, well, I’m going to choose the former. We saw our audience double over the next four years.

Michelle Lynne: Incredible. Can you talk more about this, because I’m thinking of the, the snobby, classical typical audience member who would be like, “How dare you,” you know, for lack of a better word, “dumb down our art, uh, not use the words that it’s a concerto. It’s a concerto.” Right. So, and I love that you’re taking this ownership over “No, I’m going to educate the audience if the public school system can’t,” um, but what would you say to the person who’s like, “Well, that person should just go on YouTube and do their research,” or whatever, any kind of pushback.

Aubrey Bergauer: This might be the number one question I get, if not number one, it’s up there. Like so many people say, “What about our core audience? What about the aficionado, longtimer?” Okay, so here I have several things in response to that. Not a bad question. ‘Cause this is like our core, like I said, our core audience for so many of us. So a few things. One, we found that our core audience also loved seeing the audience grow.

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

Aubrey Bergauer: We have so many people, and now I’ve seen this reproduced with so many client organizations, like people, whether it’s donors or people just writing into the general kind of hello inbox saying like, “I look around and I see younger faces. I look around performances and I see it looks different than it used to. At my orchestra, it was, it used to be half empty. Now we’re selling out and having to add performances.” So, and talk about the artist…

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Aubrey Bergauer: Too. It made a big difference in our relationship with the musicians too. But, so no matter who you are, I mean the, the most, the most knowledgeable people are the people on stage, right? And they were like, “No, no, I see it.” And then the core audiences too, they were like, “Wow.” So it actually helped. Particularly our donors who were like, “Wow, now I see what I’m investing in here…”

Michelle Lynne: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aubrey Bergauer: So… there was that. There are always going to be some naysayers for sure. So, uh, I tell this story in the book. There was one particular performance where somebody comes up to me. Wasn’t a donor, at least not a major donor, otherwise I would have known who they were. Um, so I’m guessing a subscriber and he’s kind of wagging his finger at me and he’s like, “I’ve been coming for so many years. And if you tell people to applaud when they like what they hear, one more time, I’m out of here.” I just remember thinking, “We’ve doubled our audience. Like I’ll take that deal. I will trade you for doubling the audience any day.” I mean, obviously I didn’t say it that way, but, you know,

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: I think we have to be ready for that. I don’t want that…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: Crabby bad apple who doesn’t even, who thinks they’re an, sorry, here I get on the soapbox, who thinks they’re an aficionado, but doesn’t even know that actually this whole construct of when to applaud and not is completely a 20th-century construct…

Michelle Lynne: Yep.

Aubrey Bergauer: Not even true to the origins of the art. I mean, I was like,

Michelle Lynne: Yep. Preach.

Aubrey Bergauer: I’ll get on the soapbox real fast. And so I was, so, yeah, like I said, I’ll take that deal any day of the week. I will trade you, Buster. So that’s that. And then the one other thing I’ll say is, follow the data because there is a human bias, uh, called the Law of Small Numbers. There’s another name for it too, I can’t remember. But we tend to focus on anecdotes over data. This is true for all human nature and it definitely plays out in our organizations to questions like this. ‘Cause I worked at institutions before where if that event had happened, we would go back to, you know, the next staff meeting or team meeting. “Oh my gosh, so and so, Mr. and Mrs. so and so were really cranky because such and such happened, and what are we going to do about it?” And it’s like, “No, no. Look at the data. Look at the data.”

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Aubrey Bergauer: It’s not about the one cranky person, it’s about how much we are growing because we’re doing things a little bit differently in service to our community.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, that’s so important, especially as artists because we tend to be a little bit more on the emotional side and we’re very sensitive, so having any kind of negative comment can really affect us. So it’s so good to say, look at the numbers, look at the growth, look at the people who are impressed and happy that there are more people coming. I know every time there’s young people in the room, people are like, “Wow, what are you doing here?” You know, like at my concert series, I had some friends come and he said, “All the old people ask me why I was here.” And it’s like, that’s funny, but a little bit sad because it’s like you, you hope that there would be people our age also interested in this.

