030: Bree Noble - Helping female musicians as a woman of substance
Music business expert shares tips for music artists in today’s competitive world
Bree Noble is a recognized expert in the music business community known for helping DIY musicians to build their fan base, to become more creative and productive, and to make consistent income from music. Besides being an in-demand speaker, award-winning Podcaster and founder and host of the annual Profitable Musician Online Summit, Bree has traveled the path of a struggling singer-songwriter herself and understands first-hand the career obstacles and mindset challenges artists face in today's music business. Bree's new book, The Musician's Profit Path, was released on Amazon in early 2019 and immediately hit the top 10 Music Business Books for Kindle. Bree created the Musician's Profit Path framework as a direct result of her journey from unknown Indie artist to profitable, professional musician. Her greatest joy is celebrating the success of her students, especially the members of her Female Musician Academy.
NOTES
touring for 7 years as a singer/songwriter (and a new mother)
her successful online radio show, Women of Substance, that became a podcast, and her second podcast, called Female Entrepreneur Musician
her online course and coaching program, called Female Musician Academy
we do a couple of thought experiments showcasing topics she covers in the academy and also offer some great tips for music artists to think about in today’s competitive world
she explains the concept of an “inspiration vault” for creatives/entrepreneurs who like “shiny new things”
a few quick tips on how musicians can market themselves better today
her book called The Musicians Profit Path, and she breaks down the five stages that she’s mapped out to guide you to a successful career as a musician
LINKS
The Musician’s Profit Path: The 5-Stage Blueprint To Create Massive Growth In Your Fan Base and Sustainable Income For Your Music Career by Bree Noble (*affiliate)
TRANSCRIPT
Bree Noble: 00:00:00 You know, eventually they started charging you to have these stations. And so mine just, you know, once I had left the opera and went work at home and stuff and didn't really need to listen to it, I just kind of let it go dormant because they were going to charge me. And then in 2007 I was just kind of really meeting a lot of cool female artists as I was performing around and thinking, you know, wouldn't it be cool to revive this thing and you know, put some of these artists on here that I've met and you know, even maybe even put my own music, cause I just came out with my own album. And so I looked at it and I'm like, well they're going to charge me this much to do it. And I really can't, you know, justify that. But maybe I could figure out a way.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:00:41 You're listening to The Artful Entrepreneur podcast, a show about living an inspired life filled with vitality, creativity and fulfillment. My name is Gabe Ratliff and I'll be your host as I interview fellow creative entrepreneurs from around the globe. To hear their stories and learn more about their work so that you can tap into your creative purpose and live a life that's drawn, not traced on the show. We talk about things like the creative process, personal development, community equity and contribution as well as the lessons learned along the way. All right, let's get to it.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:01:30 Hey, Artfuls! How's it going out there today? No matter what time of day you're listening to this, I hope you're having a great one and I want to say to you that you are enough and that you are worthy every once in awhile I need to hear that and I just want to make sure that you know that and I need to also ask, do you like shiny new things? I know I like shiny new things. My coach Nate would definitely say I like shiny new things. Every once in a while he's got to remind me to keep my eyes on the prize. Cause you know, as creatives and entrepreneurs, we're constantly thinking of things, right? We're constantly getting ideas and getting inspired and it's easy to see these shiny new things and be like, Oh yeah, definitely. Let's go do that. Well, that's one of our topics today on this episode with Bree Noble.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:02:21 We talk about the shiny new things and how she deals with that with her clients, the inspiration vault along with a whole bunch of other tips and tricks she shares. I'm really excited for you to meet her and to hear about this breadth of work that she's done, all these great offerings that she has for her clients and for you if you're a musician. But the interesting thing is even if you're not a musician, a lot of this stuff applies to us as creatives and entrepreneurs. It doesn't really matter. And there were some really great things that she shared that I think are very applicable to us across the, so let me tell you a little bit about Bree. Bree is a recognized expert in the music business community known for helping DIY musicians build their fan base to become more creative and productive and to make consistent income from music.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:03:12 Besides being an in demand speaker award-winning podcast or and founder and host of the annual profitable musician online summit three has traveled the path of a struggling singer, songwriter herself and understands firsthand the career obstacles and mindset challenges artists face in today's music business breeze new book. The musicians profit path was released on Amazon in early 2019 and immediately hit the top 10 music business books for Kindle. Bree created the musician's profit path framework as a direct result of her journey from unknown indie artists to profitable professional musician. Her greatest joy is celebrating the success of her students, especially the members of her female musician Academy. In the episode we talk about touring for seven years as a singer songwriter and a new mother. Her successful online radio show, women of substance that became a podcast as well as her second podcast called female entrepreneur musician, her online course and coaching program called female musician Academy.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:04:13 We do a couple of thought experiments showcasing topics that she covers in the Academy, and she also offers some great tips for music artists to think about in today's competitive world. She explains the concept of an inspiration vault for creatives and entrepreneurs. He likes shiny new things. A few quick tips on how musicians can market themselves better today. And we also talk about her book called the musician's profit path and she breaks down the five stages that she's mapped out to guide you to a successful career as a musician. So like I said, really great stuff. So let's dive in. [inaudible] Hi Bree. Thank you so much for being on the show. I'm so excited to have you here.
Bree Noble: 00:04:59 Oh, thank you so much for inviting me. I am so excited to talk to you today.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:05:05 So I always like to start off with guests and kind of take us back to where your journey began and your journey. Your journey really stems from music. And so I thought we would go back to where your journey with music began.
Bree Noble: 00:05:23 Well, I mean like most musicians, I can't think of a day that I wasn't musical and I didn't love music. I would say, you know, I did a lot of church musicals and things like that growing up, but I think it really started when I was in high school. We had several really amazing choirs at our school and so I got involved in every single one that I could discover that I absolutely loved it. And then started doing some solo competitions and decided I want to, to continue with music and voice. And so I went to college and plan to get a degree in vocal performance. And luckily I was able to perform with the school's performing ensemble. We went out like every other weekend to different places all over California and occasionally even further out. We went to Colorado one year and we just would perform. I went to a Christian liberal arts school, so we did, you know, kind of like Christian inspirational kind of music, but we're also kind of ambassadors for the school.
Bree Noble: 00:06:24 So that was really fun. I got a lot of experience learning how to talk on stage and perform on stage to all kinds of different groups. Everything from like, you know, regular churches churches with like everybody's over 70 and you know, really young churches. And then even like, we did some juvenile halls and we went to the Marine base and all kinds of cool stuff. So it was a great, a great like variety experience for me in music. Did you grow up in a creative household? You know, my mom's an artist, but like I'm not at all an artist. I'm, yeah, I tried actually. You can see on the back wall there's a painting right there. I painted it painted that one too, right there. But that was like, it was almost like, you know, paint by numbers. Like I, I, my mom tried to encourage my art and it just didn't work. But, but I've always been musical. So I think probably I got my artistic bent from her, just it appeared in a different way. And I definitely also got my entrepreneurial bent from her because she's an decorative painter and artist and you know, so she eventually started a company doing that.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:07:40 Oh, that's awesome. I had a similar childhood with, with my mom. She is a music artist and also an artist. And so I had that same kind of motivation from her.
Bree Noble: 00:07:52 Yeah. I think the support is so big because a lot of parents are like, no, you should go into the sciences or you should, you know, be a teacher or you should be a doctor or a lawyer. You know? When she saw that I wanted to go into music, she never said like, no, that's not a real, you know, that's not a real profession.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:08:11 Yeah. Same. Yeah. Mine was always like, you can do whatever you put your mind to honey, you know, just super supportive. What kind of music did you listen to as a, when you were growing up? Like what, what did, what were kind of your influences and what was kind of permeating your ears and your in your household as you were growing up?
