Practice strategies that actually work so that you stop wasting your time – with Daniel

Michelle Lynne: Hey, everybody and welcome back to the Fearless Artist Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Lynne, and today I have my colleague and a new friend Daniel from Notabl on. Welcome, Daniel Lalonde.

Daniel Lalonde: Hello. How’s it going?

Michelle Lynne: I’m doing well. Uh, so I’m excited to have you on today. You are here to chat about your freelance career, your Canadian principal base. I’d love to hear all about that, but specifically also we’re gonna talk about your practice journal company called Notabl.

So for our audience, would you please introduce yourself? My fellow Canadian. And tell us a little bit about you.

Daniel Lalonde: Hi, my name’s Daniel. I play the bass. I am principal based of the Ontario Philharmonic, and I’m on faculty at the Royal Conservatory here in Toronto, and I launched Notabl almost one year ago, which is a practice journal for classical musicians, and I sell in North America, in Europe, and a few places in Asia. And yeah, just trying to get the journal out there and show people the power of journaling while practicing and how extremely effective it can be.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, and we’re gonna get into all of that. ‘Cause I’m all on a practice kick right now about having healthier practice methods. So I, I love that we’re talking about this. Um, but I didn’t realize that Notabl was so young. Actually, I thought you started during the pandemic, but no?

Daniel Lalonde: March 15th. I launched March 15th. But there’s a lot of things involved when designing a new product. Uh, so, you know, hiring lawyers and hiring designers and everything involved. So it took maybe eight, 10 months to really suss it out and then launch almost a year ago. Yeah.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, well congrats for that. Uh, very cool. You have a first-year anniversary coming up? Uh, yeah. Deanna and I just had our five-year, uh, Fearless Artist anniversary last month and we did absolutely nothing to celebrate. So it’s good to remember anniversaries and to commemorate them.

But anyway, please tell me, like, when did you get the idea for the journals and, um, also a little bit about your career in Canada.

Daniel Lalonde: Sure. Well, I am a student of the game. I’ve been journaling—practice journaling specifically—for about 15 years, and I’ve been finding some old ones just like lying around in my library and bookshelf. And, uh, from 2011 back, asking questions and asking my teacher and planning my practice and making notes. And so I, yeah, I’ve been doing it for a while and that’s kind of what I wanted to start: something of my own. And from what I learned is you should go where you know. And so I was trying out a few different ideas, and they would be kind of very different career changes from what I was trying out before. And just always thinking back: What do I know? What do I know? And this is, you know, for the gentle listeners listening in and wanting to start something of their own—like you have—you know a life, and you know some things, and like, what problems could I solve that I know that I could gift to an audience? And this is where it came from. It’s like, okay, I’ve always been journaling. I’ve always seen it as extremely effective, especially for someone who gets maybe shiny object syndrome, maybe a little distracted, you know, maybe like, oh, I should just play that ’cause it’s fun. And kind of like, okay, now we need to get back to the work, and always danced in between the two. And the journal really helped me focus in where I needed it.

Michelle Lynne: I love this. I love so much. You’re speaking like marketing language 101, like where can you serve, where can you give, what do you know? Um, absolutely. And of course this podcast is all about musicians who do more than one thing, so I love that you were looking to build your own side thing that was still connected to your music.

Tell me a little bit more about your career. Where did you study? And you said you were using journaling back in your undergrad days.

Daniel Lalonde: Uh, well, I grew up in Ottawa. Uh, I was born in Edmonton, grew up in Ottawa—

Michelle Lynne: Yes. Edmonton. I forgot. Yes. Oh, I’m so happy now.

Daniel Lalonde: Why?

Michelle Lynne: Yes. Shout out to Albertans. Woo.

Daniel Lalonde: Go Oilers.

Michelle Lynne: Go Oilers. I love this.

So yeah, I studied at the University of Ottawa for a few years, and then I, uh, I transferred over to the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory.

Daniel Lalonde: Okay.

Michelle Lynne: So I finished my studies there and I stayed in Toronto, and I’ve been working here ever since.

Daniel Lalonde: Sure.

Michelle Lynne: Nice. And when you were using your journal in your undergrad, did you see your colleagues doing that as well, or were you kinda the only person?

Daniel Lalonde: That’s a good question. I saw myself doing it more. I can’t really recall if either I saw other people using it, but here’s what I did do—this is a hot tip right off the bat.

Michelle Lynne: Let’s hear it.

Daniel Lalonde: It was pre-smartphone days, right? I had to bring in like a recording device, like a Zoom H2, I think that’s what it was—

Michelle Lynne: I had a Zoom too. Yes.