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah.

Michelle Lynne: Um, okay, so how are you selling concerts, if not by the repertoire, if we’re not saying, you know, Mozart Symphony, like how are you bringing in new audiences?

Aubrey Bergauer: What we heard, and we just did what they told us they wanted, they said, “Why is this interesting?” We said, “Oh, well, because, you know, Mozart was a boy genius,” in this example, or, you know, whatever, we like all these things that we learned years and years ago. For most of us, we’re like, oh, this is why this is cool. This is why this matters. This is why we program this. So we just started putting that on our website as bullet points, and that was like the lead on the program page, like what makes this concert interesting. And usually it was like three or four bullet points, not a whole essay. Um, just a few quick bullet points, and then what we also, let’s see, a couple things on this one. To the music director, artistic director really helped because, you know, you ask them, “Why did they make these choices?” Oh my gosh, you’re unleashing a floodgate of, “Oh, well, this and that, and this and that.” And so being able to distill that for the public facing audience, um, that was an like an interesting and kind of fun exercise as well. And then the other thing, there were definitely some people, again, smart, educated, some people did want to go deeper. And there was one person in particular in this original focus group who said, “You know, I looked up every piece on your season on Wikipedia.”

Michelle Lynne: Oh wow.

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah. That was my reaction too. Wow. Okay. And what’s interesting though is that, in the group said this, most people won’t go to that effort. Some people would. They are, they are smart, they are hungry, they want to learn. And then somebody was like, “Hey, could you just like link to Wikipedia for us? That would be helpful.” ‘Cause if people leave your website on their own, they might not come back. But we, and we talked about that too, like, do we want to be linking people away? What’s that going to do? And we thought, well, if we’re going to lose them anyways because they don’t understand what we’re saying. Like, let’s, we did a pilot test. Let’s see. Sure enough. They were, uh, we could see them like opening in the new browser tab and then coming back and finishing their purchase. So for a while…

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Aubrey Bergauer: That’s what we did. And then later we did a website redesign. A couple, I think maybe two years later, once we had really tested a lot of these, um, theories and ideas. And in the new website redesign, we just had like pulled in from Wikipedia so they never had to leave the site. And that resulted in even higher conversion. So anyways, multiple ways to skin a cat. This is pretty in the weeds, but, um, but the point is, yes. People want to learn. They don’t want to read. This is a whole separate part of the discussion, but like things written by a musicologist for musicologists, right?

Michelle Lynne: Yep. Yeah. Even I don’t want to read musicologist, like, I’m like,

Aubrey Bergauer: Same, right? But yeah.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Um, would you ever link to recordings? Did you guys test that to let them hear at first?

Aubrey Bergauer: Thank you for mentioning that. We would, um, embed the Spotify playlist. And…

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Aubrey Bergauer: And usually it was artistic director who was like, these were his picks of the recordings that he liked. And so that was really like cool, fun messaging moment too, to be able to say, you know, this is what our artistic director recommends if you want to take a listen.

Michelle Lynne: That’s a great idea because then you’re giving people previews and probably they won’t listen to the full thing anyway, or it’ll be on in the background and then they’re more familiar when they come into the setting.

Aubrey Bergauer: You got it.

Michelle Lynne: I would love for you to talk about, well, first of all, how are you capturing new people? Like brand new people who have no experience? Is it you’re just hoping that they come on the website, or are you doing targeted ads? And then also how are we getting them to come back?