Bree Noble: 00:08:31 Growing up? Like younger? Pretty much my family only played Christian music so I didn't know anything else. And then when I was in about, I was about 10 I discovered top 40 radio and I was just hooked. Like I had no idea that there was music like this and I loved it. Like I was obsessed with the top 40. I would write down the top 40 every week. I mean in the old days, right, you had to listen to the radio to actually hear what the top songs were. Couldn't just go to Spotify and look at a list. And so yeah, you still like write down the top 40 every week. Sometimes I'd try to record the whole show and I just really got obsessed with kind of learning all about the artists, not just knowing the songs. And later on I got really interested in learning about all the areas that I didn't know about. You know, cause I basically started with the 80s until I'm like, Oh, I wonder what the music of the 70s was like. I wonder what the music of the 60s was like. You know? And I started kind of, I got into a Beatles phase for a while where I just wanted listen to every song they ever made cause I wanted to understand them, you know? So I, it's very, it's a very broad spectrum of music that, that influenced me over the years for sure.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:09:46 Yeah. What would you say was it about the Beatles that you connected with?
Bree Noble: 00:09:53 Just their amazing songwriting. I mean, and it's so diverse. Like what amazes me about them is that their songs would sound so different, you know, written by the same people. Like especially like the Lennon McCartney tunes. You'd think they'd start to sound the same, especially if they written so many songs. But if you put, you know, I'm sure some of them have some similarities, but you can find examples where it's like put them next to each other and you're like, really, these are written by the same people?
Gabe Ratliff: 00:10:25 Yeah. Well, and especially over their discography. Right. Just how they evolved as they evolved as humans and they grew from, you know, the first days with the mop top and hitting the States and becoming phenoms and then evolving in into these higher level beings.
Bree Noble: 00:10:48 Right. I mean they basically went from cover artists to coming into their own as artists.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:10:54 Yeah. Do you have a favorite you were talking about all the different decades of music and the different genres that you were starting to, to grow and learn. Were there any that stand out as like your favorite John rhe or decade or,
Bree Noble: 00:11:11 Oh, it's so hard for me to pick. I mean, I'm always going to be a huge fan of 80s music, you know, much to the disturbance of my children that I play it in the kitchen all the time. But I, you know, it just reminds me of growing up. Right. It's when I really came into my own and realized how much I loved music. I really got excited around the time that all of the female singer songwriters in the 90s, you know, jewel, Paula Cole, Sarah McLaughlin, all those people in the Lilith fair phenomenon. Oh yeah. That's when I really just got, you know, just started thinking like, wow, you know, these people are amazing. And finally they're getting some recognition. You're hearing these kinds of really talented women on the radio.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:12:00 Yeah. Indigo girls. Tori Amos. Yep. Yeah, I was obsessed with all of them. Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen, not all of those, but several of them as I've seen Indigo girls live and there were a couple of people I'd never got to see that I absolutely adore. Like I loved Sarah McLachlan at that point. I was like, just totally crush on her. I think her husband's name is Gabe as well and he's a drummer and I was like, Ugh, I'm so close. No, I had a really cool experience that so my husband got his doctorate at UC,
Bree Noble: 00:12:32 See Irvine and she came to play at UC Irvine. And they had, you know, everybody wanted to buy tickets and so they had this lottery. And you could put your name in and then like if whoever they drew first could buy the first tickets and we were like number four. So we got, you had to get your ticket in order. So like we were like four in from the right on the front row. Wow. And it didn't cost any more than any other tickets, which was cool. And so that was the first time I got to see Sarah McLaughlin and I got to see her again at Lilith fair. But she just blew me away because she was, she was one of the only artists I had seen that is even better live than anything they could capture on
Gabe Ratliff: 00:13:12 Recording. Wow. That's a tough one too. You know, cause like there's as an, as also an artist, I'll be transparent about, like I, I still looking back to the albums that, that we've put out, I still, there's so many people that have just said that we're so much better live and the productions I felt like never captured us live. And so I love that we came across with that energy and that, that intensity and that and that, just that dynamics and passion that came through the music and was able to come across live. But I was always trying to capture it in the production. You know, and it's such a hard thing that's there. It's really hard to do both of them well. But I always love seeing bands that are better live cause I feel like that's really difficult. You know, cause nowadays people can be so produced that it's really difficult to do live better.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:14:15 And so you, you, you just get so connected to that album sound and like the little things in those like little eccentricities in the twinkle Lees, I like to call them that they, they add in production. And you hear them live and just like, yeah, but it just doesn't still quite, you know, maybe this, the sound isn't as good or that the venue doesn't quite capture them or it could be all kinds of things. But I always love hearing that about artists that blow away the album. Cause you're, I mean, I remember those albums being so good and just the, the, the vocal work and the mix and the acoustics in the room. The recordings are so good and some of that stuff, you know, she's was getting really quiet and very subtle and personal and intimate. Same with Tori Amos. I mean, they both were extremely dynamic. Yup. And so it's, I was always impressive to me too, to just hear that work and how much control they had. Would you say, I mean, who are some of your top influences, I guess, besides her, that you kind of grew into falling in love with, that took you on this path you're on today?
Bree Noble: 00:15:29 I mean, you know, definitely Sarah McLaughlin, the big one. Sarah Barelas Colby Kellay, you know, I never, because the kind of music that I perform as a singer songwriter is mostly Christian inspirational. You know, I was never able to really achieve the sound that I wanted, you know, sounding similar to what they do. Like it just wasn't in me for whatever reason. I'd say like on the, on the Christian side, you know, artists like Nicole Nordmann or Sarah groves even like Amy Grant, you know, over the years were inspirations for me.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:16:07 Sure. Are you a fan of I'm Alison Krauss? Yes. I'm a big fan of her too. And you know, I grew up in the South and do, you know, different versions of bluegrass and that kind of Southern rock and Southern Gothic and all these different kind of realms of, of Southern influence music and blues revival stuff. She was one of the, the ones that I just felt like really stood out as far as a singer and just, she always hooked me even though I was not a huge, huge fan. I mean, I like it as far as like country and bluegrass. I love, I like the style and I am very respectful of the artists, but it's not one that I find myself listening to a lot, but she's always one that when she's on I stop and I'm all ears.
Bree Noble: 00:16:59 Yeah. I'm kind of the same way. Obviously it doesn't really translate into my style. Sure. But I still love it.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:17:05 I thought we'd kind of start to move forward now where you're starting to come into your own as a singer and I know you toured for it, it was about seven years or so. We were touring is, can you tell us about that era and what that was like?
Bree Noble: 00:17:20 Unlike a lot of people, I started touring after I had my first child, so I spent, you know, these first 10 years before I had kids just trying to figure out the music industry, trying to figure out where my place was and had a lot of failed attempts. And then once I really tried was able to figure out a way that worked for me, which was basically instead of trying to fit myself into the music industry or someone else's, you know, band project, which I had been trying to do, commit to really being a solo artist and kind of get over myself as far as like wanting to be famous or anything like that. Just saying like, all I really want is to be able to do music, you know, and it doesn't have to look the way I thought it was gonna look when I was 20.
