Creative Coaching for Musicians

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S3 E29: Shout Outs and Shine Theory

Rebecca Hass

This episode is devoted to appreciating people I've learned from, and whose work has inspired and influenced my creative coaching work. Sometimes it can feel like we're creating in a vacuum if we don't get a lot of feedback, and it's so important to shout out the people who have helped us along the way. So, let’s tell each other when we're doing a good job, and lift each other up! 

My challenge to you: write a note, DM, or podcast review for somebody whose work you think is awesome, because you just never know how much that person might need to hear it.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello, everyone, welcome to Being A Whole Person, Episode 29. Last week, I talked all about a bunch of things that I love, because “feel-good” is not frivolous, and I really want to drive that point home. I didn't talk about people at all, because I thought that should be its own episode. I think it's so important to shout out the people who have helped us along the way, even if indirectly. 

So, this episode is devoted to people I've learned from, and whose work has inspired and influenced mine. You'll notice I'm not going to mention any musicians, this is going to be more around my coaching work, because I feel like if I listed musical influences, this would be a six hour show, and maybe those of you who aren't musicians wouldn't find it that interesting. 

Anyway, I had a practice in, I think, 2018, of doing an Instagram post that was a shout out, every Sunday - Shout Out Sundays was the thing. I would just make a little post saying, “This person is doing awesome work, here's why. Go look at their stuff,” because I know as an independent musician, and business person, we need other people to like our stuff in order to be successful. Sometimes it can feel like we're creating in a vacuum if we don't get a lot of feedback, because that's just kind of the nature of pushing things out to the internet. So, I personally know how meaningful it is when I hear a nice comment out of the blue from somebody, and I want to spread that to other people. So, this is going to be one big shout out show. 

I also want to give a nod to Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast, because they coined this term called Shine Theory. The thought behind it is basically, if I don't shine, you don't shine, if I shine, you shine. We are here to lift each other up, and we mutually are helping make each other better. We don't need to get stuck in comparison. I love that concept. 

So, if you've been listening to my podcast for a while, this will be a familiar name, but I think, first, I have to mention Mara Glatzel. She taught me so much about rest, because I took a class about rest with her back in 2017, and I also participated in her Cycle community in 2019. Her work is all about tending to our needs. And I think I had a lot of really, well, I know I had a lot of really unrealistic ideas about productivity, about tending to myself, about self care. So her work has really just taught me to be kinder to myself and meet myself where I am. 

On the topic of self care, I also want to mention Christy Tending - she was a guest, I'm probably forgetting the episode number right now, but I'll link it in the show notes. I had a really fun interview with her last fall, and she's one of the first people that I learned about self care more deeply from as well. It wasn't such a buzzword back when I was first tuning into her work several years ago, and it really helped me get some new ideas for how to care for myself better.

Also on the topic of being kind to ourselves, I want to mention Dr. Kristin Neff, and you've probably heard me mention her name a bunch on this podcast, too, before. I really love her self compassion meditations and exercises. Her work is completely devoted to self compassion, which obviously is an interest of mine, in the work that I do, and her self compassion meditations really helped me get through the pretty terrible anxiety I was going through in 2017, but the effect of her work on me has lasted, of course. 

I definitely need to mention Becca Piastrelli, who has a podcast called Belonging that is really wonderful, and I'm part of her Hearthfire community, which is basically a women's circle online, but with the focus of seasonal living, coming together to tend to each other, and really have this sense of belonging. That's been really meaningful, and I really have enjoyed her work over the years. 

I want to mention, Laura Holway, who is a coach for creative business owners. I worked with her several years ago to help me kind of get focused, get my stuff together to make a website that would reflect my album before I made it, and also my coaching practice. I love her perspective on so many things, it's very nurturing, it's very in line with the things that I say on here, too. And she is very into embodiment as she's also a dancer. I found it very refreshing to see things about embodiment practices and somatic practices from her. And she was a guest, she was an early guest on this show, back when Being A Whole Person was about creative entrepreneurship, self care and spirituality, but still such a great interview - you should definitely go back to that one, if you haven't heard it. 

I was going to try to group these people by theme, but I think this list is going to be kind of random, and that's okay. I also really love Lisa Congdon's work. She's a visual artist, and she's pretty famous at this point. I do love her visual art, but I also love how openly she has talked about her own burnout and anxiety, and her art that she posts online often has a greater message and is geared toward the context of the time, if there's something political going on, social justice, etc. So I really like how she is attuned to the time that we're living in, and is also just really real and honest, in addition to having a great visual style. 

I really love Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I talked about her a bit in the Making Magic episode that I did, Making Magic in Dark Times. She has since passed away from ovarian cancer, but you might have heard of her because she wrote this essay in the New York Times Modern Love column called You May Want to Marry My Husband, and it went viral. She wrote that right before she passed, and it was really lovely and really heartbreaking, and made me want to delve into knowing who she was. It turns out she was so much more than just a clever, heartwarming essay. She did all kinds of different art projects, wrote all kinds of books, created experiences where people would gather in public and do things together. She was a really magical person, and when I'm being creative, I definitely want to carry some of that spirit with me, that spirit of whimsy and wonder. 

I want to mention Laser Malena-Webber, who was my Kickstarter coach, when I crowdfunded my Brazilian album in 2018. There's no way that I could have successfully funded my album without their help. I mean, I don't want to sell myself short, maybe I could have done it, but it was invaluable to have the expert knowledge. So, if you are a musician crowdfunding something, check out Laser for sure. Laser’s also in a band with their sister called The Doubleclicks, and they are really fun, and whimsical, and nerdy and awesome, so check them out, too. 

