Looking Beyond Traditional Music Careers with Studio Building Guru Katherine Emeneth

Ever looked at your music career and wondered if there's more to it than the path you're currently on? Katherine Emeneth joins us with her wealth of experience as a studio building expert and career coach for creatives, ready to shed light on the vast potential that lies beyond traditional music paths. She steers us through the terrain of scarcity versus abundance in the industry, illustrating how to mold opportunities that truly resonate with your personal values and aspirations. Our conversation is a treasure trove of practical advice for those seeking to carve out their niche and invest in a life that harmoniously blends professional success with rich personal experiences.

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Mentioned in this episode:

More info on Katherine's course: "Music Teachers Playbook"
Those who enroll before May 2024 get the following amazing bonuses:
🎶 Website building course that includes branding, logo design, SEO, website audits and more (Valued at $800)
🎶2 Extra 1:1 coaching calls (Valued at $400)
Be sure to mention "MusicianCentric"!

Katherine's website: https://www.katherineemeneth.com/
and IG: @katherineemeneth

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Our website: www.musiciancentric.com, for merch, joining our email list, and contacting us with stories and feedback!

Episode edited by: Emily MacMahon and Liz O’Hara

ViolaCentric Theme by: JP Wogaman, www.wogamusic.com

Additional music by: Freddy Hall with www.musicforpodcasts.com

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Transcript

Steph: 0:03

Welcome to the Musician-Centric Podcast. We are two freelance violists living and laughing our way through conversations that explore what it means to be a professional musician in today's world. I'm Steph.

Liz: 0:15

And I'm Liz, and we're so glad you've joined us.

Steph: 0:18

Let's dive in Make sure it's a little chilly today.

Liz: 0:25

It's like damp and icky out, which is the we're in this in between.

Steph: 0:28

It's gross.

Liz: 0:29

Like doesn't really feel like winter anymore here, but it's not spring yet, so we're yeah, it's a moving target, but it's on the horizon.

Steph: 0:35

That weather. Yeah, my little bulbs are starting to come up. Poke their little green sprouts out, yeah.

Liz: 0:40

So it's gonna happen. Yes, it's gonna happen, yeah, so it's a good month, the month of March.

Steph: 0:46

Yeah, and we've got some great stuff for you too. So we have a guest today. Her name is Katherine Emeneth and she has a company that she started called KE Creative and she is a studio building guru and she also does career coaching for creatives. So we were talking to her about a lot of different things, but basically how to figure out what you want to be doing as a musician and how. It doesn't necessarily have to be one of two ways, like either you're gonna be a performer or you're going to build a studio or become a professor at a university.

Liz: 1:19

Yeah, We've talked a lot over the course of the podcast with people who have kind of broken off the traditional paths of performance. But one of the things I think we haven't covered very much up until this point and we covered a lot with Catherine was the idea that many people who love to teach kind of put themselves on the university track. Their goal is to get a university job and their X number of reasons Y and the discovery that even in that realm you can kind of carve your own path and you can find a very fulfilling career without necessarily being on that track. And so it's kind of continuing this theme of carving out your own path. One of the things that I thought both of us really were drawn to was a concept that Catherine shared with us related to scarcity versus abundance. We've talked a lot about that too, but the idea that there's like this world we live in in which there's not enough work to go around, that it's very competitive, that we have to be kind of like working against each other or meeting each other out.

Liz: 2:20

And then there's this whole other perspective, this whole other world where actually there's plenty of work to go around, there's plenty of opportunities and it's more centered around really crafting your opportunities to be the ones that you want the most for yourself and really identifying with yourself in that way, and the way she described it I thought was just so effective and really fun to listen to.

Steph: 2:43

Yeah, so there's a lot of building, I feel like this season. We talked with Astrid earlier in the season about finding your strengths and figuring out what your path is based on, your strengths and what's important to you, and this follow up with Catherine is really nice because it's like, okay, well, now that you kind of might have an idea, here's how you can go about doing it and here's how you can focus your efforts.

Liz: 3:05

And she has a bunch of courses and stuff which she's going to talk about too Offerings for those of us who are still trying to figure out where we're going, yeah, and then the other takeaway that I remember very distinctly was we had a conversation about the amount of investment that's involved in kind of carving this type of life out for yourself, and it was really interesting.