Bree Noble: 00:18:13 And so once I did that, I just started doing a lot of grassroots marketing and within my own church, my own community. And then just branching out from there. So because I had a small child, I performed a lot at what's called mothers of preschoolers. You might know it. I think they're pretty big in Colorado, you know, for people that have children that are younger than school aged, a place where they can go and you know, still be able to meet other women and have a place that has babysitting so they can actually have some time off and, and there always have a program. So I did a lot of mothers or preschoolers, I might've performed it 75% of the ones in California because it just was a really good fit for me. And I was at the stage of life has all the people in the group. So I would kind of give a lot of stories from my own life and then share my music. So that was a big part of what I did. Touring. I just performed for a lot of women's groups, you know, whether it's a women's networking group for luncheon, I did, you know, some women's entrepreneur kind of groups, community organizations and corporate and nonprofits, things like that and churches. I wasn't out there performing in clubs and bars and any of that stuff. That stuff didn't really fit my music and it didn't interest me.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:19:39 Sure. Well [inaudible] and that's obviously paved the way for where you are today, but I just think that's so great that you took that moment to kind of step back and appreciate the landscape and the different possibilities that are out there for a singer songwriter as opposed to, I'm going to just keep beating my head against the wall, which a lot of people do. I mean, I, I'm, I'm in a shoe gazer band and it's a very niche underground style and even though it's had its ebbs and flows as far as interest and people getting back into it again, I mean it's, it's, it's had a couple of revivals and that's all well and good, but the industry itself is difficult period. Even if you're doing pop music, it's still difficult and there's a lot of competition and it doesn't matter really what decade, especially since the 50s there's been a lot of people that are making music. It's just continued to grow as well as the access to it. But along with that, there's a lot of really bad music. There's a lot of access to a lot of people that don't necessarily, you know, maybe they, you know, no judgment, but you know,
Bree Noble: 00:21:00 No, it's a double edge sword. Right. There's a lot more access, but then unfortunately there's a lot more access.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:21:06 Exactly. Yeah. It's a lot more to sift through and not, not everybody has good algorithms to help you find it or good search databases or a lot of people, you know, they have self doubt. They have perfectionism syndrome, they have imposter syndrome, they have all these things going on where maybe they don't push themselves out there because they don't feel like they deserve it or whatever the demons are they're working through. And that's generally why they're putting their music out. And you're coming from this pay, this place of putting this like love and light out into the world with what you're seeing about and what you're writing about. But then you're also looking at it through this lens of how can I adjust how I'm showing up in a way to not fit the mold that this industry has put in place is like the way that you make it and then you ended up making it by doing that exact thing and creating this life for yourself in the midst of also being a mother. Yeah. That's awesome.
Bree Noble: 00:22:06 I'm gonna look back on it. It's probably a little insane, but you know, recording my first album, my daughter was two, but it just, that's just how it happened and I figured it out.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:22:16 Bad ass hashtag bad ass. So what was that like being, you know, you're writing music, working on an album. I've done that without a kid. So what was that like? You know, having a two year old and writing music and working on an album and all that goes with it?
Bree Noble: 00:22:38 Well, I think as kids often do, like they force you to be very efficient with your time because you know, my daughter, she went to, started going to preschool when she was two and so she was gone Tuesday, Thursday, all day. But I also still worked, Oh, we kind of skipped the part where I worked at an opera company as a director of finance for several years. And when I left to have, have my daughter, I ended up continuing to work there from home about eight hours a week. So I was still had this job that I was doing while my daughter was at preschool. And then the other time that I had left and while she was napping on the other days is when I worked on music. And so it forced me to be very, you know, strategic with my time. And I remember like, you know, I would walk her back and forth to preschool and in, in a stroller and I'd be like writing music in my head, back and forth.
Bree Noble: 00:23:36 You know, I'd run, I'd run home and write down some lyrics that I'd come up with in my head and you know, so I was trying to use all the time very wisely. And then I also was able to take a songwriting class. My husband's a professor at a university and so I got to audit a songwriting class on days when my daughter was in preschool, I think when she was three. No, maybe she was even two. I, we might've, it was before according to my album because I put some of the songs I wrote in there on the album. So I guess she was two when I did that. So that was great because it worked into my schedule when she was already at preschool and I was able to really, you know, get focused and write these songs while it was in the class.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:24:17 Wow. I love hearing those stories about adversity and how, how we react in those situations. You know, like I love hearing about writing the songs in your head, right? And you're like walking back and forth and then you're like running home and writing everything down and just like packing in w the time that you could. I love, I love hearing those stories and how people different, you know, different people have these different ways of tapping into that creativity in ways that are, they're forced to. And it's funny you brought up the opera company cause that was actually my next question was around, you know, when you were finally getting to a place where you're able to leave that, that that job as a director of finance and, and, and head down the path that you are leading currently.
Bree Noble: 00:25:09 Yeah. So I worked at the opera. I had another job when I got out of school, which was also in finance. I had also gotten a double degree in business because I decided I need to be practical just in case. This music thing didn't work out about three and a half years after I left school, I got the job at the opera, which was great. I mean, you know for having to have a job, working at the opera was awesome because I had experience in opera and although I didn't want to be an opera singer, I had done some of it in college and been in a few operas and so I could really appreciate it. And you know, I got, I enjoyed getting to sit in the front row during you know, opening night and you know, being able to go to all the fancy parties and everything that we did and that was a really fun experience.
Bree Noble: 00:25:53 Like I wouldn't trade that for anything for sure. It was a really cool experience to have being in your 20s but it was also very stressful working at the opera because there are non profit and it's such a feast or famine kind of thing. And it was during the.com run. And so we would be like flush with money and then you know, 2001 all of a sudden, you know, the downturn happens and the.com crash and all of a sudden all of our donors dry up and how am I going to pay people's paychecks, you know? So we're constantly doing that in the opera. You know, especially during the summer when we weren't running shows. It was very hard to pay people so that and all of that, you know, was on my shoulders being the one that had to make sure people were paid. But it wasn't my job to raise the money.
Bree Noble: 00:26:45 So I'm like, I'm just hoping someone's going to hand me a check tomorrow. I really needed to get out because it was really causing me a lot of health issues stress wise. And once I had my daughter, like those health issues got escalated just because of the stress. And also, you know, my body having gone through pregnancy and then all of the stress on me as well from work. And so I figured out an exit strategy by figuring out that my house had almost doubled in value since I'd bought it like three years before. And so we decided to move to a different area that was cheaper, closer to my husband's work, and I was able to exit working at the opera and I exit so gracefully that I still had a job for another five years. That was like a side job. So it worked out really well.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:27:35 That's awesome. Hashtag badass yeah, one more time. That's so great. I love the that understanding of, you were mentioning about the practicality and I figured there had to be some business in there somewhere just because of, of how much you've been able to, to lay as far as the, the groundwork and the foundation for your, your current offerings. So I thought this would be a great time to kind of start transitioning as towards what you've been establishing over the last, gosh, what does that like 1213 years now. We're now starting to get to the woman of substance radio. So tell us about that.
Bree Noble: 00:28:19 Yeah, it really started right in the thick of when I was a touring artist. And it goes back to a hobby that I had. Like I said, I used to be obsessed with pop radio and I used to, you know, write down the top 40 and all that. I was always very into playlisting like and mix tapes and things like that. So I used to just, I used to take my collection of CDs and tapes and everything and I would just make all these mixes of like, this is my energy mix and this is my, this, you know, and, and this is this, this theme mix and things. And I loved doing that. That's what I would do in my off time in the summer, everybody loved listening to my mixes because they were, you never knew it was gonna come next, you know, it was, it was a big surprise.