Daniel Lalonde: Oh yes, excellent. So I would bring it into my lesson, plug it in—’cause I’d never have battery—so I’d have to plug it in the wall, record the lesson. It would be on like a SanDisk, right? And then I, halfway through the week, I’d plug that in to my computer, I’d listen back to my lesson, and boom, I’d make notes. So it’d be like having two lessons in one, which I found incredibly useful. You go through a 90-minute lesson, you can’t absorb everything. And also hearing, you know, your teacher’s sound, as well as advice—like the comparison—

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Daniel Lalonde: —is always—the ears are always tricky in a small room, big room, practice room. It’s like, oh, that’s, that’s the sound I’m looking for, that’s the advice I need, and writing it down—boom, two lessons in one week. And uh, yeah, it’s a hot tip right off the bat.

Michelle Lynne: I mean, that’s actually super smart. And I did that too. I recorded my lessons with a Zoom. I didn’t plug into the wall, so a lot of my lessons would die halfway.

And you’re just making me realize that like on my old MacBook, which is 10 years old, upstairs dead, are all my lessons. So I think some of ’em I dropped into Dropbox, but you’re right about hearing that sound. It’s so crucial. And then writing on the notes after. So what I’m hearing from you is that journaling helped kind of clarify your thoughts.

Daniel Lalonde: Oh, completely.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Daniel Lalonde: I felt swimming a lot in the world of, like, music and lessons. Like I didn’t have a ton of natural abilities in some things, so I had to learn a lot of things fast, and so I just kind of swam upstream. And journaling really helped me make sense of things when you’re battling uphill a bit.

Michelle Lynne: I think for me, I’ve only ever used journaling as tracking how many hours or, like, I don’t know, when you say shiny object syndrome, like I recognize that in myself, but I would, you know, keep my practice journal going for a few days and then totally forget about it, or lose it, or leave it at home, or, you know. So staying on track with the journal has also been a challenge.

Daniel Lalonde: Well, that’s—I mean, I hired an amazing designer, and I’ll plug her in a bit. Um, ’cause part of it is that you can just go to the dollar store, you know, the corner store, get a one-dollar notebook, and then use that, and it can be useful. But the problem is, like exactly what you said, you just kinda drop it off. You’re like, oh, you forget about it. There’s nothing really getting you to come back to it. So I wanted to make something really beautiful and really cool, so that people—they like carrying it around. They’re proud to own something nice, and then, when they open up and use it, there’s like this, oh, not only do I have something awesome, but I’m getting better at practicing and being a musician. And so that keeps you coming back to it.

Michelle Lynne: Well, I mean, I wanted to ask you this, so let’s just jump right there. But tell me about the layout and why you chose the questions that you did, and how is it structured? Because I’ve seen a few practice journals—I had a couple different ones in the last year, and some of them are overwhelming in the questions that it’s asking you to do. And I found that I would get too stuck in the weeds. But I like your outline because it’s quite simple to me, like, it seems like—but as I’ve been—I mean, here’s the proof that I’ve been using—and as you go, you can kind of see, like, okay, it’s the rhythm and the routine and being able to flip back and see what’s been happening. Um, yeah. Anyway, please share. Move through your thoughts around that.

Daniel Lalonde: I really wanted to find balance in the journal, so it’s between structure and flexibility.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Daniel Lalonde: That was part of it. ‘Cause I did—in the research, I bought maybe a dozen practice journals that I found, and I went through all of them. They all had a lot of issues. And like you say, some were either too simple—like it was just a page of, you practiced, go ahead. And some were too busy, like it was dictating your whole existence in the practice room, so it’s like a little too much, you know?

Michelle Lynne: Yes, exactly. Sorry to interrupt, but I just saw that you have quotes on the sides of these pages. These are awesome.

Daniel Lalonde: Got some nuggets in there for sure.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, let me read this one—Tchaikovsky, which is great ’cause I was working today on the Sleeping Beauty Suite: “A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he’s not in the mood.” Ooh, straight to the heart, Daniel, you’re killing us.

Okay, so you’re looking for a balance between simplicity and structure. Tell me more about that.

Daniel Lalonde: Well, you can’t have too much hand-holding in the practice room. A big philosophy that I’ve been on in, you know, the content in the newsletters I send out is that you only see your teacher once a week if you’re lucky, and you go to conservatory or you take weekly lessons. You see them once a week. If you take the hot tip I threw at you earlier, then, you know, twice a week—’cause you can listen to your lesson. But if you’re a serious practicer and you’re doing three, four hours a day, six to eight hours a day, depending on your instrument and where you are in your career, it’s mostly you and yourself in the room. So there’s always this back and forth dialogue, and I always call it between you and yourself. And this is the part of the logo that I really like—it’s a mirror image, so it’s you and yourself in the practice room.

So, you can’t have too much hand-holding, ’cause you need to do a fair amount yourself. I’m not telling you how to make a practice plan, because you’re going to make your own practice plan. I’m not telling you how to make notes on what went well and what to improve on—it’s just, this is what the notes, the space you need to make the notes. And I get pictures all the time—my customers are really great. I talk to a lot of them over social media; they send pictures, and everyone’s journal looks different. Some people have highlighters and sticky notes and very simple, like Bach one hour, Tchaikovsky one hour, and then some notes. And some people completely cover the pages, you know?