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah. Okay. The yes and yes also.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: New people here is what every artist and organization needs to hear on the whole. We get a lot of new people every year. So this is good news. A lot of what we’re doing gets new people to come. The very troubling statistic, and I talk about this a lot in the book, is that up to 90% of first-timers never come back. And we say we have a new audiences problem, we need new audiences, we need younger audiences. But the reality is talking about the data, we actually are quite good at getting new audiences. This is excellent news for us. However, where we struggle is retaining them. So how do we get new audiences? A lot of, a lot of what you said is true. Yes. Ads matter. Um, I’ll just say on the website piece. What was happening is that we’re, we were getting, and this, anybody can look at their Google Analytics to, to find the numbers on this, but it’s something, and I’ve seen this with so many clients now too, it’s something like 70% of website visitors are new. And I don’t mean brand new ticket buyers. I mean, never been to your organization.org before ever. And when I started, again, going back to the data, when I started seeing that, I was like, whoa. And then see previous conversation of are we are worried about the long-timers. They’re the minority of people visiting their website, plus they already have their tickets, their subscribers, so they’re actually not going. That’s part of the reason why they’re not on the website. They have their tickets, they’re good, they’re done. So too often artists and arts organizations are designing their sites for the people who actually aren’t really going there, or at least the majority of people going there. So that’s a whole, was a whole eye-opener for me as well. So, okay. So that’s thing one. New people are coming. New people are definitely coming to our websites. That’s why the website experience matters so much if we will ever convert them to ticket buyers. So sure enough, we saw, uh, increase in ticket conversions from our site once we made all those changes. So that meant more new people coming, ads, of course, help with that too. And then the second half of your question, how do we get them to come back? So yeah, that became a huge, that’s really what started the user experience research. I was like, if 90% of newcomers aren’t coming back, and our orchestra was close to that, it was somewhere around that number that weren’t coming back of our new, our newcomers, first-time buyers. And that’s what sent me down the path of, we got to figure out why. So, okay. Fixing the experience that helps for sure. People stop feeling unwelcome and intimidated. Yeah. That, that helps their, uh, return rate, but also more tactically. This gets into a whole chapter on the subscription model.

Michelle Lynne: Let’s jump there. Right here. This is what, page 17 in your book.

Aubrey Bergauer: Amazing. We’re doing book club here. I love this. So yeah, so the subscription model, this is another area where I realized there are so many businesses with thriving subscription models, and yet in the arts we say it’s on the… well, we, it is on the decline. We say even that it’s dead sometimes. Some people say the subscription model’s dead. And once I started researching this more, I learned 20% of all credit card transactions globally are to our subscription services, to Netflix, to Amazon, to all the things that we, that we have…

Michelle Lynne: I think I have like 15 subscriptions myself, like definitely.

Aubrey Bergauer: We all do.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: And so, uh, that became. Like this point of tension for myself where I realized, I was like, what? It’s thriving everywhere else and it’s on the rise everywhere else, yet in the arts on the decline, and some even saying dead. And I thought, this does not compute like what is going on? So I went on this deep dive of research on this when writing the book, and it turns out there’s a lot in the arts that we do different than what are now kind of normal best practices. And that alone can really, that just changes how we can interact with our subscribers. Renew more subscribers. There’s, I mean, we can go down this rabbit hole as much as you want.