Bree Noble: 00:29:03 So I always loved doing that. And like I was saying about how I loved all the Lilith fair artists I had come to to like a lot of other like independent artists that were doing similar things. And some of them had gotten an opportunity to go to Lilith fair locally and, and perform and had gotten some recognition that way. And I learned about a lot of them on mp3.com which was kind of one of those sites when MP3s were new, where indie artists could, you know, could make a, make a showing. And my husband and I had actually made an album on there and, and done really well, like as far as they to pay for streams and stuff like that. And we made thousands of dollars from streams from our Christmas album that we made. And I discovered a lot of female indie artists on there that I really liked.
Bree Noble: 00:29:52 And so I had gotten their MP3s and when in like the year 2000 a service came out called live three 65 which is where you could create an online radio station. And because of my great love of playlisting, I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to make an online radio station for myself so I can listen to all my own songs that I like that are in my library at work. Because this was before iPods and MP3, you know, players and all that stuff. Like I just wanted a way to take it to work. So I made it a made radio station and you know, put it online and then I could go to work and log into it and listen. And that's where it started. And I called it women of substance because I wanted it to be all music by amazing female artists, whether they were Indy or not, that had either some amazing like themes and lyrics, really deep kind of stuff.
Bree Noble: 00:30:48 Or it was just gonna be really high quality, great sounding vocals and melodies and stuff. So it just, it was all about quality and depth. And so I called it that back in 2000 and then, you know, eventually they started charging you to have these stations. And so mine just, you know, once I left the opera and went work at home and stuff and didn't really need to listen to it, I just kind of let it go dormant because they were going to charge me. And then in 2007 I was just kind of really meeting a lot of cool female artists as I was performing around and thinking, you know, wouldn't it be cool to revive this thing and you know, put some of these artists on here that I've met and you know, even maybe even put my own music, cause I just came out with my own album.
Bree Noble: 00:31:37 And so I looked at it and I'm like, well they're going to charge me this much to do it and I really can't, you know, justify that, but maybe I can figure out a way. So basically I figured out with the use of Sonic bids that I could take submissions from other indie artists that I didn't know about and mix them in with the ones that I already had and you know, make a little enough money from the submissions, which was not a high amount because I was going to be promoting them with my station. And that allowed me to break even. And so I'm like, okay, I'm going to bring this thing back online. And I started doing it. I was taking submissions through Sonic bits first and it really started catching on because I, I had a marketing mind about it from the beginning only because, not that I was gonna ever make money from it or anything, but I wanted to get the word out about these great artists.
Bree Noble: 00:32:35 They were all things that I had chosen that I really liked and I thought other people should hear them. So I immediately started an email list and started adding all of the artists that were getting onto the station and then getting, you know, trying to get listeners to join the email list and started Facebook page. And you know, all that stuff was new. Then Facebook, my, my space was big 2007, 2008. You know, but Facebook was pretty new and Twitter and all that. And I immediately got on those platforms, got my WLS radio moniker and started letting people know about the shows when we would, we basically at that point had a radio station style where there was music all the time. And then I started creating these specialized theme shows and some of the first ones I created were Nick. What was the first one I created?
Bree Noble: 00:33:32 One that I created pretty early on that we've still run now on the podcast. In fact, it is running, it just finished, it's called music with a conscience and it's all about social justice music and you know, so people really dig those themes, you know? And I did things like women in harmony and of course I did once for Christmas. And I remember I did a st Patrick's day one, I did, you know, patriotic songs and, and then I did one that I loved doing so much called we've got it covered, which is cover versions of well known songs, but they're completely done in a different way by all by female artists. So that's kind of how it all started. And because I injected a lot of creativity and interesting, you know, new programmings and stuff into there, it just kept growing and people really loved it a lot. And pretty soon it, you know, grew into something where I was actually getting paid to put commercials on there and sponsorships.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:34:35 I love seeing that, that trajectory of 2001 I'm just gonna, I'm gonna use the system so that I can at this moment where there's not things yet that have even been invented like Pandora or Spotify. And I'm going to create this online catalog to listen to while I'm at work to then fast forward seven years too. Okay. I'm going to turn this into a monetized [inaudible] system that is also supporting my sisters. That's awesome. I love it. So how did this now become if a few years later then it became a podcast and what was that transition like and what led you down that path? Live
Bree Noble: 00:35:27 Three 65 for a long time and then eventually we moved over to a different platform that allowed us to have like mobile apps and you know, do more with the advertising options. And after a while I just thought, you know what, like pot, I'm hearing so much about podcasting, I really feel like this is something that belongs on a podcast. And you know, we always played indie artists and well known artists side by side. That was kind of a big thing when I created women of substances that I wanted people to see that indie artists could stand up side by side with Sarah McLaughlin and Colby Kelly and Sarah Barillas, you know that they, they're just as good people just don't know about them. So that was a big thing. But when I realized I wanted to do the podcast, I realized it had to be all the indie music because there was too many issues with royalties and stuff.
Bree Noble: 00:36:21 And the issues with online radio and royalties were even getting to be difficult to deal with. And so in 2014 near the end of the year, I put out my first podcast for women of substance and it was great because I had already built up this relationship, this email list, this, you know, 25,000 people on our Facebook page, all that. And so it was easy to move people over to this new platform. Although it was still kind of that era where people didn't know what podcasting was. It could be say online radio, they get it podcasting not quite as much yet. We already had sponsors like I had already been getting sponsors for the radio. So at that point I'm like, Hey, if you sponsor, not only do you get to be on the radio but you also get a podcast sponsorship. And so that was really cool because it got them excited about, you know, being in two places with their sponsorship.
Bree Noble: 00:37:17 And it helped us sell sponsorships as we were transitioning. And when we opened women a substance on the podcast we got, we were like top of new and noteworthy for a month or two months. I mean we were constantly top of new noteworthy in the music category, which was really awesome because I'd built up this relationship with our audience where I would, you know, get them to listen. So after that I continued the radio station for another almost two years. And in I think November of 2017 I decided to shut the radio station portion down because I felt that podcasting was really growing and online radio wasn't. And I wanted to put, you know, all my focus into the one that was really growing. As I saw our stats grow and grow and grow and our radio stats basically stay the same. And also I just, I was having a lot of trouble dealing with the royalty issues that go along with radio. So I just wanted to not have to deal with that anymore and deal directly with the artists. I'm with indie artists. So that is what happened in 2017 we became exclusively a podcast and we are, we now just hit our 1000th episode, so it's pretty amazing. You know, we used to be five days a week, now we're three days a week and we have a once a month Sunday show for Christian music. So that's a lot of podcasts.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:38:44 Yes. Congratulations.
Bree Noble: 00:38:46 Thank you. And I personally announced them all, all the way up through like the last 30 episodes. I now have a girl that works with me, Beth Matthew. She is doing a fantastic job as the host so I can spend my time on some other things. And after having done 970 episodes or 80 episodes, I'm like, I'll let someone else do that for a while. But I still edit them myself, so, and I still pick out all the music and so I'm very involved.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:39:19 Oh, that's great. What I, I have a couple of questions. What, for people that haven't heard this show yet, what does this, what, what, what is sort of the format of it, what they, what can they expect
Bree Noble: 00:39:31 It is, it's almost like listening to one of my mix tapes, which is all, it's all female, female, indie artists. But what's different about it is that we're completely varied on the genre, but it's all, it's all curated by me. It's all very high quality. And you know, we can have in the same episode of 10 songs, we can have country R and B, you know, acoustic singer songwriter, a piano ballad and bluegrass or something, you know, like all of those in the same episode. Now we have a pretty high concentration of more singer songwriter, singer, singer, songwriter style or folk kind of music. But we have every John rhe even class, you know, I've had like, you know, rock opera or classical pop kind of stuff.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:40:24 Yes. Yeah. So it's, yeah, it just covers the gamut of music. So then and how long is it, are the episodes?
