Happiest Musician Minisode: Boldness 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.

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Crushing Classical

Happiest Musician Minisode: Boldness

July 24, 2025

A story of a time I failed in boldness, failed to give my project the chance it deserved. A cautionary tale for you! And an invitation.

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Theme music by DreamVance.

I help people to lean into their creative careers and start or grow their income streams. You can read more or hop onto a 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 Janet Engel. I'm the happiest musician. If you're watching this on YouTube or if you're listening to this on the Crushing Classical podcast, make sure you are subscribed. Thank you so much. I want to talk about a time where I failed in boldness.

UNKNOWN: 0:54

SPEAKER_00: 0:55

You're listening to Crushing Classical, how to thrive in your creative career. I'm your host, Janet 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 have failed to give my projects the best chance for success, and the mediocre reception I have sometimes gotten on my projects is a referendum on that failure of boldness. So here's my story. During the final year, or what I later realized was the final year of my chamber music series, Musicians for Michiana, I hosted and produced a fundraiser concert. I was excited. This was the first fundraiser we had done. I booked a venue that was one of my favorites in town. It was a little jazz club that had its own audience base. Bonus, bonus. I hired a guest performer whom I deeply believed in and who also happened to be family, which made the ensuing failure feel even worse to me. I purchased and procured a lot of relatively fancy food, and I paid a lot of attention to the colors of the napkins. I made programs, and I made posters, and I prepared my remarks for the actual event. I was really excited about this event. But I was also busy. I had other concerts to give, other things to think about. I had like a three-year-old child at home. I don't remember at this moment exactly what all of the factors were that went into this, but I vividly remember on the day of the event, I was talking with my co-hosts and we realized that none of us had done any more than the barest minimum of promotion. Thank you for watching. Maybe I called the newspaper, but I didn't follow up, and I did not have a feature article, and there was not a visible presence for this concert in our local media. So the audience for this artist, who had driven in from two hours away, was beyond small. It was me, it was my sister, my two co-hosts, and two other people, both personal friends. The artists gave a great show. We loved it. We applauded. And it sounded like the tiny smattering of humans that it was. We raised maybe$75 on the whole event, which was an overall loss of around$500. For a tiny series with effectively no budget, this was really a death knell. My energy really petered out after that. Maybe my energy had really petered out before it. Really, I think I already had one foot out the door and I didn't even know it. But what I know now is that no amount of external work, of external promotion and effort is too much if you actually want people to see your vision, if you actually want to spur them to action. in order for people to leave their houses and attend an event you have to light them up they have to hear about it many many times they have to know it's happening they have to mark their calendars they have to know me and believe in me they have to have a sense about the artist who is coming and how much they're going to enjoy it they have to have a stake in what is happening if you want people to spend money if you want them to act it is your job And so in this case, it was my job, and I completely failed in my job. Now, I mean, I can easily point to the tactical slips that were made, the way we relied on a small and unengaged social media audience and a tiny email list instead of doing a lot more personal reach-outs, instead of leveraging the larger lists of the venue and of my co-host's venue. the way we neglected to advertise in the paper, on the radio, on television. But like the bigger picture, the bigger message is that I didn't show up for my own program. Visibility takes work. And the work is not the work of making sure that the cake is beautifully decorated or that everything is in the nicest font on the website. We... Musicians can spend a lot of time polishing the details, making sure that everything is just so, that our trills and resolutions are beyond reproach. But that is not the thing that makes the audience come. And that is not the thing that makes people pay attention. And that is not the thing that makes people love music. hearing your content, seeing your content, learning from you, paying you. The precision of your trills and the correctness of your playing, that is a prerequisite. We have to do those things. The basic competence of your website, sure, it all has to be there. But the actual work is the scary part. It is the visibility. It is Raising your hand, standing up and saying, hi, I'm doing a thing. Let me tell you about it. I'm doing a thing. Let me show it to you. Here, I made this. Would you like to see it? That is the work. That is the hard work. That is the visibility work. And the other thing I want to say here is that whether or not I actually leave my house and attend something that somebody is doing in my town and attend a live music event or show up for the webinar that someone is delivering. Whether or not I actually go, it means something to me to see that people are doing it. It gives me something to say to them when I see them. Like, oh my gosh, I saw that you did a thing. I'm so sorry I wasn't there. Tell me how it went. It shows me that In my community, whether that is my online musical community or my local South Bend, Indiana musical community, it lets me know that there is action, that there is activity, that this is a thriving community, which is doing things and making things happen. And that in and of itself is inspiring. I want to be inspired to actually come to the concert. And I want to be inspired by knowing that someone is having a concert or that someone is offering a program or that someone is expanding what is possible for themselves. And we only know it if you tell us. I have failed in boldness before, and I don't want you to fail in boldness. What are you building? What are you working on? What are you great at? Let us know. Of course, I want you to let me know what you think of this episode. I want you to reach out to me. I want to see in the YouTube comments or in the Crushing Classical reviews or in my own personal email how you are reacting to this. And I want you to consider joining my fall program, the Happiest Musician Visibility Lab. You can find me and all of my information at jennetingle.com. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day.