Unlock Your Genius Zone

The 18-Year Overnight Success: How to be resilient with cellist Mari Coetzee | Ep. 60

• Ine-Wilme Coetzee • Episode 60

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In this illuminating episode, Ine-Wilme Coetzee interviews her sister Mari Coetzee, a professional cellist and coach, about the parallels between musical careers and entrepreneurship. Mari shares her journey from beginning cello at age 4-5 to finding inspiration at age 10 through Yo-Yo Ma's recordings of Bach to her years at Juilliard navigating the high performance bubble. Ultimately these experiences has molded her to expect the unexpected navigating a cello career & entrepreneurship in the craziness of motherhood with a 4 and 2 year old. Throughout the episode you will hear how Dvorak’s story (and musical clips (performed by Mari) from his stunning cello concerto!) is interwoven, the lessons we can learn from him and his resilience and how his vision and trust in the process finally gave him the success he deserved.

Key moments in this episode:

  • [01:25] Mari's early struggle with cello from ages 5-10 before her breakthrough
  • [03:15] The story of composer Dvorak, who remained unknown until his late 30s despite creating prolifically
  • [06:10] How to find motivation daily and view yourself as a channel for something bigger than perfection
  • [09:25] When creative risks are worth taking in business and performance
  • [11:42] Defining success through values rather than perfect results
  • [14:30] Mari's three career phases and handling the "small fish in a big pond" syndrome
  • [19:50] Staying resilient as a parent entrepreneur with unpredictable schedules
  • [21:15] Why balance is a verb not a noun in entrepreneurship
  • [23:38] Dvorak's persistence in creating 15 large-scale pieces before recognition

Connect with Mari:

  • See Mari perform Dvorak's cello concerto with St. John's Orchestra on June 21st in Calgary: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/st-giles-orchestra-presents-dvorak-tickets-1381140792289?aff=ebdsshcopyurl&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=

Episode mentioned: Classical Breakdown podcast episode on Dvorak: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/the-life-and-music-of-antonin-dvořák-from/id1477660645?i=1000645952191

Follow the Unlock Your Genius Zone podcast for more conversations on entrepreneurship, creativity, and resilience so you can serve people with the offer that is on your heart!

Podcast intro music: J.S. Bach Cello Suites, Suite No. 3 in C major, Prelude 
Musician: Mari Coetzee 

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Unlock your Genius Zone podcast. This is your host, ina Wilmay-Katsia, and I have a very special guest with me in person today. It is my sister, marie Katsia. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much, ina. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

Marie is a professional cellist and one of the most amazing coaches. At Fun Side Story, she actually taught me my first cello lesson, and today we're going to be talking about some of the ways that business and music world intersects. Anne-marie, the first thing that I'm curious about is tell us a bit about your background. If somebody doesn't know you, what would be the story you would tell them? Yeah, music has been part of my life for most of my life. I don't even really remember my first lessons. I think I was four, between the ages of four and five, but the one thing I do remember about those early years is just the struggle between the ages of five to ten, just feeling like why is this so hard if it's not working? I was intrigued by this instrument, learning a new skill, and I knew I wanted to continue, but it wasn't that much fun yet. I hadn't reached that, the breakthrough yet until age 10, where I discovered the recordings of joe ma playing the bach cello suites. He had some dvds with dancers and nature and it was beautiful and something just came alive on the inside where the music was so inspiring. It was specifically the third bach cello suite, the prelude, which actually happens to be the theme music for this podcast. Yes, marie recorded that for us. So when you first started, you hit play. That was Marie playing and it was the piece that inspired her to really make cello a part of her life and commit to making it a part of her life, regardless of the ups and downs. So thank you for sharing that story with us. It's fascinating.

Speaker 1:

Now, the thing that all of a sudden stands out to me about this and you told me this story like just a couple days ago is the fact that it was Bach's music that helped you. So his story was being communicated through the music and his story of resilience, in the same way that so many other composers encountered a lot of resilience or not resilience. They had to be resilient in order to actually continue their careers and it inspired you to continue. I know that there's a lot of other stories of composers like that. You were telling me one just the other day, yes, so, um, a lot of composers have really interesting stories and it comes out in their music because music is the universal language and a non-verbal way of communicating.