Bree Noble: 00:40:32 It's, there are 10 songs generally unless it's a theme show and occasionally we have to put in a few more just to make the themes work. But generally it's 10 songs. It's about 45 minutes.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:40:45 Yeah, I was going to say about 45 minutes. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
Bree Noble: 00:40:49 And it's not just music, like we, we introduce each song and say a little bit about the artist or the song, you know, just 15, 20 seconds just so you have some context and not just playing music. Yeah.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:41:03 Yeah. I actually, I started in radio when I was in high school. I started learning radio and that was my first foray into deejaying and, and doing, I, I also did mix tapes. I was also known for my known for my mix tapes and I even did stuff like I would tell a story with the song names. And so when you actually read that, when, when you read through the, the, the names of the songs and the like what the, the format of the, of the mix tape that it likes, you know, did this like story, this tale, you know, I would fill
Bree Noble: 00:41:47 The light, love walked in and we danced, you know, like that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:41:54 It's a, it would be this whole kind of like carrying you through this really cool story. And then I would always feel the, you know, the last little bit of the tape with some cool sound bite from like a film or you know, some cool little weird, I remember there was this really awesome cure song from the 80s, one of their earlier albums. It had this really cool kind of like quirky baseline and it was just kind of this like fun song, but then it had this crazy scream at the end that you didn't expect. And it was like the best cause I grew up like in horror films. My mom got me into horror when I was pretty young. Thanks mom. And so I was, I was liked you finding little funny things like that, but that was one of those ones where it would be this really memorable moment for people cause it'd be, you know, the end of side a and it would be something that'd be like, people are listening to this, they're laying in the floor, their bedroom and they're just chilling and then they've got this crazy horrendous scare at the end or scream at the end that just scares the living shit out of them.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:43:17 And then they, you wakes them back up and they flipped aside B, you know, so it was like having fun with the listener at the same time, you know?
Bree Noble: 00:43:24 Yeah. Yeah. I mean I can definitely tell my, my obsession with top 40 Casey case him and all that. And also my obsession with things like behind the music and stuff. Like I, I just wouldn't be okay with having songs without giving a little bit of background. You know, I'm, I'm intrigued as to, you know, how people got to where they are now and why they make the music they make.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:43:48 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I, yeah, storytellers behind the music. You remember Wolf man, Jack. Yeah. It's such a great voice, man. He had such a great voice. [inaudible] Ooh, man, Jack, he was like, so I can't even go there. I mean, he's like so good. I remember that when I was really young. Yeah, like the 70s. Yeah. It was like, I, it was like, I didn't ever hear it live. I would always like hear him being played back somewhere. I wanted to also ask, you talked about the royalties and like transitioning from radio to podcasting and how it, it pushed you into being fully devout to indie artists and which just completely makes sense in your, in your trajectory. I'm curious like what was that like working with NDRs? Like just for someone say they want to do a show like this. I'm just curious how you've kind of developed this process of working with indie artists to support them and not have the royalty issue because there's still this gray area around licensing and royalties in podcasting specifically. And so I'm curious how that's panned out for you since you've been doing it now for so long.
Bree Noble: 00:44:56 Yeah, it is a gray area. I mean, hopefully someone, the, you know, the main people that try to shut you down aren't listening. But I mean, it's pretty understood with the NDR artists that like this is a trade of, I'm using your music because I want to promote you and we will promote the heck out of the show. And so what you get out of it is you get promotion and if you're not okay with that, then don't be on the show. Because truthfully, I cannot afford to pay the royalties that they want me to pay because I am not a commercial radio station. You know, I'm making a few bucks on sponsorships and that's basically to pay for the hosting and pay for the time that it takes us to promote the show on all social media and the emails and the show notes and all that stuff. Right. It's not like we're making any kind of money on this thing. So the artists that I work with understand that and you know, they're thankful that we are providing this platform and if we were forced to pay royalties pretty much we couldn't afford to provide the platform. It's a passion project.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:46:11 Totally. Yeah. Obviously I was just curious, you know, for, cause that's sometimes a question people run into, right? Where they're like, I want to get into this thing and I would support people and I will you run into that thing with, with deejaying, I mean I've actually put, I put a mix up on SoundCloud, myself and SoundCloud's known for putting mixes up as DJs and I still had occasionally one would get flagged for something and I'd be like, this whole site is built on artists putting up their music or DJs putting up their mixes to promote themselves. How in the world is this? Some kind of like licensing Bali. Anyway, I just, you know, and I've just run into this before myself as an artist or a DJ, you know, and I'm like, this is frustrating. And so that's why I just thought it would be a great question to bring up to you since you've been in this space for so long and have this, this kind Sydney's frustrating because
Bree Noble: 00:47:06 It's not like, I don't want to say I don't want artists to get paid, you know, I want them to fight for their royalties and stuff, but from the man and not me because I'm not in the position to be able to pay them those kinds of royalties, like big stations that have, you know, big advertisers and all that. Yeah. They're actually making money. I'm not,
Gabe Ratliff: 00:47:29 Yeah,
Bree Noble: 00:47:30 Copy that. Well in your, you're paying them back with, like you said, promotion and support and Patrick. Yeah. And any artist that doesn't see that, like they, they go elsewhere. Yeah, sure. That's fine. They mean not every artist is for women of substance, but right. The artists that we work with, you know, 99.9% of them are so thankful and appreciative and I appreciate that from them.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:47:58 Yeah. Well, cause yeah, I mean it's like when you put your music out and somebody, I can speak to this also from experience when, when you get people writing you and saying how much your music has done for them or move them or help them in a bad place or is something that they go to for whatever that emotion is that they're looking to fill because it hits that for them. That's amazing. And if somebody says like, Hey, I want to support that and put that out for more people to listen to because I love you and support you and I'm also a singer songwriter and we're here to support each other. I mean that's just, I mean, that's why radio started in the first place. Let's, let's move forward now. Now we've got another podcast coming where you tap into the other side of your experience and our giving back to these female musicians. And that is the female entrepreneur musician podcast. So tell us about that.
Bree Noble: 00:48:59 Yeah. That was basically started because as I worked with, with women in the women of substance platform, I found so many amazing artists and I was like, how come? How come I'm not seeing them promote themselves in other ways? Like why am I the only one that is promoting this music? And I would hear from a lot of them that like they just didn't know how to promote themselves or they were hoping that a label would pick them up, you know? And they just kept making music hoping that someone would discover them. And I was like, no, you know, I've been in this position before. I don't want you guys to to be stuck like this. And so that was why I decided to do that podcast is to bring on, I started out by bringing on other artists, other indie artists that had had some kind of success in, in different areas of their career as inspiration, as informing them that yes, you can do this and you don't have to wait around for a label or someone to discover you.