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, this was mine today. Yeah.

Daniel Lalonde: There you go.

Michelle Lynne: I have to interrupt again ’cause this is “Slow, smooth, and smooth is fast.” This has been the TFA motto for like the last three months. We’ve been repeating it at every staff meeting—both of the girls working for us notice I repeat it back to them ’cause, you know, we make mistakes when we go too quick. So I encourage them, like, I would rather pay you an extra, you know, 15 minutes to make this piece of content perfect coming out rather than you’re trying to rush it out and get it done. We even have that pinned in our WhatsApp groups: Slow and smooth is fast. I love these. This is fun to dig into.

Daniel Lalonde: Thank you. Yeah, it really—I tried to curate the tips, the facts, and the quotes so that every day—journals are the same every day. It’s seven days of daily and one day of weekly recap, but every day has a little something new to it, which is yet a little sneaky information on the side.

Michelle Lynne: So just for everybody who’s listening only to this, you’ve got the date, the total practice time you did, and then the plan, and then the notes. Is there anything specific that you recommend about how to use this, or, as you’re saying, people can just dump however’s best for them?

Daniel Lalonde: That’s a great question. I like simple planning and sticking to it, which is a lot easier said than done. They say, you know, simple but not easy. So you’re gonna do 30 minutes of fundamentals, and then you do your 30 minutes of fundamentals—you put a timer on, and you go through it. And the second section of what went well and what to improve on I think is important, because some people, including myself when I was younger, stayed in the negative a lot.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Daniel Lalonde: Uh, that sucked, I hated that, I sound like crap.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. I’m out of tune.

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah, well, as a bass player that is, you know, the world I live in—being out of tune—

Michelle Lynne: That’s why I said that. Yeah. Sorry, I just had to take a jab at the string players.

Daniel Lalonde: Triggering!

Michelle Lynne: I know, I know. I never have that problem.

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah, well, too many notes, or—

Michelle Lynne: Yes, exactly. No, I did the weekly review. Yeah, so you have three questions: What went well this week? What can I improve? And then goals for next week. And I think it is a simple overview, but it’s just enough to kind of focus on what’s working, which I think is really brilliant. I used to coach in a vocal studio, and I always noticed that she would only ever take the student and talk about what was working, and then she would kind of craft that, cultivate that. And I asked her about it once and she said, because singers have so much—like, a lot of people who were coming to her were really broken from the conservatory that they were going to. They were just so in their own selves, their own heads, that they couldn’t get out of it, you know? And you’re like, oh, I’m stiff, or my larynx is in the wrong place, and all this stuff. So she’s like, I would only widen what’s working. And I always remember that ’cause I thought it was so smart to just focus on what’s working and maximize that.

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah, you gotta celebrate what you’re good at. That’s important. If you’re an orchestra person like I am, and you can play some excerpts and some parts really well, then you gotta showcase that. And you gotta own that: like, look how well I can play this. And then the things that aren’t working, then, okay, I need to improve on this. It’s not that they suck; it’s just that they need time and attention.

Michelle Lynne: I love that. My vocal coach would always say, like, where do you need to put extra love? Because I came to him just such a broken perfectionist in my thinking, and I would zero in on the things, like, oh, I don’t sound good, I sound stuck. And he would try to get me to articulate exactly what I was doing that I didn’t like, and I could never tell him exactly what. I would just, oh, it sounds flat, or it doesn’t sound—you know. And he’s like, until you can specifically tell me what you wanna improve, we can’t work on it. So then he gave me a list of, like, 16 things that singers can fix, intentionally, specifically everything from stage presence to breathing to intonation, all that stuff. So I love that you’re saying, like, what can I improve, where can I spend a little bit of extra time?

Daniel Lalonde: And that is, you know, that’s the ownership that we all need to take in the practice room. ‘Cause it’s not—yes, it’s a place to learn notes, because we have things to learn, but it’s a much, um, you know, deeper place than that. A lot of self-discovery. You know, sound production is so much of self-discovery. Practice habits and routines—everyone’s a bit different. And actually being—like you say—being able to articulate, okay, what is exactly the thing that needs a bit more love? And then the power of writing it down is, I think, also underappreciated.

Michelle Lynne: So how do you think that journaling has helped you overall as a player, now that you have a career and you’re playing for the Ontario…Ontario Harmonic?

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, I didn’t even know about that orchestra. That’s pretty cool.

Daniel Lalonde: It’s a small orchestra. It sounds grand in nature, but it’s, uh, yeah. It’s a great group of people.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, nice. I can imagine. I mean, every Ontarian is super friendly. Um, yeah. Tell me more. Like, if you hadn’t been journaling all these years, how do you think it would’ve changed the outcome of your playing, even your career? Can you hypothesize?