Speaker 1:

So anytime I work on a piece of music and I encourage students to do this as well to look up the piece you're playing and read about the composer, really become to know who they were as a person. So I was doing this one day with composer Dvorak, who lived in the second half of the 1800s and into the beginning of the 20th century, and I was fascinated by his story. I hadn't even realized up to that point that until he was in his late 30s he was virtually unknown. Nobody was playing his music. He actually got to the point where he declared the equivalent in that day of bankruptcy just in order to apply for a scholarship and a need and merit-based composition award. Wow. And he did this several times. And finally he had that breakthrough where Johannes Brahms noticed his music and then wrote to his publisher, and then the rest is history. He's now known as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Speaker 1:

But what would have happened if he quit right, if he had through those years of struggle, if he had given up? Do you happen to know when he started composing, like when this whole journey began. You know, I think for sure, maybe he dabbled in it a bit as a kid, but at one point he almost became a butcher following his, his father's trade, as they did. But then one of his teachers because he did play violin as a child recognized he had this musical gift and encouraged him to go to prague, and I'm assuming he would have been about maybe 17 or 18 years old. I'd'd have to look that up. Interesting, yeah, yeah, no, the reason I ask is really because I'm doing the math in my head how many years did he really struggle and just stay in the game?

Speaker 1:

I know something about business is that often it is the people who can just stay in the game, continue going, who in the end, win, and we see the success that they have. After the fact we think it's an overnight success when really it was just okay. How long can you stay in the game? And that really is, in the end, what matters, just staying in the game. And what I'm curious about for you is why do you stay in the game? What's your why behind playing? That a good question, you know, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I think for me it's, it's almost feels like like a treasure hunt, like uncovering or decoding these, these messages from all these great minds through the years, and I think that's that might be one of the the overall things that has kept me going, listening to the music itself and staying inspired, staying motivated. Motivation is something we have to renew daily. Yeah, what does Zig Ziglar say about that? Yeah, right, he says motivation is like bathing, that's right, recommended daily. So you have to keep yourself motivated and it's not just going to happen. You have to keep yourself motivated and it's not just going to happen and then, kind of knowing that by studying this music, you can share it with other people who might need the message that the composer had put in there. So, in that way, as the player, it's not about me or what I do, I'm just the channel or the conduit. And I guess it also removes that question of being perfect, like if you know that you're just telling the story of Dvorak and you're actually going to be doing this in a concert shortly, like you're going to get on stage and know okay, my role is so much bigger than just playing the notes perfectly, nailing every shift, every single passage needs to be perfect, because really, what ultimately matters is communicating communicating his story Exactly. That is pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

So, marie, as you're communicating a story on stage, as entrepreneurs often do in sales calls and presentations, all those things what I'm so curious about is how do you know which creative risks are worth taking? So you've done a preparation process and you prepare to perform with high energy and with all of the elements that you know will be convincing, but maybe in the moment you want to take a bit more time for a certain note, or you feel the orchestra behind you speeding up based on the energy, like the conductor feeling more energy. What? How do you know when a creative risk is worth taking? Yeah, I would say that, um, creative risks, we need to have a purpose behind them and, um, being really connected to what our role is in like we just talked about serving and being able to communicate helps us know when to take those risks. So it's not like we're just gonna do it to show how good we are in that moment or anything but, but we're sensing that maybe the people are collaborating with um in in this example on stage, maybe they are feeling something in the music that's in the moment. Yeah, then if we capture that and bring it to light, then that creates almost like the energy that the audience can feel and we can feed off the audience's energy. It's like this triangle, right, yeah, yeah, it's really cool.