Michelle Lynne: I want to hear it. I want to hear it. Yeah. Yeah. The specifics of it. ‘Cause I’m looking through like, um, giving them all the value that they deserve, giving them the second type of content that was super interesting. I’ll just leave it. Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah. Okay. So yeah, we can hit all of this. So, okay. I’ll start with first-timers, ’cause we were talking about them. So this is, I guess maybe lesson one, you have to segment your data because not all audiences are the same. Hopefully everybody who’s been like kind of nodding along. Yeah, the newcomers, not the same as the aficionados, not the same as the long-time subscribers. Okay. So you have to segment your data. There is not a one-size-fits-all message. And so often that’s what ends up happening. So for example, somebody comes to, and anybody listening, you can like raise your hand wherever you are if this has happened to you. You know, you go to an arts organization and if you buy a ticket. Then what happens? You get solicited for a donation, you get invited to the gala, you get the subscription brochure in the mail, you get solicited for every, the postcard for every concert coming up after that, right? And it’s like we bombard our newcomers with all of these different next steps, all of these different offers, and it’s very confusing. So that’s a lesson. Uh, so I said segment your audience and then I guess. Part two of that would be, and then tailor the offer. So for first-timers, we said the only thing if 90% of them are not coming back, the only thing we want them to do is come back. And so that meant no subscription solicitations, no donation solicitations, no gala invitations. We’re only going to invite them back. And there are multiple ways we did that. Email postcard, you know, all kinds of things, letter on their seat. But no matter what you do, it was more of like the strategy of nope, that’s the one next step and one next step only. We were able to get our first-timer retention. If 90% is the national stat of who doesn’t come back, that means 10% are the ones who do. We got that up to reliably 30% of newcomers at any given performance we knew would come back within 12 months. That’s a lot of money no matter the size of your organization or budget. So that right there with that one audience segment that makes a difference. And this is why retention is so important. So I’ll talk about subscribers more in just a moment, but I just have to say. ‘Cause some people even say, “Well what does it matter? Could we just sell more single tickets if we have fewer people subscribing?” Yes you can. But it is way more difficult to make revenue goals and fill the seats if you don’t. And…

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

Aubrey Bergauer: So for anybody who has a product that’s super high-end demand, maybe the Candlelight concerts are an example. Maybe they don’t have to have subscribers ’cause they’re so popular. But for any organization that’s not bursting at the seams with demand, retention really matters to making your organization sustainable. So, subscribers…

Michelle Lynne: Meaning someone who buys for the entire season and gets six tickets or,

Aubrey Bergauer: Even a small package, but yeah, some version of buying in bulk essentially.

Michelle Lynne: Okay. Right.

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the next, then, now this goes back into the subscription economy. So then the next big alarming statistic is that nationwide, at least in the US, nationwide, 50% of first-time subscribers, season ticket holders do not renew. So. When I was researching the Subscription Economy, Membership Economy, it’s also called, in some ways, this tracks, it is always, always true that the first renewal period, whether that’s your first month of Netflix, or your first year and a year long subscription, in our case, the first season, always true that that’s the hardest period to renew. Okay. However, if you get people over that hurdle, they are so much more likely to stay with you for years to come. So there’s a lot of money on the table there. And then for us in the arts in particular, once somebody is a second year subscriber, who has renewed after that first year, they’re your top prospect. The data shows for donations. So when we’re talking about how do we bring people. On an audience journey from that first interaction with the organization to their first ticket purchase, to returning to then eventually becoming a first-time subscriber, to then eventually renewing that subscription. That’s why it matters because it’s, I now, I now say I didn’t have these words when I wrote the book, but now I say patron retention, audience retention is like compound interest. It gets so much better and so much more lucrative for us. So you mentioned like the different types of content and the strategies. So just to very quickly name a few, uh, is for subscribers, the. I would say maybe number one thing that we can do is have a better onboarding experience. This is what I learned better. Onboarding means better renewals, and so, so often arts organizations put so much effort into the renewal period. I’ve been there where it’s like, “Let’s just, let’s route, let’s send out another brochure mailing. Let’s send out another brochure mailing, let’s send them another email.” And the reality is, move some of that money to the front and of their, and make their onboarding. And it doesn’t even have to be a lot of money. It can be emails and things. It’s not necessarily expensive to do, uh, because for most organizations, onboarding is true for donors too, by the way. But talking about season tickets here, so for most organizations, the onboarding is a confirmation email, maybe a ticket mailing. That’s kind of…

Michelle Lynne: So someone’s just bought like six tickets to your season, and you say like, “Here’s your confirmation of your subscription. See you at the first show.” That kind of thing, right?