Liz: 3:24

Later on, we did not talk about this in the conversation with her, but I found a post that she had shared a while back. It's at the top of her Instagram, so for those of you who are interested, you can go and check it out. But she writes five hard truths for musicians. Number three on it is if you allow yourself to take every opportunity, you may miss out on life, and she talks about how she's been sort of guilty in the past of making decisions that are work-centered and kind of missing out on personal life opportunities and things like that. But she says at the end of it like there will always be a music opportunity, there will always be something there, and balance has been resonating with me a lot lately, so I thought that was a good thread of conversation as well.

Steph: 4:05

Yeah, there's lots of great takeaways from this episode, so let us know what you really loved from it. And, if you loved this episode, if we could just ask you to share it with somebody who you think might also benefit from it. That really helps us a lot, yeah, spreading the word, collaborating with your coworkers, too, and your colleagues and your friends to help lift everybody up. And we do actually have some listeners who did share our last episode with Drew Ford, and the first one of those is her name is Elizabeth Knob, and she's on Instagram at at life from the viola section. So thank you, elizabeth for sharing.

Liz: 4:41

Thank you, elizabeth. And the other listener who shared was Veronica Vitascova Simonson, and she's at Veronica. That's V-E-R-O-N-I-K-A, underscore V-I-T-A-Z-K-O-V-A. Thank you so much for sharing this episode. It was just such a great conversation, and the more people that were able to connect with them that way, the better.

Steph: 5:03

So yeah, so thank you and enjoy this episode with Katherine Emeneth. We are all busy, especially those of us who teach music. We give everything to ensure our students' abilities and love of music are always growing and developing. We want to make sure each one has the right setup and instrument, but we barely have enough time to practice for ourselves sometimes.

Liz: 5:24

That's where Potter Violins can come in. Their sales team and technicians are also players and experts on all string things. You can send your students to try instruments, get properly sized, have their current instruments adjusted or to pick out a new bow or other string accessory. You can have total confidence that they'll be taking care of. Potters will even ship what your students need anywhere in the United States.

Steph: 5:47

So take one thing off your plate and send your students over to Potter Violins, no matter what they need, and Potter Violins loves teachers so much they want to offer you a 10% teacher's discount because you deserve it.

Liz: 6:01

Visit their flagship location in Tacoma Park, Maryland, their rental location in Gaithersburg, Maryland, or shop online from anywhere at PotterViolinscom.

Liz: 6:12

Katherine Emeneth is a musician, educator and studio-building guru. Through her KE Creative brand, she helps musicians create impactful careers, whether they're looking for help establishing, marketing or sustaining a private studio or simply getting unstuck in their entrepreneurship journey. Originally on the traditional path towards a full-time professorship, she wound up discovering that she'd already built her dream job on her own. Through career coaching, consulting and engaging Instagram content, catherine is generously sharing her skills with countless other musicians. We're very excited to welcome you to the MusicianCentric podcast, Katherine.

Katherine: 6:47

Well, thanks so much, Liz and Steph.

Liz: 6:49

I'm thrilled to be here and chatting with you guys, so we figured we'd just jump right in talking about your path through the music educator world in higher ed. We both found it really interesting to just consider that on this podcast. We're both freelance musicians, professionals. We both have studios, so we're going to probably pick your brain about that too. We've discovered that our original training was in the orchestral world. Win an orchestra job, that's the plan. Unfortunately, that market is just simply very saturated right now, so freelance musicians are having to really carve out their own careers. Of course there's overlap here, but this traditional path of pursuing a higher ed professorship, the full-time job, get the doctorate, then you'll go teach in a college Very similar in a lot of ways, right, the market is kind of saturated, and so can you tell us a little bit about your experience with that and how you got to where you are right now? Yeah, for sure.

Katherine: 7:44

And this is one of my favorite things to talk about, because this allows us to rethink what our music career can look like, how it doesn't have to be A or B, and through my journey and many other musicians' journeys we've had to figure it out like what else can we do? For me, when I started in college, I was a music education major because my parents said you cannot major in performance. You need to have some type of backup plan, something that you can do. I'm super introverted as a human and I was like I don't like kids, I don't want to do this music ed major, I just want to play like many young musicians do. But in hindsight I'm so grateful that I did, because that gave me that little glimpse of another field and how it can look differently.

Katherine: 8:28

So I started there and then, after I graduated, I actually taught general music at an elementary school for a year. You are brave. I had 600 students I saw every single week. I taught seven hours of classes. I was in charge of an afterschool chorus of fourth and fifth graders. I had 120 in that. I was responsible for organizing the talent show, doing two full blown musicals a year, and y'all, I am not a singer. I did vocal methods for that one semester.

Liz: 8:58

That's where we're forced to.