Speaker 1:

So I think, um, whether it's in business or in music, if we feel like the creative risk is going to serve our clients or serve our, the people we want to help, and that we're passionate about helping, then it's worth it, even if it means we might be sacrificing our own safe sense of sense of safety, or we're taking a risk that might make us a little uncomfortable, get us out of our comfort zone. We, it's worth it, yeah. And and what I find interesting about what you're saying there, Marie, is what constitutes as the result of taking the creative risk. It takes you out of what feels safe. You do it for the greater good. You're sacrificing your own agenda, almost call. It's like you have the sales call. You prepared for the one you did and the one you wish you had, but, if you know, you gave it your all. Like you, you spoke from the heart and you you reacted to the energy that was from the person in front of you telling their story through the thing that you can offer. That is a success in the end.

Speaker 1:

And um, on that note, like, what does success look for, look like for you in general and in the context of this performance? So I think, really, the way that we handle pressure and even the way that we go about our goals, so much of it has to do with that mindset. How do we define success? So that's a really good question. That's a really good question. I think the way we look at success should come first from our values, which, personally speaking, faith, and is this in line with God's word and truth? So the upper part of the pyramid, let's say. Or you could think about the foundation of your life, your values, and then from there, keeping your priorities in line. So to me, success is if I'm able to live out my values with my priorities straight and bring my best to the table. Like John Wooden said, make every day your masterpiece. I love that quote Just knowing you're getting 1% better each day.

Speaker 1:

It's not about being perfect or getting to a certain result, necessarily, but you know you didn't hold back anything, yeah, yeah. What do you do when you end a performance and you feel like you did hold something back. Like, how do you recover from something like that? Yeah, do you mean if you felt like you held back during the preparation or while you're in the moment, both honestly, how do you recover from feeling like you didn't do your best? How do you maintain the mental toughness in the journey? Yeah, I think that can kind of be related to also how do we handle failures or setbacks.

Speaker 1:

If things didn't work out as we wanted to and maybe we know it was because we didn't bring what we could have, and that can be really kind of like that can be a hard, a hard place. If you stay there, it can be painful, right? Yeah, so I think the main thing is getting back to identity in that moment. Like, who are you as a person outside of what you do? And can we take this moment as a learning experience rather than as a failure? Like Zig Ziglar says, failure is an event, not a person. Yeah, so no matter what happens, if we did not bring our best to the table, then maybe we need to be more honest with ourselves and define it next time. Yeah, like, define what is. What does success really mean? Like, is it perfection? If it is, you're probably going to feel like a failure afterwards, but if success really is holding to your values and giving your all, then you know you're going to be successful every single time. You don't quit. Yes, exactly, yeah, that's very cool. It reminds me of the book by John Maxwell Failing Forward, yeah, and then he talks about you don't lose, you learn. Yeah, I think there's probably another John Maxwell book about that, like titled something along the lines of you either win or you learn, or yes, yeah. Anyways, I'll have to look up that title.

Speaker 1:

But what I find interesting is there's this common thread in our conversation right now how we learn from the stories of composers. We give our all telling our story, and I think that a lot of this also comes from you learning about composers, like when you learned about the resilience that Dvorak had to incorporate in his life to stay in the game and just keep going regardless from rejection. That influenced the way that you keep going in every season of life. Like you have been a cellist now for like over 22 years, something like that, I guess. Yeah, yeah, because you started a few years before me gave me my first cello lesson. For me it's been like 20 years, so, yeah, something like that. So tell us a little bit about the different phases your career has gone through. Um, I know you were talking about, like, your juilliard years, your high school years, like I'm probably putting them out of order, but yeah, like, tell me about the resilience you had to insert into those years. Yeah, so the I would say kind of three, three phases.

Speaker 1:

My life so far have been the before age 18, the growing up years, trying to learn as much as I can learn a lot of music on the cello. Just fill the, the bucket with with knowledge. I've always just loved learning, so so that was, yeah, you're a true filament. Yeah, so that was kind of that, that phase I really I knew I wanted to go to conservatory, so that was the, the path I tried to. It's kind of like the only goal from age, yeah, 12 to 18 or, yeah, even earlier. So it's kind of just one goal, directed route in a way which is almost a little bit more simple. Yeah, way of, yeah I once heard the acronym for the word focus follow one course until success. Yeah, so your life was quite simple.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, at that point, I think so, in comparison to now, possibly, but I'll let you tell that story. Yeah, there's definitely more like, um, I was starting to get into a bit more of the high-performance bubble by working with certain teachers and then really just wanting to get to a conservatory and eventually I moved to New York so I could go to one in Juilliard and I was there for five years and I would say that bubble was even more real. It was more concentrated. Yeah, possibly, yeah, but also I know you mentioned to me the other day it was almost like you were then a small fish in a big pond of all of these high performers and the risk of feeling like you were a failure and the pressure was 10 times bigger than when you were in high school. Yeah, yeah, and I've heard a lot of people experience that, whether it's going to, you know there's something they call a Harvard effect where people grow up and they're always at the top of their class and then they're the 1% and then they get to Harvard or wherever it is and they realize only 1% there are going to be in the 1%.

