Happiest Musician Minisode: FEAR of Visibility Artwork

Crushing Classical

Crushing Classical is a series of interviews with classical musicians who are forging unique paths with their talent, creating their own artistic fulfillment and financial comfort, and finding ways to thrive. I celebrate these brave people who are taking routes outside of traditional orchestral or academic employment! As always, I invite you to listen for your own sparks and breadcrumbs, and use these interviews to find the possibilities that exist in your own life.

All Episodes

Crushing Classical

Happiest Musician Minisode: FEAR of Visibility

July 21, 2025 • Jennet Ingle

I'm talking a lot about Visibility lately - but that's because people are talking to ME about it! This fear, the fear of being seen, is so normal. Here's how it has manifested for me.

Are you interested in my Fall program, the Happiest Musician Visibility Lab? Hop on the waitlist and be the first to hear about it!

Thanks for joining me on Crushing Classical!

Theme music by DreamVance.

You can join my email list HERE, so you never miss an episode!

I help people to lean into their creative careers and start or grow their income streams. You can read more or hop onto a short discovery call from my website.

I'm your host, Jennet Ingle. I love you all. Stay safe out there!

The Happiest Musician Visibility Lab is open for enrollment now! We begin on September 8. https://www.jennetingle.com/hmvl

Speaker 00: 0:28

Hi, I'm Jennet Ingle. I am the happiest musician. If you're watching this on YouTube, please go ahead and click subscribe for me. If you're listening to this on the Crushing Classical podcast, please make sure that you are subscribed so that you never miss an episode. And so it's easier for other people to find my channel and to become themselves happier musicians. Thank you.

Unknown: 0:55

Speaker 00: 0:56

You're listening to Crushing Classical, how to thrive in your creative career. I'm your host, Jennet Ingle, oboist, entrepreneur, speaker, author, and business and creative coach for musicians. I believe that musicians are brilliant, motivated, highly trained professionals, and that in the 21st century being merely talented is not enough. In this podcast, I celebrate the musicians and creatives who are building their own careers and lives within our industry. My guests are amazing, and you are too. You are allowed to thrive, and your artistry matters. I find it astonishing how many conversations I've had in just the last few weeks where brilliant musicians, brilliant people with huge aspirations for their own careers are finding themselves held back by their own fear of visibility, their own reluctance to self-promote, their own hesitation to say out loud to people what they actually want, what they actually want to be doing and who they actually want to be. And I get it. It is so scary. Musicians are taught that if we just work hard enough, if we're just talented enough and hardworking enough, the rest will happen. The results will follow and we will get opportunities. Thank you. And the problem is that's not really the way it works anymore. We have to be visible. People have to know who we are. People have to know what we can do in order to hire us. And for a lot of us, that looks like intentional visibility, showing up on social media, showing up on blogs, on YouTube, starting podcasts, being visible. to promote the work that we are already doing so that people can find us, so that people can follow us, and so that people feel like they know us because people support people they know. I can relate to this visibility fear so much. If you know me, For my Happiest Musician Minisodes or for my YouTube channel on reedmaking or for the Crushing Classical podcast, you might think that I have always been an effortless public speaker or have always been good at expressing myself verbally. I have so many times sat shaking in my room, sat in full fight or flight mode before clicking pause. Right. This is a thing that happens for a lot of us. And it's odd that this is not taught in music school. We are taught to be performers, but we are taught to be performers on our instruments. It's peculiar how much safer it feels to be on stage with an oboe, an instrument that is much too small to actually hide behind. To walk out on stage and perform something very difficult is infinitely less frightening for me and for many of the people that I've spoken to than putting a blog post up, putting a Facebook post up, sharing even a moment of my practice routine. These are terrifying moments. to many people, and yet visibility is a crucial skill in the 21st century. There are infinitely many musicians out there right now who are terrific, who are so talented, so skilled, so prepared to play all of the jobs and to do all of the things. If you want to be the musician that gets called, for jobs, for students, for teaching, for masterclass opportunities, for whatever you are trying to do in your creative career. If you want to be the musician that is top of mind for the people who are hiring, you don't get to become that by practicing harder in your practice room. It actually takes time. outward energy, projection of visibility out into the world. And this is not easy at all. So if you also struggle with this, I want to let you know that I'm going to have a program, a group program about it in the fall. I'm going to have a link to a wait list right in the show notes of this podcast or in the description below the YouTube channel. And I would love to hear from you. What are your visibility struggles? What is the magic that is waiting for you on the other side of those hard, sweaty visibility steps? And what will support look like for you? Let me know in the comments. Let me know by emailing me. Let me know by hopping onto my waiting list and I will reach out to you. Thank you so much for watching today. Have a great day.