Katherine: 9:00

And that was it. Yes, exactly. I'm always really grateful for that experience because it made me realize I actually do like kids and I actually love teaching. I just don't like in that number, that quantity of kids. So then, of course, like I was like oh crap, what do I do now? So I went back to school for safety, got a master's in performance and then decided to move all the way across the country to Seattle to pursue a doctorate in flute performance. And it was there where I really was like oh, I want to do the higher ed thing because it's all of my favorite things it's teaching, it's playing and it's researching, being a nerd and writing and impacting young musicians so that they can go on and build a great career for themselves.

Katherine: 9:41

Because all through my college career I was that type of musician who was like I'm the exception, I'm going to be the one that gets the job, I'm going to do whatever it takes in order to make myself really marketable. So I did things already in college, like I interned with the Atlanta Symphony and I helped with build out the summer music program at one of the universities. And then at my doctorate I did similar things. I tutored the athletes in the athletic department in their non major music classes. To get that under my belt, I did the whole, the whole checklist of the traditional things we're supposed to do as musicians, you know, teaching master classes. I organized a summer festival and ran the whole thing. I built websites, I learned, I figured out how to do all of that on my own, without any help, and at the same time, too, I was like, well, crap, I'm living in Seattle, it's extremely expensive, I need an income, let's teach privately. And so I was able to start a studio doing that. So all of that kind of helped me going in for a college professor position.

Katherine: 10:39

And I had, I think I had seven in-person interviews where I was in the final three each time, and the thing that got me there was not my fancy performing degrees and international competitions, but it was the fact that I had a music at degree, I had built my own studios, I had created summer programs all on my own and I knew all of these skills and I had done all of these skills that I could help the students at the university do for themselves to provide them with that education. So you know a lot of times not so much anymore. But a lot of times professors will poo poo like if you do things other than practicing or like gain other type of experience. But that was the thing that really set me apart from everybody else. I got my foot in the door, Did not go to big name conservatories or anything like that, but it was just that my career was so diverse.

Katherine: 11:28

So I was on that track to have that traditional professor job and then through that process I started realizing like you know what, especially as I got into the final three and I started seeing the salaries.

Katherine: 11:39

Some of them were like $45,000 a year for an assistant professor job and like recruiting is a huge thing and all the stuff that they wanted me to do and it's living like in not ideal places. You know, I started going through this phase where I was like let's take a step back. What do we really want to achieve in this life? And what I really wanted to achieve in this life was loving music and playing music, helping other people and making as many people as I can lifelong lovers of music and helping this next generation of musicians learn the valuable skills of how to create a job and to make a living as a full time musician. So then I had to stop and think do I really need a title to do that? Do I really need that? No, I don't really need that title.

Katherine: 12:26

So for me, that pivot kind of happened and it was scary, of course, because you know, the reason why musicians are attracted to those traditional career paths is because it feels safe, right, stay stable like you're. You're walking into a place that provides you health insurance and benefits and you know you don't have to make your own income. But the problem with that is in marketing and in business. There's a strategy that's really cool called Red Ocean Blue Ocean strategy. I don't know if y'all are familiar with this or not but I use it all the time when I'm talking marketing.

Katherine: 12:58

Okay, so it's a strategy that's been around for a long time and there's a book about it. So if you like, nerd out about marketing and business stuff, like I do, you check it? Out and basically is the red ocean are all of the industries that are in existence today, so the known market space where industry boundaries are defined and companies try to outperform their rivals to try to get more of the existing market. It's cutthroat competition which turns the ocean red because of like what it's kind of a little bit.

Katherine: 13:28

So you have to compete in an existing market. You have to beat the competition, you have to exploit the existing demand and you have to align with the market's current set of rules. You have to follow the rules that the market is set up for. What does that sound? A whole lot like.

Liz: 13:45

Yep, yep, I mean right, sounds like our lives.

Katherine: 13:48

Yeah, it's the classical music bubble, as I call it, and I mean the bubble's not bad, but it kind of you. There's roles you have to follow. You have to be okay with doing certain things, like spending tons of money to go take auditions or to go travel or, you know, be okay with driving all over the place for freelance work, and if you're okay with those rules, then that's what the bubble dictates that you do, and then you stay in that bubble.

Steph: 14:14

It's also a small bubble.

Katherine: 14:15

Yes, it's very small.

Steph: 14:17

It's getting smaller.

Katherine: 14:18

And it's getting smaller. There's more people being crammed into the bubble.