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah. That’s what happens a lot. And so especially for somebody who’s a new subscriber, like, we need to roll out the welcome wagon. And so, you know, it’s, “Thank you so much.” Like we originally changed our back at the California Symphony, changed our order confirmation to like a GIF of people jumping up and down and like we’re so excited and like really tried to tell them like, “This is awesome that you took this step.” And then that goes into the next bit of research on this is reinforce their decision. They’ve just dropped. Kind of a lot of money. I mean, that’s a very subjective statement…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Aubrey Bergauer: For a lot of people, but they dropped some money, let’s put it that way.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: More than they would on a single ticket because they bought multiple performances. And so then we have the first job we have to do. This is true for any subscription brand. You have to combat essentially buyer’s remorse and so reinforce the wisdom of the decision. So that’s why like the energy is needed telling them like, “Oh, you’ve made such a good choice.” And then it’s all the benefits that we use to sell. The tickets in the first place. Free ticket exchanges. What? Whatever else we said, you know, um, your same seat next year if you want. Or all those types of benefits. Remind them like you are now. First in line. If you want to renew your seats next year, you’re also subtly saying renew your seats next year. Um, so anyways, reinforce the wisdom of the decision. You want them to feel good about it. So all of that is part of onboarding. Then after that second type of content, this one I thought was super interesting. So Netflix knows. If they can get any of us to a second type of content, we are more likely to stick with our subscription for longer. Second type of content, meaning if I subscribe to Netflix because I want to watch some documentaries, they know if they can get me to watch true crime, a rom-com, and just a comedy in general. Anything else that’s not documentary? I’m way more likely to stick with that subscription for longer. So that is part of the reason why the recommendations, they want them to be tailored to the individual. ‘Cause that’s also smart. But also why a lot of times the recommendations are, might see some things similar, but then you also might see, oh, this other thing that’s a different, uh, genre. So same can be true for our arts organizations and some organizations. Really silo their programming, particularly orchestras where it’s like, “Here’s the traditional classical over here, and if you like the Beethoven, you might like the Brahms.” That’s not wrong. But then there’s also siloed over here, the pops and or the movie concerts or whatever, and there’s very low cross-pollination. And so that’s one way to do it is to try to go to different content types. The other way to do it I like is multi-channel. So follow us on Instagram. And see us live in the concert hall. That’s another way to get people literally to a different content type, different platform. So this is another one where there’s multiple ways to skin a cat, but getting outside of this mentality of like the traditionalist, only like the traditional stuff. Um, not necessarily true. And the more we can help people, I might join Netflix ’cause I really like documentaries, but they can help me see that. Oh no, there’s a lot of other good stuff here better for my retention rate. And I will just wrap this up by saying we have the ability as organizations and particularly as excellent artists to deliver all of that. And I think the way we tend to silo all of that programming and even, um, like almost segregate. It is really a disservice to actually retaining more people because it showcases the incredible breadth of what our artists can do. I think we should celebrate that and embrace that. And it’s actually a selling point, not this like siloed programming approach that we’ve had for so long now.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. That’s amazing. I love this, uh, description of the onboarding experience. I read something similar in a book where they were talking about the first day on the job and that they put in a ton of energy and intention towards a new employee at the office. And again, the retention rate was way higher. They made sure the coworkers came over and introduced themselves. They made sure that they had a free lunch on their first day. Somebody was there to show them around the office. This is from a book by Chip and Dan Heath.

Aubrey Bergauer: Oh.

Michelle Lynne: And it was just like how to get them to be loyal to your company for many, many years. It’s all about that first touch point with you. So yeah, if somebody’s going to give six times the ticket price to you, you want to make sure that they feel what you said, they’ve made a good decision and that you’re excited.

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s, okay, one more thing, just ’cause I can’t help myself.

Michelle Lynne: No, I love it.

Aubrey Bergauer: People make their decision on whether to return or not. Something within like the first 30 minutes of their arrival. And so for most people, they haven’t heard a note of music yet. You know what? The first 30 minutes is finding parking and. Getting their ticket scanned and dealing with the ushers and trying to find their way around the hall and you know, and it’s, and reading the program book and maybe standing in line at the bar, right? It’s like all these things where it’s like, oh wow, they’re barely hearing the orchestra tune at this point.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: So, anyways.

