Female Entrepreneur Musician with Bree Noble

Artist booking prices can be a touchy subject. How do you know what to charge when booking a gig? How do you know you are charging what you are worth? Tara B is back this week to share more of her valuable wisdom, this time around artist booking prices and making sure you are making a profit. Talking about money can be uncomfortable but Tara’s advice will give you the confidence you need to price your gigs fairly. To learn even more around this topic, check out Tara’s course starting on July 10th, 4 Days to Booking Like A Boss. 6 things to consider when setting artist booking prices:

Being the daughter of a legend, Carla Cooke always had a passion for music. At age 50, she began singing the best Sam Cooke songs, branched out into her own songs and started pursuing her music career. Starting her full fledged music career later in life is proof that it’s never too late to follow your passion. Carla’s style embraces all sorts of music types. Her father, the legendary Sam Cooke, died when she was just 4 months old so she finds performing as a way to feel connected to him. Being the daughter of Sam Cooke: Creating a legacy of her own: Finding success: Links and Resources Carlacooke.com ABOUT HOST BREE NOBLE

Tara B takes the fear out of finding music gigs that pay by showing artists where to look, whether they are in a brand new market or getting back into the music scene. Tara B has been a performing musician for 27 years with over one hundred gigs each year for the past 10 years. She knows a thing or two about starting over because she has moved a lot in her life. In this podcast, Tara goes over 3 ways artists can find gigs in new markets where the audience comes to them. To leverage these techniques, it’s a great idea to bring along business cards and CDs for purchase. The following environments are great for introducing yourself and passing out your information. If you find this information useful, join us for Tara’s free 4 Days to Booking Like a Boss where she will dive even deeper into how you can find music gigs that pay. 3 Ways to Finding Music Gigs that Pay Concert Series’ in parks Women’s Clubs  Farmer’s Markets July 10th starts Tara’s 4 day free training called 4 Days to Booking Like a Boss. Using her knowledge and advice, Tara will be giving you resources and assignments to get you on the booking bandwagon and even booking into the new year. Sign up now to save your spot!   ABOUT HOST BREE NOBLE  