Katherine: 14:22

Exactly, it's getting really overcrowded it really is, and so it's kind of depressing. But the great news is you have that red ocean, or the classical music bubble as I call it, and then you have the blue ocean. So the blue ocean is where I started living and it brought so much more help, happiness, positive impact in the community. And so, basically, the Blue Ocean is our industries that don't exist, they're the unknown, they're unexplored and there's no competition. It's vast, it's deep, it's powerful, there's tons of opportunity and places for having profitable growth. There's no competition like it's totally irrelevant if you have competition or not. You can create and capture new demand in it and you can do something different, you can pursue something different.

Katherine: 15:10

So our Blue Ocean is where, in my work, I try to help nudge musicians towards. Is that Blue Ocean to try to think of how their skill sets are different and how they can impact the world in a new and different way? The downside of the Blue Ocean is it's extremely scary to make that shift in that pivot, because humans are herd animals and we love sticking with what we know, people see as makes you a valid musician. So the titles, the doctorate, the checklist I won this job in this orchestra or I played with this orchestra last weekend Versus starting something on your own and being very, very vulnerable. So, as far as your question goes about those traditional paths and breaking free and looking into something different, I always like to think about the Red Ocean and the Blue Ocean because, to me, in order for us to continue classical music industry and to make it better and to make it live on forever, we gotta start thinking like that Blue Ocean.

Steph: 16:06

I just, yeah, to make it bigger, yeah, I just love this so much.

Liz: 16:08

It's like I've said this before many times but I was always dissatisfied with the funnel. It feels like we're just stuck on and from an early age like 26 years old I was going I need to come up with something. I need to like do something different. I just I have to figure something else out, and it just was like the feeling of red versus blue. There's so many things that that evokes. It's just very, very cool and we've never been introduced to that idea before. But I will also say, even now I can think of more than one example from the last orchestra job I played where that example of toxicity, the like cut throat, like cut somebody else down, it's mine. I need to carve it out from, I need to steal this from another person because there's not enough room for all of us Kind of mentality is so pervasive and it's so fascinating to think like we're just sort of stuck in the shallows somewhere. We're all like feeding off of each other.

Liz: 17:03

But if you just get out there into the big wide blue open. There's so much room and it is scary, like 100%. It's scary but it's also so rewarding. It's the place where you don't feel that pressure to like get ahead of somebody else Like you're just doing your own. You're swimming your own race, Like you're just doing your own thing, right. I just love that so much.

Steph: 17:30

It made me think of Liz. We're doing a reading this book called Creative Success Now by Astrid Bombgriner, and a big part of you know she coaches people in a similar way creatives to find their own path their blue ocean, so to speak. But what this reminds me of, and what you said was important to you when you were examining your own career path, was you wanted to help people, you wanted to play music, you wanted to inspire people kids to love music for their whole lives, and these are values and this is like the cornerstone of anyone's career in music. Once you take a step back and say, okay, well, this career path isn't necessarily what I need or want in order to be fulfilled. It's these qualities that are important to me. So what can I do that involves these qualities.

Katherine: 18:20

Yeah, exactly, and like I remember even subbing in orchestras and just feeling in my body being so uncomfortable and like worrying about what everyone is thinking and when somebody's gonna tell me like you're playing this too loud or playing this too soft and like, am I gonna be asked back again?

Katherine: 18:37

Versus, like going and hanging out in a pit in the orchestra for Cinderella or Mary Poppins and like the retired principal trombonist of the major orchestra sitting right behind me playing beautiful sounds in my ear and he was like, oh my gosh, this is so much more fun if I had only known this. You know, and just finding that fulfillment in that way, yeah, and this is industry wide.

Liz: 18:58

It's like just a change of approach and I think you can even you can see it in orchestras as well. You know the orchestras that are kind of taking this blue ocean approach as opposed to the red ocean, and it is stark. I mean, for a freelancer it's stark. I'm highly attuned to it now, but it makes decisions easier, like if you're committed to this path and it's working for you. You know, I mean there's a fair amount of I think this is worth talking about and maybe this gets into like the pivot of you know how do musicians go about doing this. There's a fair amount of like faith or trust. That has to happen. That's like I know what I want and I know how it feels when I'm doing the right things and I know how it feels when I'm not doing the right things, like. But that uncertainty can be very scary, truly very scary.

Steph: 19:41

How'd you get over that yourself?

Katherine: 19:42

You know it was a very interesting process because when I decided to stop applying for college professor jobs and just do my own thing, I honestly grieved for about six months about, you know, leaving that dream that I had had for so long behind. You know, I would see in my inbox every now and then former professors that would send me like flute professor job vacancy postings and stuff and how they were still trying to encourage me to go down that path, you know, because that's their job as an educator, but not really honoring the decision that I had made to not pursue that anymore. So it was really. It's hard because we have all this external pressure coming to you and also the fact that you have spent so much time pursuing this one thing and you have invested so much energy and money into pursuing this whole thing and there's so many people who've cheered you on to do this thing and now you're changing gears. So it kind of felt like grieving it in a way. Oh, 100%.