Michelle Lynne: No, it’s amazing as an artist, I mean, I know many people listening have their own projects, so there’s so much I can hear everybody being like, you know, “We just want to practice. We just want to play.” So it sounds like we just need to keep building teams around us. I know for my chamber music series, I have great people standing at the door. I personally have started walking out before the concert to like, thank people for coming or welcome people or whatever. But at the same time I’m also like, “Well now everyone’s seen me.” So that kind of ruins the whole like, you know, artist entrance or whatever. But at the same time, I’m like, whatever, it doesn’t matter. It matters that I have connection with the audience and thank them genuinely. And I also try to stand at the door when they’re leaving so I can at least shake hands and be like, “Hey, you know, thanks so much for coming.” Show appreciation that way.

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah, I was just going to say afterwards is an, is a great example too. I mean, it matters that people have a good first 30 minutes in this example, but, um, but yeah, if artists, ’cause I know this is. Maybe a tricky one. Some artists like need to be in the zone, don’t really want to be social beforehand. That’s okay. Um, and I’ve worked with institutions before where we made like kind of meet and greet, pre-show a choice. Like I think that’s fair to the artists. Some are like, no, it’s fine. I want to be social, I’m out and about and that’s okay too. Of course. And then some don’t want that and that’s okay. But, um, I’m totally a fan of after party, call it whatever you want, but I’m like, yeah, let’s get people out there really meeting the celebrities after the concert.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. That’s so good. That’s really helpful. Okay. As you were doing this work over the last, what, 10, 20 years and you started to bring in these business concepts to the arts world, did you have like a light bulb moment when you were like, “This is working?”

Aubrey Bergauer: Oh yes. I’m trying to think, was there a singular moment? I think no matter what I’ve tried, I, because there’s so many different strategies and tactics over the years, I, I am very data-driven if that’s not clear yet. Uh, and…

Michelle Lynne: I get it. I love it.

Aubrey Bergauer: Part of why I’m so data-driven is because I learned very early on in my early twenties, my ideas aren’t going to get me very far. I need, I need evidence. And so, uh, part of it’s my nature, but part of it is realizing if I’m going to make the case, you better know the numbers, girl. So, I say that because that’s really what has, I think, um, spurred so much of this is, you know, early on, I’m trying to think like 2006, I remember being maybe 2007. I remember being at the Seattle Opera and making the case for starting social media channels. Right? This really dates me and now it seems so obvious. How could they, how could an organization push back against having social media channels? But at the time, that was the, was…

Michelle Lynne: I mean, some still do, so you’re not, so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: And, and I remember pushing for a mobile friendly website back then too and you know, all those things. And like at the time it was, I mean I went all the way up to the CEO and I was having to make the case and there was so much pushback. And I say that not, not to throw shade, but to say like versions of that are true now, versions of that will always be true. So the. The, I don’t know if there was a singular light bulb moment, but it was always something like where I’m like, I see this thing working in other industries. At the time, so many brands already had social media channels. Right? And so, you know, things like that. And I was like, I think I, I see an application. I. To our work that, how that could help us. That’s usually how it, I think it almost always starts. And then, then, uh, the other thing I’m a big fan of is a pilot test. We do not have to, like, spend a lot of money to try a new idea. I’m actually against that. I think we, I’m a big fan of how do you. This comes from Jim Collins, Stanford Business School, but fire bullets before cannonballs. And so how can we test something on a small scale with very little money, very little resources back to Silicon Valley. You know, we call that minimum viable product is another way to say that. So that’s really important too, that we do not have to like go sink or swim. We actually, that’s actually not how change is made. Also, Chip and Dan Heath research coming back to them. Change is made in small doses, small increments. So is there a singular light bulb moment? I don’t know, but just these little moments over time where I’m like, every time, if I can test it, measure it, see the success, then that is really what has spurred me on to keep going.

