Is it possible for musicians to earn money from their passion? Where can musicians go to learn the skills, they need, to increase their effectiveness?

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, Bree Noble of Female Entrepreneur Musician shares what the Profitable Musician Summit is all about.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:34 – Are you investing in your ongoing education?

01:30 – Introductions

01:39 – What brought you to this point?

08:30 – Do you need permission to be a musician?

12:51 – What is the Profitable Musician Summit?

16:40 – What have you learned from putting on the Profitable Musician Summit?

19:46 – What has been the response to the Profitable Musician Summit?

21:28 – Is it even possible to be a profitable musician?

23:11 – People are stopped by the smallest things

24:35 – Make the commitment first, work out the details later

25:28 – Making money in music

28:14 – What are your thoughts on music entrepreneurship?

30:49 – Learning from failures

32:05 – What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve encountered as an entrepreneur?

34:41 – Getting coaching

35:55 – What are some of the biggest successes you’ve experienced as an entrepreneur?

37:11 – Hacking book writing

38:39 – Are there any books or resources that have helped you on your journey?

40:07 – Is there anything else I should have asked?

Transcription:

David Andrew Wiebe: I have a question for you. Are you investing in your ongoing education? I'm not talking about the education that you get in school. I'm talking about the kind that you get through personal development through reading books, through listening to audios and podcasts, watching videos, getting mentorship. Is that something that you're regularly engaging in?

There's so much great content out there and if you don't take advantage of it, and you don't apply it to your music career, but continue to complain about the fact that you can't make money from music, then you're really just shooting yourself in the foot.

I have a special guest on today. And I think you're going to love this interview. There is a huge opportunity to contribute to your learning, to your knowledge, to your expertise if you take advantage of some of the things mentioned in this episode. I'm not going to say anymore. Here's my special interview.

Today I'm chatting with music business trainer and mentor Bree Noble. How are you today, Bree?

Bree Noble: I'm doing great.

David Andrew Wiebe: Excellent. It's great to have you on the show. I've had the opportunity to read your bio so I have a pretty good sense of where you're coming from, but for the sake of our listeners, I would love for you to touch on your story and what brought you to this point of founding an online radio station, starting the Female Entrepreneur Musician Podcast, producing the Profitable Musician Summit and more.

Bree Noble: Oh, man. Okay. I'll try to keep it brief. You know, I'm a musician at heart of course, and my background is as a musician, a vocalist and a singer songwriter. I grew up performing a lot in high school and every choir I could do and solo competitions. I went to Westmont College to get a degree in music and vocal performance. And somewhere along the way, I got practical. I decided that I also needed a degree in business. So just in case this music thing fell through, which is kind of funny to think about it that way because I wasn't thinking about, “Oh, I kind of need the business in order to do the music.” It didn't occur to me, I thought these are two separate things. And you know, this is my fallback plan. Because I looked at it that way, when I got out of school, I really didn't have any guidance on how to make a career as a musician so I went ahead and went into the world of accounting and finance and ended up kind of marrying those by being a director of finance at a Top 15 Opera Company, which was a really cool experience, but you know, after working in the corporate world, all that time, I just really wanted to share my music, my talent, and just share my song writing with an audience and I didn't have any idea how to make that happen. I tried all kinds of weird things getting together with certain producers that I thought were going to catapult my career, trying to fit myself into different bands that didn't really match.

I never really having the confidence to go out there as a soloist because I didn't know what I was doing, you know? And so, I also thought I needed permission to start working as a musician and starting a business. I thought I needed a record label. I needed a booking agent, somebody to tell me that I was now legit and I could now have a career. We now grant you The Crown of music career, you know. And so, I was stuck for a really long time. But once I left my job at the opera because I had a baby and life was getting super overwhelming. And so, I managed to exit gracefully and be at home, do a little bit of work at the opera on the side, and really had a little more time to kind of delve into how would I start this music career. And at that point, I finally just got fed up basically and said, “If I keep waiting around, by now I'm already 32, life's going to pass me by.” So that's when I started realizing, okay, I had all these entrepreneurship classes in school. Why wouldn't I use all that information that I've learned to build a business?

And you know, even though the stuff I learned in school really didn't completely apply, it kind of opened my mind to how can I put these things together? And so, it just started basically building from the ground up and going out there and booking myself and touring locally within the state of California. And over time, I built a career where I was actually having people call me and asked me to perform. I felt like that was the real point where I had “succeeded” is that now people were calling me and I didn't always have to be out there cold calling and stuff.

During that time, I developed a lot of relationships with other musicians. I just felt called to build a platform that promoted female artists because I thought there just isn't enough out there to promote female artists and there wasn't enough of a ratio. When you listen to the radio or Sirius XM or anything of female artists, even though there were so many amazing ones out there. So, I started the Women of Substance radio station. It was an online station started out on Live 365 back in 2007. And eventually that became a podcast. We went more professional. We had advertising and all that.

After doing that for seven years, I realized I'm working with all these amazing female artists, but a lot of them… Look, why am I the only one playing their music? Why don't they have a fan base? Their music is so good. And so, I thought, you know, maybe I could take some of what I learned because I understand where they're coming from being struggling and not knowing what to do, not knowing how to build it like a business. I could take some of that information and experience that I had and help them. So that's when I started the Female Entrepreneur Musician Podcast. I started the Female Musician Academy which is a membership for female artists to help them learn to market and grow their career like a business. And along the way, like I've met so many amazing other experts in the field. I decided last year that I really wanted to put on an online conference for all the people that really couldn't go out to conferences like myself really. Because I have younger kids, I didn't want to travel. I understand that a lot of people are in that position. They just don't want to spend the money to go to a conference. And so, we decided to put on the Profitable Musician Summit. We had 40 speakers. It was amazing. We decided to do it again because it was so popular. So that's what's happening this year in April.

David Andrew Wiebe: Wow, that's awesome. I mean, there's so many trails I want to go down there. And your story is very relatable to me. One of the things that you touched on there about being practical. Like I've never been terribly practical. I think I've only ever spent six months in a traditional job role, only to realize that no matter how hard I worked, I got paid the same minimum wage per hour. That didn't suit me very well. So, I found out I was pretty unemployable early on. But you know, friends and colleagues have also pointed out, “Hey, you actually do have kind of a practical aspect to what you're doing because you're not dependent. Or like 100% dependent on your music to produce an income, you already always have something else going on.” And that's very true.

Another thing that I wanted to comment on was the whole thing about waiting for others to acknowledge you, which I think is a very common trap for musicians out there looking to create a career. I've often said on this podcast, the clouds will part, God will descend, and the angels will come with him and announce in a booming voice, “You were meant to play guitar.” That moment never happens. And even if you go to school, it never happened. So, I love what you shared there.

Bree Noble: No, I know. It doesn't. I'm actually still kind of surprised all the time, that people still have this attitude, but it is pervasive. And it may never disappear. I mean, I guess people just still think in 2019 that they need a record deal. Or they need some industry decision maker to give them permission. And so, you know, that's part of my big platform and message. Nobody can give you permission except yourself.

David Andrew Wiebe: Yeah, totally. Seth Godin has a relatively new podcast called Akimbo, and I think he had an episode called Pick yourself. I mean, I think that's 80% of music entrepreneurship right there. If you get that, then you're well on your way to achieving way more.

Bree Noble: Well,