Barbara Erochina is also someone whose work has really, really influenced me and she now goes by her Russian name Varvara, which I'm sure I'm not saying quite right, but anyway, you might know her either way. She is...I think she says she labels herself as an emotional wellness coach, and she talks a lot about embodiment and somatic practices, coming from a therapy background, but now bringing this stuff to a wider audience. I have taken her classes on how to feel, which again sounds like a funny thing, like, we have to learn how to feel things? Well, yes, to actually really feel our feelings, we do! I took her How to Feel class on grief and joy. There was a whole series of different classes, but I just took a couple of them in the spring and I found those so, so helpful, and her nurturing energy is just amazing. I highly recommend checking her out, too. 

On the topic of emotions, and feeling your feelings, I've really been enjoying the human empathy podcast lately with Non Wels. He also has such a kind and wonderful spirit, and talks to people about feelings and mental health, and how essential empathy is. And I just find that sometimes it's like, you need to listen to something that just, it's sort of like getting in a bath of a different feeling. That might sound really weird, but you're sort of...steeping in someone else's spirit and way of seeing the world. I really love listening to his podcasts because it makes me feel friendlier to myself afterwards. 

I also really want to shout out Caroline and Jason Zook, of Wandering Aimfully - they do unboring business coaching. Between the two of them, they have so much amazing experience in the online business space, but they also really make it fun, because that is one of their main values, like, their podcast is called “What is it All For?” What is it all for if we are working ourselves into the ground, and never having fun, or never doing the things that are meaningful to us? I've learned a ton from them, and even if you don't participate in their coaching program, which I actually haven't, they’re so giving that you still learn so much from them just from being on their newsletter and things like that.

I also have learned so much from Kyla Roma. I've been in her Uncomplicated Marketing Academy this year. She just really keeps it real in terms of marketing. I know a lot of us have negative ideas about marketing. And she talks about the “bro marketing tactics” and how, if you think that's icky, you know, that's normal, and you don't have to do it like that. So I really admire how she shows up to do that work, and also makes such an inclusive space where everyone feels welcome, and everyone feels like they can do it, even though maybe marketing is not something that comes easily to you because you haven't done it. 

I've also learned a ton from Sarah Morgan, who goes by XO Sarah. She has had some great courses on blogging and email lists, and just online business essentials. I have taken some of those courses in the past, and now a lot of her stuff is more all inclusive, like, Essentials, I think her membership is called. But I've learned a ton from her. I love how she keeps it no-bullshit, keeps it real, and is really honest about her own mental health struggles, and how just exactly how she makes things work. Like, if something's a failure, she'll share it with you. It's not that guru mentality that you get from a lot of online business people. So that's very cool. 

I also love Sister, Jennifer Armbrust’s company, and the book Proposals for the Feminine Economy is a game changer in my mindset of how I think about business. She has these 12 principles for feminist business, and number one is, “you have a body,” which is something that I bring up all the time when talking about compassionate productivity. They have this whole trimester theory of birthing of business, so you kind of see your business as like, a baby that you need to take care of and nurture in different ways at different times - really brilliant stuff. They're really awesome. 

And in the spiritual realm, I want to mention Lindsey Mack, who does Tarot for the Wild Soul. She has a podcast, she has courses. I took a class with her last year about your inner voice and getting in touch with your own inner voice or spiritual guides are, however you see it. And I found that very illuminating. It really helped me get in touch with my own intuition which has obvious implications. For not just my life, but my creative life too. She comes across with such a kind spirit that I really, really love. 

Lastly, for now, this is just one installment of my people who have influenced me, I'm sure that there's going to be more that I forgot, because my pandemic brain doesn't hold information as well as I would like it to. But, the last person I'm going to mention today is Alexandra Franzen. She is really inspiring in how she shows up for creativity. She's written a number of books, from stuff that's like fun and productivity related to like helping people write better emails, she also wrote this short novel about someone's last 24 hours to live, because they knew they only had 24 hours left, and what would they do with it, and that was really cool and sort of changed my idea of what's important in life and made me think about that. She also has a very successful business without being on social media at all. I like how she challenges a lot of assumptions about what you need to do to sustain your career creatively. I really admire her openness and honesty, about her process. 

I think that's a common thread for most people that I admire is that they're very honest and authentic about their process and who they are. And no surprise, those are some of my core values as well: honesty, authenticity, curiosity, all this kind of stuff. So, of course, we tend to be inspired by people who have similar values to us. I hope that gave you some cool people to check out and learn more about. 

Before I go, I want to challenge you to write a note to somebody whose work you think is awesome. Just send them a random note, like even just a DM on Instagram, or if there's somebody whose podcast you really like, send them or write them a review, which, if you do that, for me, that would be so wonderful, but it doesn't have to be for me. It's just really nice to make a habit of this. Every Friday, I've started to just send a compliment to somebody because you just never know how much that person might need to hear that. Maybe they haven't heard something nice like that in a while. Maybe they're having a rough day. Those little compliments go a long way. 

So let's just all tell each other when we're doing a good job more often. Let's lift each other up. I also want to mention really quickly that soon there will be a way to support this podcast on Patreon, and it is not live yet but it will be soon, so you will hear from me when it is. On that note, I hope that you have a great week, and that you are lifted up, and that you can lift others up. Until next time, be well.