Michelle Lynne: What is something that surprised you? You didn’t think it was going to work. You shot a few bullets and you’re like, ah, I’m not sure. And then it turned out to be a big win.

Aubrey Bergauer: Let’s think. Wasn’t sure I would say. Okay, I’ve got a couple that I can think of. One is some of this retention work. I knew we could be more strategic. I knew we could be more, you know, tailored in our offers and who gets what message. That part, I felt really confident about. But the idea of we’re going to wait to solicit people for a donation until they’re a second-year subscriber. Still to this day, that’s usually when the fundraising people are like having a heart attack. Like what? You know, and in CEOs too. Like, what? And, and I was then the CEO chair at that point. And I, but I just remember looking at the numbers and then really digging in and, give this advice to any organization today too, who’s having that heart attack moment. Look at, run the numbers. What are, how many first-time buyers are actually converting to donors? Some is probably the answer. And then what dollar amount is attached to that, because it’s usually like the $20 gift, not the $2,000 gift, right? Because they’re new. And so usually once I started digging into that, and usually is the case as it plays out, it’s like, oh, there’s actually not that much money attached to that group. And if we instead get them work on getting them to subscribe, for example, and then eventually donate later. First of all, their first gift isn’t $20. At that point it’s $200… or whatever…

Michelle Lynne: Right, right.

Aubrey Bergauer: I’ll take a 10x increase in somebody’s first gift, you know, so, but I, I would say that was one where it just feel, it felt a little counterintuitive or a lot counterintuitive. And then I was like, saw it bear out and now have seen a bear out for the last 10 years of this strategy working for organizations.

Michelle Lynne: I mean, in a real way, you’re just taking the general principle of know, like, and trust and applying it to your audience. Like, “Hey, you know us and then you’re going to like us.” ‘Cause you come to a few concerts and you see that the standard is the same excellence every time. Now you trust the experience and you’re willing to invest in this.

Aubrey Bergauer: That’s exactly right. And that’s the holy grail. Because, because this is now like another kind of, I don’t know, another issue or another just thing we see in the art so much is, yeah, we tend to sell, this goes back to like selling the program. I, we sell this artist or the, or that Beethoven piece or whatever. And instead, if we build a brand where people trust us. People are like, Aubrey, do we need to program more Harry Potter in concert, or more Beethoven, or more Brahms? Can we not champion the composers we want? And you know, and I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, it’s, it’s exactly what you’re saying, Michelle. Like if we build a place where people say, “I trust you. I know I will learn something. I know I will have an awe-inspired moment. I know I will come away feeling good things.” That’s the holy grail, and that liberates us in terms of programming as well.

Michelle Lynne: That’s amazing. I mean, there’s so much that you’ve shared already, but I do want to touch on mindset because I know that that’s one of the main things we come up against also in the Fearless Artist is, is scarcity to abundance. So I’d love for you to talk a bit about like, how have you helped to shift this mindset in our industry?

Aubrey Bergauer: This is the other biggest question I get. I would say so. So you’re hitting all the top ones. So, okay. It’s what will our core audience think? And then this overcoming scarcity mindset. So what do we do about this? There’s so much research on this too. I think it goes back to trying things on a small scale for sure. Realizing that yes, we might be afraid or fearful of, will this work? Will this not work? Can we try something new? Can we not? If we look at the data, we know if we keep doing the same things, we know what that result is. We see that graph, we know what that line looks like. It goes down. Whether that’s a financial graph, an audience graph, a subscriber graph, like we know that’s what it looks like in our industry. That’s thing one, where it’s like we have got to give ourselves permission to try it differently because clinging to what we know that is human nature clinging to what we know and what is familiar and comfortable. But what is familiar and comfortable is a decline, and at some point that’s not sustainable.