Daniel Lalonde: I mean, the amount of things I would’ve forgotten… You—if you’re someone who remembers absolutely everything, you have a photographic memory—I’m eternally jealous of that. But being able to—especially when you revisit music, and having a log of journaling, like, oh, I played that last year, oh, and I went back, oh, these are the same issues, I solved these problems already. Like, you can basically just teach yourself. And I really like this quote—I’ve been saying it a lot to myself lately—is that we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught.

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

Daniel Lalonde: And if you journal and you’re writing everything down over a few months, you’re like, man, I’m seeing the same things over and over again. It’s like, yeah, these are the things that you’re good at and that you need to work on. And just keep reminding yourself that, you know, to go forward.

Michelle Lynne: Interesting. I think I haven’t dug into journaling that specifically yet, where I would write down a specific piece, what I need to fix, ’cause mostly I’m just trying to get through the amount of notes that I need to learn. So I noticed today, like, I make notes about concepts for myself, like ways of approaching the instrument. I’m continually trying to speak more kindly to myself in the practice room ’cause I’ve just hated myself in the practice room for so many years, which is why I learned that I avoided practicing—’cause I just didn’t want to feel like that. I’ve done a lot of subconscious work around that. But I wrote today in my thing, my Notabl journal, “Wrapping your brain around new music,” because I have just so much—so many notes to learn right now. I wrote in my Instagram story today, I had a little meltdown on the weekend. But then—I mean, I also like your journal because there’s other ways you can adapt it for your needs. So, like, in the inside cover I wrote down all of my upcoming programs and repertoire so that at a glance I can see the next three months, and I know what I need to do for those individual programs. I think that’s really helpful. But I said, “You’ll get faster. Stop being annoyed that it’s not coming right away.” So I think I kind of write myself little motivational encouragement things to be like, remember, you have to be nice to yourself so you won’t try and see results in this place or else you’ll just avoid it.

Daniel Lalonde: It’s you teaching yourself.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Daniel Lalonde: There’s always these two minds going in the practice room, and it’s, uh, yeah, we all need to develop a very—if we can—a very healthy relationship between those two minds.

Michelle Lynne: At the bottom, I noticed you have this little box. Tell me about this.

Daniel Lalonde: Well, when I first—I have it somewhere here, I have so many design drafts—you know, it was not this staggered two boxes. It was different. I—yeah, a lot of different design details and drafts. And I had “good, neutral, bad.” And I remember, you know, you put the journal—you spend a month putting the journal together, and you get it printed, and you ship it to your house, and immediately you open up like, oh my God, this ain’t close to what I wanted. Oh my God, no, that’s all off. And you just—it’s all these things that I wasn’t—you’re not aware of until you hold it, because it’s just on a piece of paper or on a screen. Seeing the word “bad” there was like, this goes against the whole philosophy of being kind to yourself and teaching yourself. And like, you don’t sound bad, you just need more love and time.

So I think the “productive, neutral, unproductive” box is a small self-motivator, in that no one really wants to tick off “unproductive.” And so you’ll kind of do your—like, I don’t—it just kind of feels bad, so I just want to—okay, I can work a little harder and a little better, so I can at least tick off “neutral” ’cause I know today isn’t going great.

Michelle Lynne: I love that. I never saw it as like a self-motivator. Okay, that’s good. I’m gonna use it that way from now on.

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah, you’re always trying to hit “productive,” but you can’t do it every time. But you’re always trying to reach for that.

Michelle Lynne: So you mentioned already that you chat a lot with your clients in social media, the DMs and stuff. What are people saying? What’s the feedback that you’re getting around people using the journal?

Daniel Lalonde: A lot. I am getting—and my favorite is—”Oh my God, I can’t believe how much I can get done in an hour,” which is—

Michelle Lynne: Oh yeah.

Daniel Lalonde: —um, people—I think the way I create my content when I do my own journaling, I always put times and I always use a timer.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, yes.

Daniel Lalonde: 20-minute fundamentals, 30-minute blah, blah, blah. And I always do that. So when people start doing, you know, 20, 20, 20, they’re like, wow, I can’t believe in three 20-minute sessions I actually got that much work done.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, one of your practice tips: Try practicing this way for one week, see if it works for you—three 15-minute intervals with a 15-minute break at the end. I did have that thought today. I had a free afternoon, and I thought maybe I’ll do, like, 45-minute chunks and then 15-minute breaks. I didn’t do that. I got swarmed with a bunch of DMs that I had to deal with, and I went for a walk with my dog. Anyway, “Do this one to three times in the morning and one to three times in the afternoon. Each interval should be planned and focused.” Okay, dig in with us about, like, how do you plan and focus your—’cause to me, as a pianist—and probably it’s gonna differ for every instrument—but 15 minutes, how can we make this—how do you plan this?

Daniel Lalonde: Okay, this was actually years of self-discovery in that one little practice tip, because I would, you know, get some coffee, go in the practice room. In schools, a lot of the time, you have to book rooms for, like, two hours.