Speaker 1:

So you know we talked about a little bit the imposter syndrome in the past, so that can be a really tricky part about that. No matter where you get to, it could be in business as well. Anytime you reach the next level, you actually feel like you haven't reached it, in a way, because there's always like that 99% to keep going if you consider yourself to be the 1%. Yeah, so those years it was harder than ever, I'd say, to keep my identity away from what I was doing, because I was going to ask you, how did you navigate that? And you just gave me the answer you had to keep your identity set in who you are and whose you are. Yeah, exactly, and learning to view pressure as a good thing and not as something to try and get away from. Yeah, so kind of exploring a lot more of the mental toughness side of everything those years.

Speaker 1:

And then after, I would say, that season of life came to a close in 2020. Yeah, I had graduated, and during covid, yeah, right, right at the middle. And then it was navigating life after graduation yeah, getting married, having two little kids now and four-year-old and two-year-old best nephew and niece I could ever want. And now I would say the kind of to summarize the change between that high performance bubble and, I would say, life in the real world is you don't have things that are, you can't control your environment as much. That was a big thing. Unexpected things come up and then you really need your compass, what we talked about, your values and your priorities, right. So it's kind of like your foundation, just trying to put a framework to this. It's like you have your values as the bottom layer and that determines your priorities and that determines your actions. I'd say so. And mindset is like the over-encompassing bridge over it all, would you say that's how you'd describe it. Yeah, I think that sounds really accurate. I wouldn't even say so.

Speaker 1:

On that note of having two little kids and not being able to control your environment, tell me more about what you do now to stay resilient. Do the same as what Dvorak did through those decades of not seeing success necessarily, but for you, success is maybe making sure you can practice the amount you want to, or it is coming to a performance, knowing you've done everything you could to prepare all of those sorts of things. How do you navigate the lack of control now that you're a mom versus when you were in Juilliard? Yeah, I'd say that I was thinking about the other day too. If we use the environment around us as almost like a crutch, like I wasn't able to do what I wanted to do today because of this unexpected thing came up with the kids or whatever. Then we are actually limiting our ability to rise to the challenge. That allows you to adapt in performances. Then it's like the macro perspective of adapting as a mom allows you to actually be higher performance in the moment. It's like second by second versus day by day. Yeah, I like that analogy.

Speaker 1:

That's very cool, because one of the things we've always talked about, even with students, is how do you recover if you make a mistake while you're on stage? How do you make the mistake, actually make it seem intentional, exactly so for that I like to think about, like, if you're watching a YouTube video and there's a slider moving on the bottom, you can see the little pin. It's moving in real time, yeah, but if you were to move the pin back, think back to all this happened I wish I hadn't made that mistake Then your slider is not keeping up with in real time. With the video, there's an off sync. So the goal, whether it's in the middle of a sales call or in the middle of a concert or in the middle of the day, is just to keep your slider current with what you're doing and you can learn from the past and from the mistakes. You can do reflection on it later, but you have to stay present in the moment that you're in. That's.

Speaker 1:

That's fascinating, because sometimes people think that balance as a mom means you have equal amounts of time that you're parenting and equal amounts of time you're working and everything's in this perfect balance. But it's more like it's intentional imbalance. By being present and the presence in each situation makes you feel balanced. It's more like balance is an emotion instead of a reality yeah, or an end result yeah. Or I like think of balance isn't like a noun, like okay, balance, but it's rather a verb, like we're on a balance beam, like on a balancing board yeah, we're balancing all the time. Yeah, you're never going to achieve balance as a noun. Yeah, yeah. And if you define success as having balance, you're not going to fail. Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating.