Katherine: 20:40

I feel that very, very strongly right now?

Katherine: 20:43

Yes, but on the other side too and this is what I tell folks that I work with and that I coach is that if you believe in your thing so much that you don't care what other people say and that you're going to do it anyway, if it helps one person, then it makes it worth it. Then you should do the thing. You should at least give it a try. This is what I'm happy to scream from the rooftops in order to help at least one person.

Katherine: 21:06

I know I can't please everyone and, of course, when people do poo poo your posts or they send you random emails or whatever, of course you're like oh crap, I made somebody mad, or am I doing the right thing? What are people going to think of me? And that whole imposter syndrome. But as you go and doing this and you start getting that proof that yeah, this is actually helping people, this is actually a really cool thing that's going to support people and make their lives better in a different way, then you're like okay, keep going, keep going what the haters hate and show it for the people who really appreciate what you've got to say, one friend of ours was just talking to me texted me not that long ago about this the idea that actually most entrepreneurs have what they call portfolio career, which means that there's multiple aspects of that and you can add and you can take away and there's always going to be something different, which is again goes back to that blue ocean idea.

Liz: 22:03

This is a total tangent, but I'm going to ask it because it's something that's very present of mine, for me in my life right now. All of this sounds so amazing and it's like I resonate with the helper. I resonate with this feeling of when you're connecting to other people, you're making a pact in their lives. You really feel it and you are motivated by it and I feel, every year I get older, my capacity for that is fully dependent on my energy levels and what I'm capable of doing in terms of taking care of myself and having time. This sounds like a lot of work.

Katherine: 22:41

See all these gray hairs that are coming in there, friends.

Liz: 22:45

And I think it's important to mention this because this is true. I think this is one of those things that can limit sometimes our musicians from going from red ocean to blue ocean. Mentality is that the stuff that you just get called for, that's your paycheck, that you keep getting that job. You get to a certain point in your career. You don't have to do the work to make that stuff happen, you don't have to create it, it's just there, it's just a gig. It pays you X amount of money. You know how much it's going to make. Whatever, for us there's this big level energy that has to go into everything you do, and if that energy is taken away, it doesn't do as well. So I think my question is and it's because I'm working on this myself where's the balance? How is your life work balance and what do you do to decompress and do you have any time to decompress?

Katherine: 23:34

Yes, yeah, that's a big question that I actually get asked quite a lot of times. In my opinion, as a portfolio career musician, as an entrepreneur, even as a musician, there really is no balance. There's never going to be a time in your life where you're perfectly in a symbiotic relationship with the care of personal life in your work life. It's always going to be tilted one way or another. So I know.

Katherine: 23:59

For me, what I've had to figure out is where are my boundaries of where I know what are the caps of things that I can do? So, for example, for my private teaching studio, I have 16 students this year. Four of them are graduating and so, even though I have a big waiting list, I'm only going to keep it at 12 next year. So then I'm only teaching four hours a day, three days a week. So that is my cap for that. I wish I could teach everybody, but that's not sustainable. So keep those 12 going For going out to schools and doing sectionals teaching is one of the most exhausting things that you can do for your body and sectionals.

Liz: 24:38

Oh, God, yes so much energy.

Katherine: 24:40

I love them. It requires so much energy.

Liz: 24:42

So much energy, yeah totally so.

Katherine: 24:45

I have seven schools that I go to this semester. The next semester is going to go way down to two schools that I go see. And then I'm recruiting other flutists to this area so that they can take on that work and so that they build our community. Give those other musicians the opportunity to learn these skills.

Katherine: 25:05

So, and then for the online stuff, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of time to create things. It takes a lot of time to market things and you know, especially these days, you see all these ads that are like create a digital product and have a passive income, y'all that is a bunch of things. That is a myth.

Katherine: 25:22

There is no such thing as passive income as a person who has tried it numerous times, I work harder on my passive stuff than I do on my active stuff. That's a lot. So you know, finding out which things you want to dedicate your focus to. The other thing that I do is that I think of all of my projects or all of my different things that I do in my portfolio.