Finding time for music can be a juggling act, especially when artists have all different kinds of day jobs. Whether you work full-time outside the house, in your home office or take care of young children or aging adults (which is definitely a full-time job), finding time for music can be a juggling act. When I first started trying to build a music career, I worked full-time as a Director of Finance at an Opera Company. It was quite a demanding and stressful job, yet I managed to make time for band rehearsals, songwriting and recording my first demo. When I started to build a name for myself as a solo recording and performing artist, I was a stay-at-home mom with a 2 year old. In some ways, it was more challenging than balancing music with a corporate job. You don’t get to “clock out” at the end of the day, and you definitely don’t get rewarded with any overtime pay! Yet during this time, I was able to write and record an entire album, perform locally about 6 times per month, book several 2 week mini tours, record demos for other songwriters and take a songwriting class. It definitely wasn’t easy to find time for music… But sometimes the raw power fueled by the passion we have for music can drive us to accomplish the super-human. But passion alone isn’t enough. It takes battle-tested strategies and detailed planning to make sure music doesn’t get pushed to the back burner when our day job is demanding. If the idea of “detailed planning” sounds intimidating…I get it. I used to feel overwhelmed by the idea of making a plan to get things done. But when I finally admitted to myself that the lack of a plan was what was standing between me and my dream of a music career, I put my fear and resistance aside. I know you can too! I am going to share a few ways you can find time to focus on music while working full-time on other things. Determine When You Are Most Productive Discover which time of day you are most inspired, focused and likely to feel motivated to work on music. For me, it is early morning, before the kids are up and the hustle and bustle of the day’s responsibilities threatens to distract me. Maybe for you, it’s late at night when you’ve gotten your daily tasks done. Or the weekend when you can devote a larger block of time to music-related creativity or music marketing projects. Oftentimes, we can squeeze in some short work sprints in the middle of the day – during a lunch hour or while the kids are napping. If you’ve had your coffee and are in “work mode” it might be your most productive time for music. Your Lunch Hour – A Music Power Hour Whether you shut the door to your office or go work in your car or at a local coffee shop, your lunch hour can be a golden opportunity to find time for music and make some progress. After all, you’re already in work mode and hopefully “in the zone”, so why not extend that productivity to your music.   If you are home taking care of children or other adults, set your schedule so that they are occupied by a quiet activity or napping at this time so you can have at least an hour to devote to music. What can you do with these short snippets or time? Work on some lyrics you started writing. Starting from just a spark of inspiration,, you can get quite far on a set of lyrics in one hour. You can even use the internet at work for the thesaurus if you get stuck. If you keep your lyric ideas in Google drive, Dropbox, Evernote or your favorite cloud storage service, it will be very easy to pick right up where you left off no matter where and when you work on your lyrics. Use the internet to research booking opportunities. Choose one method of research each day – newspaper calendar section, similar artist’s gig calendars, gigging websites – and focus on that specific kind of research for your lunch hour. That way, you have enough time to find some great connections without going down too many internet rabbit trails and wasting a lot more time (we’ve all wasted an entire afternoon this way haven’t we?). It’s useful to have a one hour time limit. Make booking calls or follow up with venues you’ve already contacted by email. This might be the perfect time to catch them in their office or on email since it’s probably their lunch hour too. Bring your instrument or track and practice in the car or in a remote part of the office. If you’re a vocalist, bring some tracks you can sing with or just use your iPod or phone to listen and review melodies and lyrics you need to memorize. If you work in a city, try busking on your lunch hour. You might even make some new fans and a little cash while getting some practice time in. Idle Time Can Be Learning Time If your job involves a commute (car, subway. train or even plane), there’s no need to feel like that time is wasted. With tons of educational resources online like podcasts, audio books, courses, and physical books, you could be learning something new each day to advance your career or improve your music. Subscribe to some podcasts about building a music career so your device will automatically download the episodes. That way you won’t have to use data or be in a wireless environment to learn and be inspired on the go. Some of my favorites are: DIY Musician Podcast Bridge The Atlantic DIY Artist Route Break The Business Female Entrepreneur Musician (of course) If you’re already enrolled in an online course, take a few minutes at the beginning of your week to download some new modules to your phone, or login to the members area so you can easily access the content when you need it. This extra few minutes of thinking ahead will save you time and frustration later. Invest in Help If you’re working full-time, your time for music can be quite limited. For you, time may actually be a more precious and scarce resource than money. I highly recommend you invest a small portion of your weekly paycheck into a virtual assistant or local student to help you do some of the music-related tasks that don’t necessarily have to be done by you. Spend your valuable time performing, connecting with fans, writing and recording music. Get your new assistant to help you with social media posts, updating your website, managing your email list, writing your newsletter, writing blog posts and more. If your day job is taking care of kids or adults at home, save up for some babysitting time. When I recorded my Holiday album, I built babysitting money into the budget so I could hire a college student to watch my girls, then 8 and 2, twice per week for 4 hour sessions so I could get the recording done. It was a really smart investment. Had I not done that, I most certainly wouldn’t have gotten the release out on time. Summing It Up, Goal-Setting & Planning for Success If you are juggling the demands of a full-time job, try these productivity hacks to find time for music: Choose one hour each day when you’ll be most productive and block it off on your calendar. This could be before work, in the evening or during your lunch hour. Use your lunch hour to write, practice, perform or work on booking research and follow-up.. Do the prep work so you can have easy access to lots of audio and written music training during your commute. Set aside some of your hard-earned money to invest in an assistant so your lack of time doesn’t prevent you from making progress. If your day job involves taking care of family members: Set aside an hour either before they get up or after they go to bed to work on music. In addition, you hopefully can find a time when they are napping or doing a quiet activity in the middle of the day so you can sneak some more work time in. Listen to audio podcasts, audio books or audio from courses you’ve purchased while doing household chores or in the car running errands. Set aside some babysitting money or build it into your project budgets. With just a little planning, you won’t have to feel like work and life is crowding out your music career. You will be surprised how productive you can be if you deliberately carve out small segments of time for music. It does take a little forethought, preparation and organization, but it will be well worth it. Having a day job might make the road longer, but it doesn’t have to completely deter you from reaching your music career goals. You got this! Here’s a little tool to help you get organized and create goals so you know exactly what to work on in those short windows of productive time before your job, during lunch and inthe evening or on the weekends. Being focused and organized about your goals and planning the actions you need to take to achieve them will be the key to making the most of the time you do have to work on music. Click on the image to Download my SMART Goals Workbook. With this, you will learn how to set achievable goals that will help you earn money from music. Watch the live video recording of the podcast. ABOUT HOST BREE NOBLE Bree Noble is an entrepreneur, musician and speaker. She founded Women of Substance Radio, an online radio station that promotes quality female artists in all genres, in 2007.  She launched the Women of Substance Music Podcast in November 2014, a 5 day per week show which promotes Independent female artists. Her podcast has hit #1 in New & Noteworthy for the Music, Arts and Society & Culture categories and #4 Audio Podcast on all of iTunes. She draws on her extensive experience running her own music business, both as a solo musician and as an Industry professional, to train and mentor other female musicians. Learn more about the station, the show and the artists at www.wosradio.com. Connect with Bree on Twitter @BreeNoble or on Facebook or on Instagram @breenoblemusic