Michelle Lynne: Yep.

Daniel Lalonde: So like, I only have two hours to get work done. And with a bass—say maybe with piano, you don’t have a piano at home—you’re like, I can’t bring this thing home. I only have two hours. How do I get the best out of these two hours? And I always found that when I used the timer, I could never quite get to 20 minutes.

Michelle Lynne: Mm.

Daniel Lalonde: Some people can, but for myself I felt like if I do this—if I do scales—for 15 minutes, I can do focused, hard for 15 minutes, and then I would need to take, you know, go to the bathroom, get a sip of water, come back—boom—do another 15 minutes, make some notes, walk around the room, don’t go on your phone. I mean, this is pre-phone days. And then, uh, then do another 15 minutes. Then I would find I was a little bit like, okay, my brain—I’m getting a bit foggy now and my body’s feeling a little something, so now I’m gonna take a little bit more of a break. And over a lot of experimentation, a lot of learning—which is why I press upon people really to try this—and I had a community tip; it’s also part of my Instagram. I have really high-caliber musicians offer their amazing wisdom and advice and community tips. And, uh, Lola from the Rotterdam Philharmonic said a similar thing, you know, unprompted: “I do a 45-minute session, I do a 15-minute break. That 15-minute break I plan my next session,” and, uh, you know, try to do some good techniques of, like, basically not going on your phone and not trying to entertain yourself.

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Daniel Lalonde: Do some journaling, walk around, you know, lie down, even, breathe—like, my teacher would always tell me, we are more like plants and less like computers, so you gotta let the water seep into the soil; you gotta give it a bit of time.

Michelle Lynne: That’s really good. Yeah, going on your phone is just a brain killer because then there’s people harassing you ’cause they need things, and then somebody that you wanted to check up with, and then, oh yeah, you forgot to send this message, and then your brain is flooded. Even if you get off your phone within the 10 minutes of the break, I find that my brain is now snapping with all these other things I have to think about, and then the focus on the practicing is gone.

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah, you can think of it like nutrients, like you just put 45 minutes of nutrients in, and then you start with the phone, and then, like, you start pulling them out, like, wait, I just spent 45 minutes giving my body and my mind all this information, and now it’s getting pulled out by distractions or, you know, entertainment or things like that.

Michelle Lynne: I am just gonna so enjoy digging into these little quotes. That is totally my thing. Here’s a quick checklist before you start something: posture, breathing, hear the sound, play. I love that—training your inner ear before we just jump in or rush in, just taking a second. I have a friend who sits at the piano and just touches it for a second to get grounded, because we have different pianos every single time, so it’s like, okay, I’m gonna connect to this particular instrument and get used to the setting that I’m in right now, and breathe, and yeah, I love that.

Daniel Lalonde: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Lynne: Do you have any other hot practice tips for people listening?

Daniel Lalonde: I mean, going off of that one right there, absolutely. We just have to get comfortable and really knowledgeable with the sound we hear in our head versus what we’re producing outward, because—and having that distance not be too far apart. And if I can explain that: if you want to sound like this, but you actually sound like this—I’m, you know, my hands are very far apart—you’re just in a world of frustration. And every time you play a note, you’re like, is that what I really sound like? That’s terrible. And so you want that distance to be close. I want to get to level 45; I’m level 43 right now, which is good. And having this sound you want is such a great teacher in showing, like, okay, this is what I want to do. My body may act differently in the moment, but now this is an opportunity for me to teach my body how to make that sound I’m hearing. And as you listen to more music—you go see concerts, go see live music, folks, and listen to more music, listen to different genres of music—and just hear great musicians playing live a life. And this sound will start to really, really develop over time. And then it’s kind of like this forever journey, like, you know, the sourdough from San Francisco that’s a hundred years old and never ends. It’s just, uh, it just keeps maturing.

Michelle Lynne: I love that. I saw an app recently where it said, discover where your sound comes from, and you’re supposed to be able to trace back your musical tree and see, like, which—based on which teachers you’ve been studying with. And I have traced back my tree because we did that in the undergrad, but it was kind of funny. I never thought of it about your sound. It could be like, you sound so much like this person, this person. So I love that you’re focusing on that inner ear.

Um, I know you’re a one-person team behind Notabl, so tell me, how do you stay inspired? How do you keep going on the hard days? I mean, everything seems very put together and well done, and I know that behind the scenes there’s a lot of work going on. So how do you keep going?

Daniel Lalonde: Well, I mean, for the journal particular, I’ll shout out Shanna Flodström. She is the designer, and check her out—Flodström Interiors. She sells her own wallpaper, and she’s an interior designer by trade, and, you know, a really amazing interior designer. Her wallpapers are really cool. So she was recommended by a friend of a friend. She had done some books and textbooks in the past, and didn’t really know—I knew what I kind of wanted and had a difficult time explaining, and then, you know, just moved forward a little bit, and I knew what I wanted it to look like on the inside, and just the practical part of it. But this—

Michelle Lynne: It is super important that you have enough writing space and that your hand is comfortable on the page, and I thought you had to think about all of those things.