Katherine: 25:42

Career is like pots on a stove. So sometimes of years, there's going to be one thing that's almost boiling over. Right, that's the forefront of my attention, while the other stuff's in the back burner and then they rotate. So you don't want to have all of your pots boiling over because that's going to make you insane. So, like figuring out in your schedule okay, when can I dedicate the most time to this one pursuit, Like when do I need to focus on that and when can I push the other stuff in the back? So it comes with a lot of planning and a lot of organization with the things. But it's very important to plan so that you don't get overwhelmed and get into paralysis or you don't want to do anything.

Steph: 26:18

Yeah, yeah. That's a very common side effect of overwhelm. For me, yes, at least it's like paralysis.

Liz: 26:25

Yeah, yeah, burnout in general, I mean it's a thing, it is a thing for sure.

Katherine: 26:30

And I feel like that a lot of times. Musicians especially, we run from each thing that's urgent to the next thing that's urgent. Put out the fire immediately, like what's the next thing I absolutely have to do, instead of focusing on the important thing. Yeah, is that urgent versus important thing? That's always going on, so you always have to step back and look at what is important that will move me forward, not just the fire that I need to put out right now.

Liz: 26:52

That's a great way to think about it, because, yeah, I feel that shift. I also was just talking to somebody recently who was saying they were just out one night and casually talking to this person who was the surgeon, talking about how they can never take a break, like they can never take time off because then they lose their chops and then it's like a whole balance or whatever. And but I'm like, do you understand, though, the funny, like the way you're talking about this? You're talking about the sense of life or death, but you're literally talking to someone who's working in the business of life or death. Like is this very funny to me? I'm like, if surgeons can take a break and come back and still save lives, so can we.

Katherine: 27:31

Absolutely.

Steph: 27:32

Yeah.

Katherine: 27:32

Yeah, and it's important to you too.

Steph: 27:35

Yeah, well, a lot of us just going back to your transition from having this kind of blinders-on idea of what you wanted to do to taking the blinders off and being a little bit more open. So a lot of us musicians are kind of realizing it. The blinders are kind of being like ripped away, yeah, but as orchestras, our opportunities are becoming fewer and further between. So the people who you coach like let's say that you have people coming to you that are stuck, they're unsure, they're kind of in limbo how do you coach them through this time of trying to figure out what's next?

Katherine: 28:10

Yeah, and most people I talk to, that's how they come to me. And first of all we explore like dream scenario, right, I think a lot of times musicians don't allow themselves to dream and we get stuck in this thing of having to do things, because that's what the classical music bubble says we have to do, and if we don't do those things we're a failure. Blah, blah, blah. So first we start off with dreaming. What are the things? What do you want out of your life? What do you want? What are those values that you want to have in your life? What are the things that you want to always do? What are the things that's the most exciting for you? And then we kind of pair those down into categories. So if somebody likes to write a lot, then that would go in a category. If somebody likes to play, which most people do, that goes into a category. If somebody likes to teach, then that would be another thing. If they are into numbers or business, then we kind of look and see what their interests are, the things that excite them, because if you're not excited by something, you're not going to be able to go all in and stay in it, right? So then after we do, that we talk about okay. Well, what is it about those things that excite you? What you're thinking is mostly is connecting with a person, a young person, one-on-one and being a mentor to them, because they had a mentor that was really really formative in their youth For writing. It could be that they're introverted, like me, and they like that form of expression better than they like talking or teaching someone. And then for business, a lot of people will just like the competitive edge and like seeing how what they can do can impact an organization or whatever. So then I usually will say well, I will come up with a couple of scenarios of different things like how does this sound to you?

Katherine: 29:50

And either, if it's like starting a private studio, starting an ensemble, starting a business, starting this, that and the other, they say, yeah, that's great, but, and then there's usually some type of objection, some type of block that gets in their way, and then usually after that we talk through that block.

Katherine: 30:06

Where is that coming from?

Katherine: 30:08

Is that coming from music school, where you were taught that all you could do is play and all you should do is practice, and that you will be frowned upon if you do not go into this direction or this direction, because if you don't look at it straight in the face and really accept it, that it's right there in front of you, you cannot blow past it, like you have to figure out where that is and if you're going to let it limit you or if you're going to release it and then be able to pursue the thing.

Katherine: 30:33

So usually that's a big part of this and most people when they when they start working with me in whatever capacity, by the time we're done, the biggest thing that they have gained is confidence in themselves and knowing that they can do the thing and that they feel comfortable with it, because they start off really scared about taking this thing and then, by the end, really confident and own the thing that they're trying to create. So there's a lot of limiting beliefs out there for musicians and there's a lot of things that happen to us because I think it's not addressed throughout our education. We are not given a taste of how to do this, how to do that, how to do that. It's getting better, for sure, but there's no guide, there's no do this, this, this, this, and that's how we've been trained as we were kids.