As an artist, music video marketing is one of the best tools we have in our marketing arsenal. Whether it’s boosting your crowdfunding campaign or getting more Patreon followers, Holly G of Holly G Studios tells us all about how to create videos to connect to our audience and grow our fanbase. She has just started a new course called Go Live Like A Pro where she demystifies live video and teaches artists how to effectively use it to boost their fan base. Music Video Marketing to Grow Your Fanbase Music Video Marketing for Different Platforms Confidence for Videos How to Leverage FB Live If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out Holly’s course Go Live Like A Pro where she shows you how to use music video marketing to connect with your audience authentically and ultimately, grow your fanbase. Resources and Links @hollygstudios on social media hollygstudios.com ABOUT HOST BREE NOBLE

How To Get Fans To Tell You What They Want Using A Survey Surveying your audience is a very important tool to get fans to tell you what they actually want from you. The #1 rule of surveys is…don’t call it a survey. Listen Above or Watch The Video Why To Survey Your Fans Get Fans To Tell You About Themselves Get Fans To Tell You What They Want Where & How To Survey Your Fans You will get so much valuable data from a survey of your fans. I recommend you do this at least once or twice per year. ABOUT HOST BREE NOBLE  

When I was in a band that lacked a band marketing plan, it was detrimental to our success. Started by one woman, the band was already branded and named prior to having any members. The founding woman auditioned and picked two more members, myself being one of them. Although our band had potential, we had no idea how to promote ourselves as artists and so this story is important for me to share with you. Musicians can begin to feel confused or hopeless when they are talented and motivated but aren’t seeing success. This is the story that inspired me to create the Musician’s Profit Path, a course where musicians can learn about the 5 Stages of Music Career Growth, how to recognize which stage their in and when to move on to the next stage. Our Band Marketing Plan (what NOT to do): Band Marketing Plan (what you SHOULD do): Less than a year after recording our CD, we broke up because: The moral of the story is that without a band marketing plan, your momentum can be strictly limited. I created the Musician’s Profit Path to help musicians navigate their way through the 5 Stages of Music Career Growth. In this course, you will learn what stage you are in, what you should be doing to maintain your momentum and what you need to focus on to move up to the next level. Head over to musiciansprofitpath.com for more information and to sign up for the next course. ABOUT HOST BREE NOBLE    

This week, Naomi Wachira joins me to discuss music for community and how growing up singing gospel music in a choir has driven her to create music that is hopeful and inspiring. Committed to making the world a better place, you can find Naomi in the Pacific Northwest pursuing her music career full time. Revenue Streams Non-Traditional Venues Overcoming Struggle The Role of Music in Bringing People Together Angelique Kidjo quote – “Even enemies listen to the same type of music.” Books and Resources sonicbids.com cdbaby.com femusician.com Connect naomiwachira.com Naomi Wachira (@imanafricangirl) | Twitter https://www.instagram.com/imanafricangirl/ Naomi Wachira – YouTube ABOUT HOST BREE NOBLE

Facebook for musicians can be a driving force in building a music career. Today’s podcast focuses on the right way to use Facebook groups to build a music career. I created a free group, Female Indie Musician Community which now has approximately 1,650 members and tons of engagement. With so many Facebook groups available, musicians in all locations, especially rural or remote areas, can have doors and opportunities opened to them simply by joining and networking within these groups. When looking for groups to join, make use of the search bar in Facebook. Searching for keywords, such as genre, location, licensing, performing, etc. can lead you to groups that you would want to be a part of. Be sure to pick your areas of focus so you can determine how many groups you want to be a part of. How to find Facebook groups: How to use Facebook groups: What NOT to do: It’s important to remember that many times, industry pros are hanging out in Facebook groups for musicians. Showing up, engaging and being supportive can lead to many doors being opened and new opportunities. If you haven’t joined my Female Indie Musician Community yet, please do so. We’d love to meet you! ABOUT HOST BREE NOBLE

Kirsti Manna’s songwriting camp empowers women and girls to find their creative voice. Not only did her 6 week #1 hit “Austin” introduce Blake Shelton to country music, but Kirsti also has an interesting history in acting where she had a TV show called Kirsti’s Manor. Kirsti has been gracious enough to offer a ticket to her songwriting camp, Songwriter Camp for Girls, this June 24th and 25th to a lucky winner from my audience. To win, visit femusician.com/contest. Sharing the love with other female musicians will give you extra entries so make sure you tell your friends about this amazing opportunity! 3 Kinds of Artists Revenue Streams Advice to Artists Songwriting Camp for Girls If you’d like to win a FREE ticket to Songwriter Camp for Girls on June 24th and 25th, visit femusician.com/contest. Don’t forget to get more entries by sharing with other female musicians. Good luck! Connect With: @songwritergirl1 on Instagram and Twitter YouTube Facebook Resources and Books The Business of Music – Donald Passman Creative Visualizatioin – Shakti Gawain The Magic – Rhonda Burn ABOUT HOST BREE NOBLE