Bree Noble: 00:50:00 Like you can go out there and start building your career now. And that was why I started it. It was just a, it was really important to me to get that message out and, and connect with those people because I had started getting so many questions from people. You know, when you build a platform like women of substance in your, you're in this position where people see you as an authority even though maybe you're really not that much of an authority other than what you've experienced in your own career. You know, I'm not an person. I'm a person that built my career outside of the industry and so I knew that that's what I could help them do.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:50:35 Yeah. And again, I mean, like I said before, that's brilliant. It's brilliant because you're using that business mind and entrepreneurial mind that you have to look at how to solve the putting food on my table problem that a lot of artists run into in a very smart and productive and financially viable way. Right. Cause you're looking at how to tackle this in a different, from a different angle as opposed to, Oh yeah, that's how you do it. I mean, I'm just going to try that. Like we said, like beating your head against the wall and that's what a lot of people do and they, like you said, you and people just think like if I make it, they'll come, they'll hear me and the love my music and support me and I'll get gigs and tour and all this like, you know, visualization that a lot of us do as we are writing our music and playing it and getting excited about the prospects of it being a livelihood. It can sometimes be a pipe dream because you're not actually taking action. Right. So what is the format of this show look like? What does, what does that, what can people expect from that podcast?
Bree Noble: 00:51:57 Well, actually that show has been, I've been taking a break from that show for almost a year. I think we had our, we, I did release some episodes around April because we were doing our profitable musicians summit and I wanted to do some previews of that. Generally it's, it's interviews with female indie artists or interviews with females in the music industry. And then it's also like me, you know, teaching some concepts, everything from like how to grow your email list, what to email your, your fans about, you know, what to talk about on social media, you know, how to make your performances better. Like across the board. A lot of questions that I get from my Academy members, that's what I'm sharing on the podcast. So we have 180 something episodes of amazing content that even though we're not putting any new out right now, which I know we will be soon, you know, people lately have been doing like seasons of the podcast. So I guess we're off season right now, but there's so much content on there. Just, you know, if you go to fem, musician.com F as in female, he is an entrepreneur, musician.com you will see a wide arrange of episodes that, you know, there'll be something there that will help you with whatever it is you're struggling with right now.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:53:15 Yeah, that's great. I mean, yeah, it's, that's the thing I love about this content, right? Is it, a lot of this content that you're putting out is timeless. And that's the thing that I think is so great about the way are looking at. I mean, it's the same thing with your, the radio show turned podcast. The same thing with the content you're putting out. It's entrepreneurial things. It's ways to grow, you know, email's not going anywhere and you know, needing to grow your audience and needing to continue to grow as a singer and how in a performer that stuff does timeless. So it doesn't, even if you are taking a break, I mean that's just a lot of really great content for musicians out there that are in that need. So that's awesome. I mean, 180 plus episodes and it's a ton of great content.
Bree Noble: 00:54:02 Yeah, it is. It's most of it. It really is evergreen. The only things is maybe if there's an episode about, you know, some kind of tech thing, like, you know, Spotify just added this or you know but mostly it's very evergreen and the interviews, I know people will find really inspiring interviews in every kind of genre. Every, you know, everything from, from people who are just like really close to the mainstream and then people that are just totally in like not even trying to be in the mainstream. You know, I interviewed somebody who like, she only performs at comic book conventions, you know, stuff like that. So you know, people finding like a really extreme niche, which is always fun too to hear that those even exist.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:54:49 Oh yeah. Well in those, I mean the underground never goes away, right? Like that's, that's like the great stuff of legend are these awesome little pockets of people that do super unique stuff. I mean, I've seen some really weird shows and there it's leaves an imprint, you know, [inaudible]
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Gabe Ratliff: 00:56:40 So a moment ago you mentioned getting questions from the Academy and this seems like a great opportunity for you to talk about one of your newer offerings, the female musician Academy. Can you tell us what that's about and how that has feeding into these questions that you're just talking about?
Bree Noble: 00:56:59 Absolutely. And it's funny to think of it as newer because it's been around for four years, but it is, I guess in comparison to women of substance, it is newer. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a membership of female Indian musicians who are really serious about their career. Whether they are, you know, just wanting to be like the best hobby artist ever. They want to do this part time or they really want to do this full time. The key is that they really want to pursue a career in some way in music and actually make some, some headway and not just make music for fun. They really want their music to be heard. And a lot of them, you know, they're very impact driven. Like they want to just like the women on women of substance, you know, they want their music to get into the ears of the people that need to hear it because it's got a message.
Bree Noble: 00:57:50 So I started the Academy in 2015 with 18 people and now we have like 10 times that many people. And it's, I, I teach them, you know, whatever they're having trouble with, I, I bring in experts to help them. I have a lot of different courses that I've created inside the Academy and I also take them through what I've called the musicians profit path, which is, you know, they can come in at whatever level they're at, where they could be a total beginner or they could be, I've been performing for, you know, a long time now, but I have no online presence. You know, I've, I've built up this online presence, but I've never performed before. You know, it's like all these different levels and stages of their career and so we've got kind of this path so they can figure out where they're at and what they need to do to, to move forward. On the path.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:58:41 That's great. What are some things that people can expect when they, when they joined the Academy and they get into the community, what does that experience like?
Bree Noble: 00:58:51 Well, I think the best thing is that we have live calls. We have live calls every week, so we get on zoom like you and I are right now, but we have, you know, 25 people that show up and we have been basing things around a monthly theme, but people can always get their questions answered. So if they've got a question that's outside of the scope of the theme, that's fine. We have a time for that too. And I think it's so important because when you're operating as an independent and you don't have an advisor or anything, the group mind, you know, is so is so helpful because even if I don't have the answer or if I have one experience with something, you know there's other people in the group that have also experienced it in some way and can give them advice. So it's almost like having a group of advisors in your career. When you're an indie, you sometimes feel so isolated and alone and you have no idea if you're making the right choices.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:59:50 Yeah. It's like the downside of being an independent artist. Yep. You feel independent and yeah, I totally get that. And the, I, I run into that same thing in my podcast coaching program. I do a group version and there's so much great content that comes from that just inherently because of having other people like content within itself that just creates itself because, and I'm not even just content, but the community and the support, the feedback and like the, the idea is when I say content, I mean like the ideas of content that people come up with and, and just are promoting within each other cause they get fired up and it just sparks an idea and the brainstorming and all of these things start to take hold and all of a sudden, you know, their show starts to evolve as they're developing it cause they're developing it together and they're getting that buy in and the feedback. And, and I can have moments where I can just kind of step back and just like let them run for a minute, you know, and just like feed into wherever that's taken them. Cause they're all creative.
Bree Noble: 01:01:04 It's been so cool to see how they've, they've taken, you know, some of this and taken off like they've started their own songwriting group within the Academy. Like I had nothing to do with this. I just asked them my blessing and I promote it to make sure people know when, you know, they have a new a quarter that you can join. But it's just so cool that they did that. Some of them have done collaboration's, they've met in real life. You know, a couple of them went and bust together on the street, you know, like when they met each other. So there's just so many cool things that, that have come about. You know, someone was running a festival and another one of our artists was able to come and perform there. So it's been really neat to see how just creating this Academy has allowed people to connect.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:01:46 Oh yeah. That's awesome. What are some of the big challenges that you hear from these artists today? Like what are, what are some of the primary, I mean we've talked about a few throughout the conversation, but like what are you hearing today that, that people are just really, as you know, as we've kinda done the, you know, we've seen the industry have this massive shift over the last 10 15 years with digital and we've got the Spotify world and Pandora and all of these things, YouTube, Facebook, all of this stuff happening now. There's all kinds of different types of marketing and different types of methods for people to get their stuff out there. Like what are the challenges that you're hearing from people?
