The 5 People You Need Around You to Find Success (Part 3)
Tags: Professional Musicians, Music Teachers, Classical Music, Business Intelligence

(This is the third in a 5-part series)

How are you doing?

It’s been A WEEK over here. A week of last lessons, college applications, (more!) letters of recommendation, Christmas preparations, and general wrapping-up-of-the-year type things. Wednesday night I was coaching a quartet online when I suddenly felt a fever come over me and the entire left side of my face started throbbing. So fun.

Have you ever had a toothache before?

I hadn’t either. But oh, holy hell!

I managed to get in to see a Dentist on Thursday afternoon, who gave me the awesome news.

All I want for Christmas is a root canal? Ughh.

Friday was meant to be a day of calls for the next round of The Profit Pivot AND the big, highly anticipated “Graduation call” with my current cohort, but the universe had something different in mind.

Due to a “mishap” of some kind over at the power station, the entire island of Bermuda went dark. No lights, no power, no wi-fi, no running water. no zoom. OMG.

It was just one of those days. One of those days when I wanted to question everything I was doing. One of those days when it felt like the universe was conspiring against me.

One of those days when it just felt hard.

I’m going to let you all in on a little secret. This whole career pivot thing? It Ain’t Always Easy.

A few (very kind) friends and colleagues have told me that it appears that it was effortless for me. One day, I was a freelance cellist. The next day, I was flying around to different cities playing recitals, and the next day after that, I was running an online festival, restructuring my entire way of teaching and starting a coaching business.

Easy Peasy. Ha! Not exactly.

Two weeks ago, in Part 1, I told you that I had my inspiration from various people around me who had come up with successful ideas, and last week, in Part 2, I told you how incredibly helpful it was that I was surrounded by an amazing peer group in my own coaching program. This week, I want to tell you about my secret weapon.

This one is so important that I put it in the middle of the series. Because by now you know I’m serious about these 5 people, and in case you start to lose interest or get distracted by the holidays, at least you’ll have read this post. (Don’t though, because the last two are important too, obviously, or it would just have been a list of 3 People you Need)

It’s The Pillar. My secret weapon, that is.

The person that holds you up. The person that keeps you from crumbling in the middle of a launch when you round the top of the curve of the rollercoaster and start barreling headfirst towards the ground because the power was cut ( spoiler alert-it’ll all work out, it just might not feel like it in that exact moment.)

Your Pillar can be your spouse, your best friend, your mom, your kind neighbor who thinks you’re the bomb, or your Aunt Susie you always knows just what to say to make you feel better.

Your Proof? You might not even have met them. Your Peer? They’re going through the same thing. You can cry on their shoulder, but they are crying on yours as well.

Your Pillar though? They are there for you. Strong, always encouraging, always on your side. When you are on top of the world, they tell you they believe in you. When you’re ready to quit? They tell you they believe in you.

When I was growing up, doing the whole monkey dance of competitions and auditions that all young musicians go through, I would get incredibly annoyed when, after a “not-exactly-my-best-most shining-moment” performance, my dad would come up to me, beaming, and say “That was terrific, honey! You were the best one!”

I was annoyed because he was a) clearly wrong and b) didn’t know Anything. My friends’ parents were all professional musicians. They knew. And they could be honest about their child’s performance. They could go home and critically break everything down and do a full SWOT analysis of that day’s performance.

And there I was with my dumb dad. I would tell my friends “I could walk out on stage and take a crap, and he would still tell me I was great.”

In hindsight, I was the luckiest girl around. He was such a gift. He was my first pillar.

The truth is, we all desperately need someone like that in our life. Someone who, no matter what, is supporting us.

The person who believes in you, your dreams, and your ability to make them happen. A person who will run errands and take on extra chores for you when you need to work a few extra hours a few weeks in a row.

The person who is blind to your bad moments and is just constantly telling you to keep going, that you’re doing great.

These days, my pillar is my husband. He’s a scientist, and he had to google “cello” the night we met “just to make sure”. For years, he would feel bad that he couldn’t talk to me seriously about classical music, or “my work” the way I could with my colleagues, and eventually (I think) I was able to convince him that I didn’t need that from him.

In those colleagues, I have my peers-important, but only 1 out of the 5. He was my Pillar. My source of strength and support, and I don’t need him to know a damn thing about my industry for that.

The tooth will be taken care of, the calls and sessions will be rescheduled, and the emails will be replied to, but I definitely could not have gotten through last week without some support.

How is your team coming together? Have you found your Proof? gathered some Peers? Who can act as your Pillar? I’d love to know!

Cheers,

Join a program full of your peers. The 2nd round of my 10-week group coaching program, The Profit Pivot is starting up in January. You can find out more about it. If you’ve been thinking about making a shift in your career as a professional musician, let’s talk this week. You can schedule a (free) 30-minute discovery zoom call with me by clicking Would you like to hear about future trainings, challenges, and other happenings? You can join the TFTL Facebook Group and get all of the insider info