Liz: 31:15

Yeah, I mean the blocks are also. I think so much of it is like we said before when you said, catherine, that you had this grieving process you have to also do the work of letting go of this concept that if you give up that path, you are somehow lesser than and that your colleagues are going to have this attitude about you, that you gave up on a thing because you couldn't make it or whatever, but I just think more and more about it. I'm like but most of us are in that boat.

Liz: 31:44

Most of us haven't made it and we're all. So, who's fighting who? I mean, we just had this. We talked to somebody last episode that is coming out that it's like this path we're put on, we're just our hopes get so high. I just think we all have this idea in our head of like what it's going to be, and then you have to let it go and it's like, but who's the one telling you that you didn't make it? Like someone else that didn't make it? I don't.

Liz: 32:10

It's like such a yeah, and what's making it earning $35,000 a year to teach at a university or or let's just let's just say you get your dream orchestra job and you're making $100,000 a year and then next year they're like sorry, we're bankrupt, you can't pay you anymore. It's a wild thing. I just I love all of this and so much. You said like, ultimately, when people come away from this work that they do with you, that they're gaining confidence in their own abilities and their own path, and that's really that's what everybody needs in order to do this work. Like it's not some magic formula of X, y and Z.

Liz: 32:53

Yes, you can build skills. Skills are important. You have to learn the skills. You have to know what skills you need in order to do the thing you want to do. But you have to believe that if you go it on your own, it's going to happen and the struggle doesn't end. You know you decide to take a path. You're going to have rocky moments and you're going to have moments where you're like I don't know if this is going to work, and then you keep at it and you keep believing in it and it sounds so. I swear I say this like every few years. You know how, when we're kids, there's like that whole. Just believe in yourself.

Liz: 33:22

You know like believe in yourself and when you're a kid you're like okay, whatever, yeah, believe in myself, but every few years or so I take a moment and I'm understanding it on this deeper level. That's like belief in your ability to do things is what allows you to do things.

Katherine: 33:37

Period. Yeah, it's amazing. Exactly. It's like I tell people I use this analogy all the time If you go to the doctor and you have to have brain surgery and the doctor's like yeah, I'm really I'm not that confident in my ability to do this thing and you know, I'm kind of new at it. I've only. I went to medical school and I did the stuff Like technically I trained Like to beat imposter syndrome stuff.

Katherine: 34:00

It's like if that's how you present, do you want to pay that doctor to do surgery on your brain and be confident in that?

Steph: 34:07

Just going back to what we were talking about, how you know, it's really hard to pry yourself out of these ideas of success that you have, and part of it is you've worked so hard to hone this one aspect of your being that is not your whole being, and it's hard to realize that that you are more than your musical abilities. You have strengths that are not even related to that and you're not even using them like half the time. So what would happen if you took those musician abilities that you have but you also added all the other things that you're super strong at? What would you be able to do? I mean, we really we really do put ourselves in these narrow little boxes, but there's a lot of different ways to use even more of yourself to create higher fulfillment and greater success, exactly, which is why I think it's so important from and I mean my poor private students.

Katherine: 34:58

I make them do stuff all the time. You know, I'm not even in college. I'm like okay, we're creating a concert series, you're in charge of programming, you're in charge of venue, you're in charge of if we're going to ask for donations or not, you know, and let's make some leaders who learn how to do this stuff from an early age.

Katherine: 35:18

Yes, and so I mean musicians. I love medieval and renaissance music. That is great and all. But how much more powerful would it be if you had a project based learning class that gets you out in the community and makes you have to create something in order to generate a potential income or at least donations for yourself, so you learn those skills. So when you get out, you're not just, you don't just have one skill that you just know how to play, but you don't know how to make money for playing.

Steph: 35:43

I mean we make Girl Scouts sell cookies.

Liz: 35:45

Yes, exactly, but you know.

Steph: 35:48

That goes to show you yes, I'm a great musician, but I also have organizational skills. I can also manage an inventory. I can also manage money.

Katherine: 35:57

I can do all these other things.

Liz: 35:59

But like here I am, like oh, I'm not a success because I'm not playing full time in an orchestra, right right, you know it's so interesting too to think about, like both sides of this coin where we talk about, and we know there are many musicians who get the dream job, whether it's teaching in this college or the orchestra, who say that same thing to you, catherine, who are just like miserable.