Michelle Lynne: The decline that we all complain about. By the way, classical music is dying. Nobody comes to the concerts.

Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah. Yeah. But it’s comfortable, right? Like we all can recite…

Michelle Lynne: Right.

Aubrey Bergauer: Those lines. We know, ’cause we’ve been there and so it’s, so it’s, um, it is human nature, but also humans. Our brains are plastic. Uh, neuroplasticity is a whole thing. So it’s like we can change the whole, the whole science of change is really what we’re talking about here. And so start small, test it, measure it, see how it goes. Iterate. We haven’t talked about that yet so many times. Also, we think if it’s not a home run out of the gate, if we do not try the new thing, and it is instantly successful. It didn’t work. I’ve been in so many conversations where, “Oh, it didn’t work.” I’m like, “Well, okay, hang on, hang on, hang on. Is there indicate…”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes we tried it and it was like, “Oh yeah, nope, we’re done.” And then sometimes it’s like, “Is there any indication? Is there, what if we try it and switch this little thing or adjust this other thing?” And the good news about our business is what we do is so cyclical. We have another concert next week. We have another concert next month, another performance. What? Or if an artist, you know. You’re developing your season, you’re, you’re doing one gig and then another. I mean, whatever. It just, we are so cyclical and what we do, it actually really helps this iterative approach because it is the nature of our business. So that’s in our corner. And then the other thing I would say on scarcity mindset is I think maybe just reiterating what I said before, it, we try to just like for the fences, do the home run swing. You know, what’s the saying? Like shoot for the moon, you might hit the stars, or you know, whatever. That kind of thing saying is, and it’s like, that’s just actually so not what the research shows. And I think that’s great news for us and to realize that no growth is possible. We have so much evidence. I have 600 clients now, or who over the years, and it’s like, okay, like these are individuals and organizations who have said, “I’m going to try it.” Some with extreme fear and trepidation, but I’m going to try it. And so now we have this like growing body of people saying like, “I believe it.” And that’s when there really starts to be some momentum with going from scarcity to abundance of, “Oh yeah, the proof is in the pudding. We see it.” So, and I hope that helps. I think this is never easy overcoming scarcity. Again, it’s what we know, it’s what’s comfortable. And yet at the same time, human nature is amazing ’cause we can literally rewire our brains and form new neural pathways, and that’s what we’re talking about.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. And I think the proof is the evidence that you are bringing. So I just want to thank you so much for this amazing book and uh, everybody go get your copy, Run It Like a Business. Um, and also just to your point of try it once, it doesn’t work, give up. Well, like we’re a musician, so we know that that’s not how we approach our instruments.

Aubrey Bergauer: Oh, thank you for saying that. ‘Cause I love this analogy and I, I didn’t bring it up today, but I use it a lot where I’m like, no, musicians are the best at this. We practice, we iterate. Like, yes. So thank you for saying that.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, of course. So I think that’ll help anyone listening who needs to try some new things. I know that I’m going to be taking so much of this and applying it to my concert series, so thank you. Hopefully I’ll have a sold out season and I’ll call you in a year and I’ll say it worked. If there was one action point that our listeners can do from today’s episode, Aubrey, do you know what it would be?

Aubrey Bergauer: I would say get the book.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Aubrey Bergauer: Talk about it. If, if people have listened and thought, “Yeah, this sounds interesting,” or “This sounds like it could be helpful,” please take that step. Go by the book, AubreyBergauer.com/book or Amazon or wherever you buy books, it’s there. But, um, it’s just been really amazing to see the response and how actionable people tell me it, it really isn’t helpful to them.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, if you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see it’s got a great cover. Run It Like a Business. We love bringing these principles into the arts world. Uh, we thank you for what you’re doing for the arts world. You’re making a huge impact and you’ve definitely impacted us today.

Aubrey Bergauer: Oh, thank you for having me.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, everybody, make sure you go follow Aubrey on all the channels. Get her book and we’ll see you on the next show. Be fearless.