Daniel Lalonde: Oh yeah, I had to find the right publishing for the books, and I made sure the publishing is B Corp—that was something very important. For people who don’t know, it’s companies that work very hard to make sure they’re carbon neutral or low emissions, so they’re, um, it’s kind of a very environmentally focused company. So all the printing is B Corp, which is very important. And Shanna did an amazing job of getting the feel—which is, you know, something an amazing artist or designer can do. She designed the logo and got this feel of Notabl, of something really cool and useful, and the balance of structure and flexibility inside.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, great. I hear you. But I know that then it was up to you to sell and market and build your social media and run your backend and promote and work with influencers. I mean, you sent me a copy, and I’ve been using it—love it. So how, how are you doing all that on your own?

Daniel Lalonde: Um, it’s a lot of time. I spent—it took me a long time—I’d say maybe six to eight months—to really figure out how much time I have in a day. You know, I drop my kid off at school, and he’s home by, you know, four o’clock. And like, a lot of time I’m gigging in the afternoon or in the evening, so I’m trying to figure out—I am writing, I’m creating content, I am creating ads, and I am, you know, responding to things. I’m doing collaborations and just responding to emails that need to be responded to. So again, the same as the practice journal—I put a timer on and I just go. So I’m gonna write. I’m gonna write an email for the newsletter in an hour, and boom, I just put on an hour, have a coffee, and I go. Um, I took a really cool course on how to make ads for Meta.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Daniel Lalonde: I’ve been selling a lot through Meta, which has been tricky. I still take—I’m still in the program and I still do coaching calls, and there’s so much to learn ’cause it’s also—it’s an app, it’s evolving. So every quarter the Meta ad updates, so it’s never ending, and it’s tricky, and you definitely don’t wanna waste your money. I just looked actually yesterday—I spent $20,000 in ads since I started. Since I started. Yeah.

Michelle Lynne: That’s crazy. Well, you obviously know what you’re doing ’cause I haven’t—I mean, yeah, I know the power of it, ’cause it works if you’re reaching your target audience. Unfortunately, my ad was reaching elderly women over 67 or something. I was like, that is not who I want in the Fearless Artist membership.

Daniel Lalonde: Right, they’re starting their ukulele career right away, you know?

Michelle Lynne: Exactly. Okay. Well anyway, it sounds like you learned a ton of skills outside of music in order to pull off. So how was that for you? Did you have tough days? Did you have to pull yourself together? I mean, how did you do this?

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah, of course. Really tough days. Like I, you know, there’s some things—I hired a trademark lawyer. There were just some things I didn’t know how to do, like to trademark. And there’s some things I did not want to mess with. The publishing company I used sent me an email one day—it was by mistake, I think it was from like a new employee—they’re like, oh, you actually can’t print journals from our—for our books. And I was like—literally, this entire—

Michelle Lynne: That’s your entire offer.

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah, you’re like, you can’t legally print journals, and I had to call the lawyer and be like, are you kidding? And he’s like, no, no, no, they’re wrong. I was like, okay, that’s good to hear. Thank you. Some hard things like that. And just getting comfortable spending money to make money—that is not something we’re used to in the music world. We’re used to investing in instruments, which is very normal to us, investing in, you know, concert clothes and transportation, and you get paid after you do a gig, you get paid for a rehearsal, you get paid for your gig, you get paid for teaching—and, you know, you get paid for your time. But what we don’t really do is, all right, I’m gonna give this conductor a thousand dollars, and I’m gonna play and hope that they give me two thousand dollars back after the gig. It’s a very different mindset. And I can’t imagine giving conductors thousands of dollars in hopes that I get it back. But, uh, yeah, that’s, you know, very common for businesses and cash flow, is that you spend money to make money. So being fully in the music world, that was something I had to kind of work my head around. And it’s a—it can be a scary risk, like, do I really wanna—I would say to launch the journal, it was around ten thousand dollars—

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Daniel Lalonde: —to launch the—

Michelle Lynne: Yes, for everybody listening. Yeah.

Daniel Lalonde: Yes, which, you know, our dollar is not doing that great right now, but—

Michelle Lynne: It’s like seven thousand American or the Euro, I think.

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah, I would say, yeah, around seventy-five hundred.

Michelle Lynne: No, I’m thankful that you’re talking about this, because return on investment is something that I’m constantly talking about in our content as well. When we’re asking people to invest in things like the social media program that we run, so I’m telling them, listen, you’re gonna book concerts from your content strategy—like, we’ve got examples after examples. Those concerts are gonna pay you, you’re gonna earn money from doing this. So yes, you’re paying the course up front, however, this is like long-term wins. But it’s hard for musicians to understand this, because it does feel like a loss in the beginning, rather than—but because there’s a mindset that you have to trust—

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah.