Bree Noble: 01:02:33 Technology is a big one. One of our weekly calls, the second Tuesday of the month, we do a tech talk Tuesday because I know that tech is a big issue for them, especially because we have a lot of, of artists that, you know, maybe were doing music before and then took a break and then they came back to it and like everything was different. You know, everything was online and they didn't know how to even navigate it or you know, there's just so many platforms that they have to know and understand and so that's why we have the tech talk Tuesday and it's been amazing to see, I think I started it in April or something like it's so popular. I had never, I wasn't sure if people were going to use it thought maybe I'd just hang out there and every once in a while when people would pop in with a question, no people come to this call because they, they have a lot of tech issues and a lot of tech stress.
Bree Noble: 01:03:26 So that's something really good and not feeling sheepish about it. Like a lot of times maybe they feel a little sheepish about asking like they should understand how to do XYZ on Spotify. And when they asked the question, people like, I've been wondering that, I haven't tried to figure that out. And someone will get out their phone and like show it on the, on the screen and like, okay, you press this button, you press these like three little dots and then you do this, you know, and people are like, Oh my gosh, why did they make this so hard? So that's one thing. And another thing that I'm very big on is overwhelm is such a big one for them because they're having to wear so many hats. And so we focus everything around 90 day goals and getting them to choose five goals in the next 90 days.
Bree Noble: 01:04:11 So they're not totally overwhelmed because a lot of them, because they have no, you know, guide or advisor other than, you know, me and the Academy. But a lot of times they're swayed by what they see other artists doing and they think they should be doing that. And then they see another artist, you know, they're making a lot of videos on YouTube. I should be doing that. And then this person is doing this, you know, doing Facebook ads, I should be doing that. And so then they've got this huge long to do list of things. They don't know how to do half of them, but they think they should be doing them. And it just makes them feel so overwhelmed that they're like, I give up, I'm just going to go write a song. You know? And so then they, they don't do the business stuff. So that's a big one that we really try to, we try to help people get accountability partners and stay, stay true to their five goals and, and really, you know, try to stay on track instead of just getting overwhelmed.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:05:09 Let's do a quick thought experiment. What if, let's say I'm an artist and I'm in the Academy and that's exactly where I'm at and I'm, I've, I've got, you know, five or 10, let's say I have five or 10 of this list of things that I want to do. And I'm like, I gotta do this and this. We got to make a music video and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And you know, email is, Oh my God, you know, we got to do that. And you know, all these things, how do you, how do you speak to that and how, how do you help me as this person to not only S, you know, squash the overwhelm, but how do you also help me prioritize what goals I should be approaching first?
Bree Noble: 01:05:58 Well, the first thing I do is have you do a big brain dump, so you know, use it whiteboard or sticky notes or you know, a computer file or whatever and just write down all the things that you'd want to do in the next year. Like based upon, you know, whatever stuff you'd been writing down based upon other artists that you've seen and you know, and what you've had in your mind and all, you know, just really rack your brain. Well, what would be all the things you'd want to do if you could do everything, write it all down and then, and then you need to look at it and kind of organize it. Like put like things together, you know, all the performing type of things, all the, all the, you know, fan base kinds of things. Put them all together and then I'm going to force you to pick five.
Bree Noble: 01:06:50 And so when you put them the like things together, you might see that, you know, they're so similar that they could be restated as one thing, you know pick five. But I kind of would like, if you can, to have one overarching goal, you know, maybe your one overarching goal is I want to build my fan base. Okay, what are the things that you can do in the next 90 days to build your fan base? You know, I want to be more consistent with my email list. You know, what does that mean? That means I need to write an email every two weeks to my email list. That could be one goal. Another part of the fan base might be like, I'm going to release videos cause I really think my fans would like videos. So I'm going to release one video in the next 90 days.
Bree Noble: 01:07:32 So, you know, if you choose kind of an overarching thing, it's usually something like building your fan base, you know, upleveling the gigs that you're doing maybe. And that could involve several different kinds of, of events that you wanted to do. It could be, you know, it could involve like upleveling your gigs, could be like, I want to get this kind of emerge and you know, that kind of stuff. Or it could be, I want to release something. It really is the single in 90 days, you know? So what's involved in that? There's the recording process, there's the marketing side that, you know, so we try to, I try to pin them down to one overarching goal. It's doesn't, it's not always necessary because you may be in a season where you're more in like, I need to practice and I need to, you know, get some performing experience and, and that kinda, I need to vent to even start building my online presence.
Bree Noble: 01:08:28 You know, that is just things that you have to do. And it's all very informed by the stage that you're in. So, you know, if you're in the foundation stage, the Academy training will tell you exactly what you need to focus on. You need to focus on your website, you need to focus on your social media, you know, building those, you need to focus on your EPK, need to focus on getting some performing experience at some open mics or some coffee shops. You know, you'll look in the training and you'll know exactly what those goals are. If your goal is to get out of the foundation stage in the first 90 days, you know,
Gabe Ratliff: 01:09:05 That's great. Yeah. Thanks for doing that. I like kind of getting into that space and you know, pretending like, okay, I'm this person. What does that look like? How do you, how do you help me? Cause I think that's, that pretends a lot of us as artists or creatives, even entrepreneurs. I mean that, that's one thing that I love about the two is that they're very symbiotic. We can all feel overwhelmed and we can also, you know, have this immense amount of goals that you're like, I have all these things that I want to do. And you know, when you're an artist, you're essentially a brand and you're developing your brand, your marketing, your brand, your actually, you know, performing as the brand. And there's, you know, this whole slew of things that are completely relevant and relative across the board is as if you were, you know, an entrepreneur or a business. And at the same time you're also doing this very personal thing, creating your music. So, you know, there's a lot in there that can, can really get, you know, tumultuous inside as you're trying to do all this,
Bree Noble: 01:10:13 Force them to make choices. You know, like, no, can I have six goals? No, you cannot have six goals. We only have five, you know, and, and sometimes they'll be like, can I have four goals? Yes, you may have four goals because it's less than five. And you know, then if you happen to, if you're able to achieve them in two months, then you can start your 90 days again, you know? But getting them to give up some of the ones that don't fit is the hardest part. You have to like pry it out of their head. You know and say look, for the next 90 days, these things that you couldn't choose, those are your enemies because they're the things that are going to try to distract you from the goals that you chose because you really wanted to choose them but you couldn't because you can only have five.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:10:58 Okay. So I'm going to speak from experience cause I like shiny things to my coach just actually said that to me last week in our mastermind. Love you Nate. He was like shiny thing, man, shiny thing. So I know, right? And I just dammit, I like shiny things. So how, let's try another thought experiment. If you're, if you're open to it, how would you, let's say I have, you know, a couple of new things that I'm wanting to do as I'm trying to build these goals. How do you kind of reign that in and help me figure out which one, like what are the top ones or how do you already chose your goals, but now these other things are coming up. Yeah, right. Like say I'll just establish goals and then I'm like, Ooh, there's this shiny, I just had this, you know, cause this is what we do as entrepreneurs, right? Like we, we're visionaries and we go, Ooh, I got this thing. Or you know, you see the new band doing this or you see a band doing this new thing and you're like, Ooh, maybe that's the way to do it. Maybe we do a podcast or whatever it is. Right? Like maybe there's, maybe this will get us into this space. What would you say then?
Bree Noble: 01:12:12 No, I know. That's so dangerous. That's, that's what I always warn people against like C w looking at what other artists are doing because we always think, Oh, that must be the reason I'm not succeeding because I'm not doing that. You know? So yeah. What I encourage them to do is something I call an inspiration vault, which is, you know, when you did that big brain dump and you had those 25 things and you finally whittled it down to the five and you gave up the ones you didn't want to, then you take all of those. And you put them into what I call an inspiration vault and you can keep it, you know, somewhere that's handy, but I don't want you looking at it all the time, like can be in your phone, but like in a note that is not easily seen. You know, unless you go into it, you could put it in a, in a, you know, the pad that you kept in your purse or something.