Liz: 36:21

And I'm wondering if a huge piece of it is that part of what makes us love being musicians so much, or what draws us to being musicians is the creative pursuit. It's the expression of your voice, and the more you spend, hammered down by whatever bureaucracy you're surrounded by, the more limited you are, the more you feel tamped down and you might not even recognize that that's what's happening. So on the other side of that, here we are teaching kids in a music studio who may not even go into music it's not important, but we're teaching them how to use these other skills related to their creative endeavor. And then a musician who wants to go in and be a professional musician one day already is thinking about how those skills can relate to their creative endeavors. And that is the most important thing, because whether you're a musician in a full-time orchestra or not, you have the opportunity to use these skills. I mean you could do that even if you have the full-time job. If you're miserable on the full-time job, what else can you do?

Katherine: 37:18

Where's your blue ocean? Right? Like yeah and fun. You know. That's why I always say that every music student needs to go in with a music and you know they need to find the blank from the music and and the undergrad is all about exploration. Take Javanese Gamalon ensemble, you know. Take a finance class.

Katherine: 37:38

Take things that are kind of interesting to you and see if they are interesting to you and then, when you choose your if you go into a master's or if you do a gap year or whatever choose a place where you can dip your toe into that other thing and learn that skill too Doesn't mean that you're not going to get the job, but it does prepare you for the time between you graduate and the time you get the job, so that you can actually make money doing something that you like and doing something that can pair really well with music. That could open a totally different door for you, and you can choose to stay down that traditional path, for sure, but at least you have something that is marketable, instead of having to go outside of the arts and outside of music to get to the living.

Steph: 38:18

Yeah, yeah, it's very powerful. Oh, I love it so much. So we know that you've got all kinds of irons in the fire, catherine. So you have to share with us all of the new, like what you're doing to help musicians and where they can find you and what you're offering, and tell us all those things.

Katherine: 38:34

Yes, okay, absolutely so. I'm on Instagram. Just my name, Katherine Emeneth, and then my team member, Natalie. She actually just launched her kind of branch of our company, Instagram, called the Limitless Musician, where she's going to talk about breaking down all of those limits that we talked about earlier.

Katherine: 38:50

She's one of the people that I coached several years ago and, really great. I love hiring people that I've worked with and that have had success, so we're there. We're also on Facebook. We have a group called Classical Musicianier, which is about musicians who engineer their career, and we offer a little advice and discussion stuff like that. As far as like our online things, we have several.

Katherine: 39:09

We have so many freebies on our website, like so many, and the website right now is KatherineEmeneth. com, so I have stuff on there about starting private studios, downloads for music teachers with things that they can use, mindset stuff, et cetera.

Katherine: 39:22

And then for if folks are looking to get involved with us more in coaching, in a couple of weeks we're going to open up enrollment again for our coaching program, the Music Teachers Playbook, which is for private music development.

Katherine: 39:35

For sure, it's like we hold your hand and help youth through all these blocks and barriers to create a fulfilling career teaching privately.

Katherine: 39:42

But the cool part about it is that the skills that you learn in there apply to anything apply to marketing yourself as a freelancer if you want to start an ensemble, anything and everything, and that's why graduates always come back to us and say, okay, I want to do this thing next, you know, and are excited about being able to see the next thing. So those are the things that we have coming up, and I also offer free strategy calls for you know people who are in music school who are really unsure. They see that ends of their studies coming up and they just need a little help and a little coaching. So I do that totally for free, just to like talk to people and get to know them and provide a little insight into their situation, and so that's on the side as well, and we've had a couple of new things that are being cooked up right now, so I'm not going to share about that, right now, but people can follow us to find out more about that.

Liz: 40:30

Very cool Congratulations on all these things. I remember a classical musician here was like one of the first things I think we found when we were getting rolling with the podcast now over three years ago, and it was just like it's so nice to see this whole world of entrepreneurial musicians opening themselves up, showing the world who they are, offering their own expertise, their own experience, their own knowledge and wisdom with other musicians who are looking to pursue this path, because I feel like the more this community expands, the better for our industry, just in general. So it's yeah.

Steph: 41:06

Absolutely For the perpetuation of our industry it needs to grow not shrink Exactly.

Katherine: 41:13

Thanks for being a part of that world. Yes, absolutely, it's been really, really cool.

Steph: 41:17

Thanks for making time for us today. Thank you, Katherine.

Liz: 41:22

Thank you so much for listening today.

Liz: 41:24

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Steph: 41:32

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Liz: 41:35

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Steph: 41:41

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Liz: 41:49

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Liz: 41:51

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Steph: 41:54

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Liz: 41:58

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Liz: 41:59

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