Michelle Lynne: —trust in yourself, you have to trust in the content that you’re putting out, you have to trust that you’re gonna stick to it and be consistent. Then you need to trust people are gonna find you, and you are advertising yourself on social media. But a really fun story that came back yesterday was a girl in our mastermind, and she did our social media program—a six-week sprint—and she posted a ten-second clip of her practicing, and somebody saw it and knew of an orchestra in Alaska whose soloist just dropped out for Rhapsody in Blue, which is what she happened to be posting. So they called her, and now she’s on her way to Alaska to go play an orchestra gig because of her content strategy, and she said, thanks, thank you guys for making me post. And I’m like, this makes me so happy to show that it works for people.

I love celebrating, love celebrating people who take risks like you. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, because that’s a big risk to put in 10K and trust and hope and work that it’s gonna come back.

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah, it is. And it’s—I think because our minds work musically, it’s a bit of a hurdle, but once you can get over that hurdle, it is so worth it, because most of the world is used to that. You know, people buy a house that’s so expensive, and then maybe it’ll go up. They buy an investment, they buy, you know—yeah, they start—the business world is huge. This is just something we’re not entirely used to, but we can learn a lot from other industries and how to overcome that. And I feel like maybe—I don’t wanna put words into other musicians’ mouths—but because we’re so connected to performing and sound, there’s always an audience, there’s always external gratification that’s coming back at us from applause or from like, attaboys—very Canadian.

Michelle Lynne: Voice. Oh, sorry, I didn’t catch that. Yes.

Daniel Lalonde: Uh, you know, but it’s a different thing when it doesn’t come back immediately. Like, not only do I not know if this is gonna work immediately, but I’m gonna put money into it now and hope it works later. And there’s that trust in yourself that’s different, but I think it’s very important to really get in touch with. And also this long-term gratification really helps in the practice room too—this slow practice that people don’t really want to do because it doesn’t sound like Heifetz right away. And they’re like, well, just give it like a month of this. So like, I just taught a group class before coming here, and it’s just like, yeah, in about a few months you’ll be really good at this. Like, what, a few months? I want it right now. It’s like, that’s just—if you want something good, you have to wait. You put in time…

Michelle Lynne: Yes. Yeah, well, that doesn’t help that we have given our kids phones from the ages of, what, 10 now? I mean, we are the last generation—you and I—to have grown up in junior high, may not have had a cell phone. So now they’re getting the instant all the time—I mean, the likes and the views right away after you post. So I love this, I love the process of this.

Um, what’s your dream for Notabl? Where would you love to see it go?

Daniel Lalonde: Hmm, great question. Um, you know, I would love people to get the journal and to use it, and to find that it is a powerful tool in their practicing. I’m also in the process of writing a book right now that will accompany the journal. Hopefully before summer it’ll be out. So, your teacher tells you, okay, you need to practice an hour a day. So you get the journal, you practice, okay, I’ll do four—I’ll do, like, two 15-minute sessions, I’ll take a break, two 15-minute sessions, there’s my hour. But what do you do in those 15-minute sessions besides just learning notes? And this whole book is gonna be based around what to actually—like, from playing one note, and all these tips and tricks and problem solves and conceptual ideas of how to practice in the practice room. So I want these two pieces to accompany each other.

Michelle Lynne: Amazing. And I know that you’re on faculty at the Royal Conservatory of Music, which is my upbringing—I did RCM growing up. So maybe there’s something there for you to collab with them, getting these journals in the hands of their students, the books in their libraries. I mean, I think it’s a great tool. I think it’s super—also Canadian made. I’m definitely gonna be promoting that on the socials and letting people know how they can find you. I know you have a newsletter—if you wanna let us know, how can people find you, how can they read your newsletter?

Daniel Lalonde: Just go to the website and sign up—shopnotabl.com.

Michelle Lynne: Shopnotabl.com. That’s N-O-T-A-B-L.

Daniel Lalonde: Yes.

Michelle Lynne: And how can we find you on Instagram?

Daniel Lalonde: Uh, Notabl underscore underscore. If you just type underscore, you will see it. It’s just a—

Michelle Lynne: Find you. Awesome. And I know that you have a discount code for everybody listening—super generous.

Daniel Lalonde: Yes, I do. Fearless15 for 15% off.

Michelle Lynne: 15% off for Fearless15 at shopnotabl.com. That’s awesome. And I know there’s a bunch of different covers. I have the red one; I picked the soft cover, not the spiral. And I love it. I mean, I love how it sits open on the piano ’cause it’s just—I mean, you have to be able to write in something like this easily. Like, there’s a lot of practicalities going into this. So yeah, just huge, huge congrats to you for pulling this off for your upcoming one-year anniversary.

Daniel Lalonde: Thank you.

Michelle Lynne: Um, I know for everybody listening, we’d love to have one action point that we finish the episode with. What’s something that someone can do right now after turning this off?

