Starting a business as a creative can be a daunting task. After completing her PhD in Piano Performance, Fabiana Claure set out to start a business around her creative talents and now helps other creatives do the same.

In today’s episode, Fabiana talks about her struggle to find work even with a PhD which led her to start her own brick and mortar business. She also shares how she transitioned from a brick-and-mortar business to a virtual business, and how she now helps other musicians turn their passion into profit.

In this episode you’ll also hear:

  • How prioritizing and delegating work ensures you focus on what’s most important in your business.
  • Why trying to balance everything separately doesn’t work.
  • How delegating task to others fosters creativity and growth, both personally and professionally.
  • How to effectively package your business to have it running more efficiently.
  • Why networking, connecting, and creating are vital components of a business.
  • And a way to transition your brick-and-mortar business into a thriving virtual business.

Important Links & Mentions

Fabiana Claure’s Website

FREE 90-Minute Guide to Packaging Your Skills Into a Profitable Online Music Business

Musicians Profit Umbrella®

Musicians Creating Prosperity Facebook Group

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Solopreneur Success™ Transcript

SSP056 Packaging Creative Skills Into a Profitable Online Business with Fabiana Claure

Fabiana Claure:

Like if you’re just saying “Oh, I have to do this video. I have to do this interview. I have to do this,” and you’re showing up with that energy that you’re not enjoying it, guess what? You’re not going to have the results that you want and magnetizing people around you, and getting people excited about whether they can become clients or collaborators or partners, you name it.

So, it’s been a process of learning I need to create content so people can know what I’m about, but at the same time, I need to reach out and connect with people and have conversations, invite people to talk to me so that I can understand really what their pain points are and how I can help them, if at all. And when I have those conversations, then it fuels more idea for content because I get to see how people discuss their problems. I get to understand their limiting beliefs. I get to understand their objections, and I can talk about that in my content.

Steve Coombes:

You’re listening to concert pianist Fabiana Claure, who turned her passion for piano into a brick and mortar music school, one of the nation’s top collegiate music business school programs, and now a special initiative teaching musicians how to become successful entrepreneurs online without giving up their first love of music. You’ll love her story and insights on business, including how to take your in-person business knowledge and turn it into a virtual business. And you’re about to hear Fabiana’s insights now because Fabiana is today’s guest on Solopreneur Success.

Narrator:

Welcome to the Solopreneur Success™ podcast, where successful business owners gather to share true stories and sound advice to help you start and grow your own solopreneur business. Come soar with us and design the life you love. Now, here’s your host, Steve Coombes.

Steve:

Hello, solopreneurs. Today, I’m interviewing Fabiana Claure, who is the founder and director of the University of North Texas Music Business and Entrepreneurship Program, a major program initiative ranked among the top 15 music business schools in the country that help musicians launch their own businesses. I love that because I’m all about helping people launch and grow a business. Today, she runs the Musicians Profit Umbrella, which helps musicians from all around the world package their skills into a profitable and scalable online teaching or coaching business. That’s exiting stuff. So, Fabiana, welcome to the show.

Fabiana:

Thank you, Steve. I’m excited to be here and have this fun conversation with you and your community.

Steve:

That’s awesome. We both happen to be in the North Texas area, I believe, now. I used to be in New Hampshire. Now, we’re both in a similar area of the country. How did you get involved with the college? I’m just curious how you got to the point where you’re building a music program to help so many people. I just want to hear a little bit about your story and background.

Fabiana:

Sure. Well, I had pursued my career as a musician all my life, culminating in a doctorate degree in piano performance, and towards the end of my career, I realized that I needed to learn about the business side of music, that it wasn’t enough to just focus on being an amazing musician and performer, and educator, that I needed to learn business. So, I started to learn about entrepreneurship and music business towards the end of my degree. Thankfully, a few years before we finished our program, my husband and I are both musicians. We’re both pianists. We were doing our doctorates together.

We were looking at what are options beyond school? Once we graduate, where do we go? How do we find a job? What are the options? We started realizing at that point that the statistics for actually getting a job upon graduation were really low in academia. It was really unlikely that the two of us would get two full-time positions at a university of the same place. So, I started looking at what are the other options that I want to rely on that don’t depend on someone picking me, that I can create on my own. So, my husband and I came up with the idea of creating our own business, creating a music school, and throughout our last year in our doctorate program, we launched our music academy, Superior Academy of Music, which has now been in existence for 11 years.

So, it was a journey of jumping out of a relatively safe environment in academia and just deciding to start our own business. We created our own livelihood, and also hired several of our colleagues who were graduating and feeling like “now what do I do with this shiny doctorate degree?” So, that was the first journey into the business side of music, and after 5 years of running the school, going through all the ups and downs of learning how to build a business, we had a brick and mortar facility, very much anchored in the community in Miami, I started to wonder what else I could do with all this experience, how else I could help.

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