Business Plan Controversy from a Music Professor

Gather around for tale of a business plan controversy from long ago. Back when The Office was new and Heroes was the Next Big Thing.

While I was working as a student accountant for my university’s School of Music, a minor scandal broke out. Nothing salacious, unfortunately, but still one to remember.

One of the newer professors (who was, if I remember right, a fairly successful jazz musician before joining the faculty) helped host a recruiting event at a local high school. It was his first time on the recruiting trail, meeting with the local aspiring musicians clamoring to be the next Louis Armstrong or Marcus Miller. It was his job to tell them that they wanted to be in his program.

“Hold on,” he was reported to have said to these students, “you shouldn’t bother joining the School of Music unless you have a business plan for how you’re going to make money when you graduate.”

“You can’t say that,” several other professors shouted back (later, not in front of the kids). “The school is a place of learning. We can’t turn them away because they don’t know how they’re going to turn their art into a career!”

Dream Big…Then Plan

On one hand, how many 16 and 17 year olds at upper middle class schools really know what work is? They’re worried about dates to the dance and passing grades, not a comprehensive business plan for after college. That’s basically a lifetime away!

On the other hand, the new professor had a point. If we want to get fancy, we can look at the hugely popular Stephen Covey book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and point to Habit #3: Begin with the End in Mind.

What is the student’s end at joining a music program? Is it to learn how to be a fantastic musician, or is it to learn how to make money being a fantastic musician?

Most schools teaching the creative fields act as if the student’s only goal is the former. Be a great musician, or artist, or writer, or whatever. But then the assumption is the whole “making money” thing will take care of itself. I mean, it seemed to have worked out for the professors, right?

At The Indiepreneur, we’re trying to fill that gap. Yes, it’s still early stages, but that’s our goal, to help musicians (and artists of all kinds) to get a plan into place for the business side of things.

Processes, Not Goals

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not in high school anymore trying to decide between a music major or something boring and practical like accounting. No, you’re already heading down an Indiepreneur route.

There’s obviously a lot to cover on that, but for right now I want to focus on one piece of advice, and that’s on goals.

The music professor wanted these high school students to have a business plan to make money after college graduation. This, to many ears, sounds like a goal.

My advice is not to have goals.

I’ll walk that back a little. Yes, you do want a direction, and goals often provide that direction. The problem is that either (a) the goal is easy to reach, giving only a little direction, or (b) the goal is hard to reach, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

Instead, you need a process. Things that you do daily and weekly that will take you in the right direction.

We’ll talk a lot more in the future about this process. For now, start that list of the things that a successful person in your field would do every day, every week, every month.

Things like practicing. Reaching out to customers. Writing blogs or email newsletters.

It’s doing these things every day that will make you successful. Having one big goal just won’t be enough.