Daniel Lalonde: Something I’ve been writing about in the book yesterday was about mentally and physically setting up your practice space. It doesn’t matter where or how you practice—you could be outside or in a school or in your house or apartment or wherever—but if you can mentally really get into a practice zone before you start, you’re just gonna save yourself a lot of time, energy, and frustration. I like just even talking to myself like, okay, it’s practice time, I’m gonna get some work done. You do a few deep breaths—if you’re writing down, write something down, journal and plan out your practice. It can be writing down or just mentally, okay, I’m gonna do warmup, fundamentals, do my concerto, do my things, and I gotta get outta this practice room right now. And then just really commit that time to what you’re doing, and please—you don’t have to be dramatic and throw the phone over the building, but just silent and out of sight.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, that’s so—but when you’re using your timers, what are you using for your timers? This is where I got stuck today.

Daniel Lalonde: I use a physical timer. I have an actual wheel.

Michelle Lynne: Oh, no way. Oh, you are old school.

Daniel Lalonde: You can check it out. It’s a wheel that is magnetic; you put it on your music stand and you press start.

Michelle Lynne: You are so cool, Daniel. I actually used my iPad today for the timer because I was on my iPad for the scores.

Daniel Lalonde: No, I love iPads, and I use them, and I know they have the tuner and the metronome and the timer—you can totally use it for that. And just the phone is—the phone is very different. It’s like a little demon that has all these little things in it. And even I can see it right here, even though I can—it’s like, come on, you should pick me up.

Michelle Lynne: That is psychologically true, it does. Yeah, there is that—it’s called the phantom effect or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah, it’s creepy. Just put it in your jacket, hide it, just make it not visible. Yeah.

Michelle Lynne: Very, very good. Actually, scientifically, I have a friend who’s studying at university right now, she tells me all these brain tips, and she said the fact of your phone being in the room means you’ll be less productive, even if it’s face-down, even if you’re not looking at it, because of what you’re describing. So she said you have to put the phone in a different room when you’re practicing. So I—

Daniel Lalonde: You do have to throw it over the building.

Michelle Lynne: Maybe. I’ve been using the Forest app for a long time, I promote that a lot because I love it. Um, it blocks your phone from any apps that you tell it to. So then I could still use Spotify, for example, ’cause I’m usually listening to a recording and trying to work through stuff. Um, but yeah, I also think—I actually, today I’m laughing because I had an idea for a reel today where I would be like, guys, I found the one secret to practicing effectively, and then it was gonna be like me chucking my phone into the forest or something. Like, yeah, I might still film that. But then I was like, how do I throw my phone without damaging—anyway, problems for another day.

Daniel Lalonde: It is an investment. You need to buy a burner phone to throw it.

Michelle Lynne: That’s true.

Daniel Lalonde: You need to invest in yourself, Michelle—buy a—

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can do that.

Daniel Lalonde: I wanted to know what your message to musicians is. If you had one thing you could tell ’em on a billboard, what would you say?

Well, be aware of pain. I went through six months of an ulnar injury. Um, yeah, you may be 19 or 20, but you’re not invincible. Take pain seriously. And, um, I exercise a lot. So, learning how your body responds to different kinds of pain is very important, because joint pain, nerve pain, muscular pain, tendon pain—they’re all different. And when I was younger, I didn’t know what they were. I was like, oh, I’m practicing a lot, this kind of hurt is good. They’re like, no, that kind of hurt’s bad. It’s very different than, like, a muscular pain, which is good ’cause the muscles will break down, they’ll build back up by tomorrow—it’s great. Take pain seriously and learn whether it is productive pain or, you know, you’re damaging your body long-term.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, that’s super good. And also, like, the journal is another place where you can start to write down if you are feeling anything. You can make a note, then you can keep track of, oh, this has been recurring for a couple weeks now, I should take it more seriously, or for example.

Daniel Lalonde: Yeah.

Michelle Lynne: Awesome.

Daniel Lalonde: Time off is good. Like, I like one day a week where you don’t play at all.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Daniel Lalonde: Let the whole body set. Yeah, I’ve got oodles of tips and tricks.

Michelle Lynne: Awesome. Well, we’ll have to have you on again when the book comes out ’cause I definitely want to hear more about that.

Daniel Lalonde: Yes.

Michelle Lynne: Um, this has been awesome. Thank you so much, Daniel, for your time and for the discount code. Everybody listening, go check it out: Fearless15 for 15% off. I will be putting more of this in my stories because I think it’s super helpful, and uh, yeah, see you at the next one. Daniel, thanks so much for your time today.

Daniel Lalonde: Thanks, Michelle.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, everybody, screenshot this and turn to your stories, and tag Notabl underscore and the Fri artist, and uh, go check out his shop for all of the journals in there, and we’ll see you on the next episode. Be fearless.

Daniel Lalonde: See ya.