Speaker 1:

And then with Dvorak's story, because I know there's one incredible part of the story that we haven't even touched on yet how did he finally see success after all those years of resilience? Tell me more about that. A word he applied for, or whatever. Whatever it was, you, you tell the story best. Yeah, so, um, when, when he submitted a bunch of compositions to this award not knowing if it was going to work right, yeah, so he's taking a risk not knowing what the the panel of musicians would think about his music. But most composers, apparently and this was all from a podcast episode by Classical Breakdown which we can link to this For sure they were saying most people would submit maybe a handful of pieces, at most maybe one or two, and usually not very long pieces, and most composers, when they're young, kind of starting out, don't have a very large amount of music written yet.

Speaker 1:

They're waiting for the money to come in first or the recognition. But Dvorak, he was writing music anyways, even though he had nobody really playing his pieces, no traction, to the point where eventually he could hardly afford paper. But he kept going and for this award he submitted in his application 15 large scale pieces, which was unheard of. So give us an idea of what is a large scale piece versus a small scale. Yeah, so, like a small scale piece might be one that lasts for about three minutes, like like a song. Oh yeah, it would be like if somebody submitted 15 albums of 20 songs each, versus like three songs, three minutes each. Yeah, kind of like that perspective. One of them was even a full-scale opera that he wrote this out and he has our hours long. Yeah, and he had had this vision of how it would be staged, and he'd never even gotten an invitation to write an opera. But what kept him going to believe in the process and believe in the message he was trying to put in his music so much? That's what fascinates me, that he didn't just quit yeah, exactly, because then we wouldn't have all this amazing music. He had a vision. That was the word that popped out to me when you were telling that part of the story.

Speaker 1:

I think there's a quote by Helen Keller. She says well, at least there's a verse in the Bible that says people perish for lack of vision. I think Helen Keller says it, though in a way what is worse than being blind is not having a vision, or what is worse than having a lack of sight is not having a vision. So she's distinguishing between having sight, being able to physically see, versus having a vision of the future, a vision of how beautiful the future can be. And John Maxwell says when there is hope in the future, there's power in the present. So we can take divorce X story, we can take those concepts and we can put our emotions, our time, our hearts into something, even if we don't know if it's going to work, because we know that if we have a vision and we keep going, we are going to see a result at one point, and that will determine our next step.

Speaker 1:

And who was the composer that found Dvorak's music Like? Who was that? I know, but yeah, people listening Johannes Brahms. Yes, that's basically who was at that point, the most respected composer in the country. Yeah, so his word really counted for something. Yeah, do you think that Dvorak would have kept going after that point in time If Brahms had rejected his music? That's an interesting question. I think he still would have. I think so too, because you know he had a track record. At this point he had already been going on for 18 years just roughly 18 years or so writing music even though people weren't playing it. Yeah, exactly yeah, you will be playing it.

Speaker 1:

Actually, on what is the day? June 21st? Yes, so saturday, june 21st in calgary amazing, um, I will be joined by my wonderful friends and colleagues in calgary at the saint john's orchestra and they will be playing a few orchestra pieces by dvorak fantastic, some of the slavonic dances. You can kind of hear different parts of his story through music, exactly. And then we'll do the Cello Concerto yeah, fantastic, I'm excited for that.

Speaker 1:

I'll make sure that the link to buy tickets, if you're local, is in the description box. And, marie, I'm just so excited you get to do that Like that, you get to tell Dvorak's story in the concert. I cannot wait to hear the performance when the time of this episode comes out it's going to be May 19th, so about a month in advance for you to get your tickets and if there's a live streaming option, I will add the link as well to the description box. But, marie, thank you so much for your time, for your wisdom, for your energy. You truly are, truly are my both my best friend, my sister, my business partner, all the things, and it was just an honor to be able to have this dedicated time and space to have a conversation. Everybody could be a fly on the wall to the conversations we have daily. So thank you so much. Well, thank you so much for having me.