Bree Noble: 01:13:02 But the point is that you need to think of it as like a vault that can, you can put things in, but you can't take things out until someone gives you the key, you know, like, like one of those mailboxes where the blue mailbox where you put your mail in, but then you could never get it out once you put it in there. Sure, yup. Let's do work for the post office. So it's like that because like as you said, as you're going along, you get these amazing ideas. Right. And I'm not discounting the ideas. That's what's amazing about being a creative and an entrepreneur. And you know, we get, whether it's songwriting ideas or it's a marketing idea or something we see in other artists doing, like those again are the enemy. They're trying to keep you from achieving your goals. And I'm not saying that you can't do those things, you just can't do them right now.
Bree Noble: 01:13:52 And so I want you to put them down because they might be a cool idea at the end of your 90 days. They might be something you want to focus on, but not yet. Because otherwise if you, if you switch gears and you move to that thing, it's likely that you won't finish the goals that you committed to. And I, I just see this way too often where people are not completing anything. You have all these half done projects. It's like you made 20 different kinds of cookies and you just had the dough, you know, and you never bake them. So you really have nothing. I mean, unless you love cookie dough, which we all do, but you didn't actually make any cookies for your bakery. You just made dough.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:14:40 So people are showing up wanting to buy cookies and you've just got all this half base.
Bree Noble: 01:14:45 Yup. But we got 20 kinds, but it's only DOE you can't have any.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:14:49 Right. They'll make you sick potentially or not. Yeah. Let me ask you this then. What, what would you say, I've got a couple other questions around, you know, your thoughts for musicians out there today. What, what are some ways that you're seeing musicians that are marketing themselves and finding some success? Like what, what are, what are, what do you see as kind of the top few things that are working for musicians today?
Bree Noble: 01:15:21 I mean email is still a thing, so getting people on your email list is still important. I still think it's the best way of stickiness, which is making sure that you're able to continue to communicate with your people versus, you know, relying on the social media algorithms. I think that I would like people to ha be on my email list and follow me on Spotify because I do think that most people are listening to music on some kind of a streaming app. And I'd like to know that my fans are listening to my music, you know, so although Spotify, you know, the payment is really, really small. Right. But it adds up. And I'd much rather have somebody listening to my music on Spotify than just buying my album and never playing it because they don't have a CD player. I want them to buy the album and follow me on Spotify.
Bree Noble: 01:16:20 So I know that they're listening to my music cause every time they listened to my music it's going to solidify our relationship. And then, you know, maybe down the line when I come out with a crowd funding campaign and I ask them to support me, they'll think about all those times that they listened to me on Spotify and how much they enjoyed it and then they'll want to, to support me in my next, you know, endeavor. So I think both of those are important communication through email and that that continued relationship listening relationship through Spotify. I do think that, you know, getting people on your email list at shows is a thing that people are not doing enough of. And using something like a, like a texting program can be very successful or even a QR code. Just putting that up on the screen and getting people to take a picture of it and having it automatically send them, you know, a free song and get them on your email list. I meet a lot of artists that perform all the time and don't take any advantage of the fact that they have a captive audience to get those people on their email list so they can talk to them again and again.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:17:41 Yeah, it's interesting because especially you, I mean, everybody's all ears, right? You're just staring at the stage and you know, if you're the front person and that's it. Even even if you have, you have a band backing you up or, or what have you, you're the like, it's like I said before, you're the brand and people that are, to hear whatever it is you have to say, whether that's with music behind it or not. And so, yeah, you've got this window, it's like it's the perfect soapbox.
Bree Noble: 01:18:12 Yep. It really isn't. And if people are having a good time, you know you've made a memory for them, there's pretty much no reason that they wouldn't want to get on your email list. You know, they may say unsubscribed some day when they forget how fun, how much fun they had at your concert, but in the meantime, get them while you while they're hot and then nurture them
Gabe Ratliff: 01:18:33 Here. Here. That's great. I just heard that recently on an episode of Pat Flynn's smart passive income podcast. He was talking about how email is the next new thing because people keep thinking it's dying and going to go away, but it's still the best way to communicate with your audience because you like you, you nailed it, right? It's, you're not basing it on their algorithm where it is that day and if you fit in that mold or not
Bree Noble: 01:19:07 And people can't stop you from using it to promote something. I mean even something like mini chat, which I also use for Facebook messenger, but like you have to be super careful what you put on there. You can't just say, Hey, here's the link to my new CD. Go buy it. Not that I would do that anyway, but I'm just saying if you were promoting something that just came out, you can't actually send to send a promotional link through there. You have to say like, Hey, are you interested in finding out about it? Click this link, click this button and then you can get the link for it. So you have to be really careful what you put through there. So email is the only one that you can basically say whatever you want to, your audience is not as long as they don't interpret you as spam or you know, being malicious in any way. No one can stop you from, you know, telling your audience about your crowdfunding campaign.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:20:02 Yeah. Cause they've given consent. They've said, Hey, I want to hear from you. I really dig what you're, talk to me, the ultimate permission marketing. Yeah, absolutely. And if they don't like it, if for some reason no one subscribed, they'll unsubscribe and they'll give consent to not get your stuff. Yep. Okay. So let me ask you this then. Where do you see the music industry going from here? We, you've caught us up to where things are, ways that people can market and tools that they can use, whether that be around goal setting or marketing themselves. Now where do you see the industry going?
Bree Noble: 01:20:43 Gosh, I wish I knew. I see. I feel like I could make a lot of money if I knew.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:20:48 I think there was a lot of people saying that actually.
Bree Noble: 01:20:50 Yeah. No, I really don't know. I have no idea what's around the corner. You know, I'm not seeing anything that's telling me it's, you know, this is going to be the next big thing or anything. I still feel like there's so much growth to happen with streaming and ways that we can make it more beneficial for artists. You know, right now as we're recording this, you can't even put your website on Spotify. I'm hoping Spotify will start to, you know, be a little bit more quid pro quo with artists and, and help us build our business in a ways that we can, we can communicate with fans through Spotify. You can put your social media is on there, but you can't put your website.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:21:37 Yeah, I mean that, that conversation had been coming up too as well as with podcasting, right. Where there's more interactivity that should be available to us as content creators similar to YouTube where we can engage and people can take action. You know, if you have like something that you're doing a fundraiser for or if you are wanting just kind of like Patrion and you want people to just support. I know you do Patrion for your podcasts and you know, if people want to just support you because you're awesome and they love what you're doing, it shouldn't be that hard.
Bree Noble: 01:22:14 Right. They shouldn't have to go track you down. They should be able to click a button.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:22:19 Especially since that app is in, is a mobile app as it is, you know, it's definitely got the space to be this more interactive kind of thing. I see it coming. I see things like, you know, you can go to a shop and buy, you know, merge or tickets for shows. As long as the bots haven't bought them all up. Yeah, I just said that cause that's illegal. It needs to be illegal federally. I am so against this whole reseller bot BS is so frustrating as an artist, as a fan. It is so frustrating to me. So I had just had to say that. Okay. So Bri, let me ask you
Bree Noble: 01:23:05 Now, what advice would you give to an up and coming female DIY musician? I'm pretty biased because I have two big communities of female artists. So I think getting into community is the most important thing you can do. Your very, very first starting out, you don't even have any music yet and you just want to kind of get an idea of what it's like a join a free community. There's tons of them on Facebook, including mine, the female Indian musician community. There's also ones that are local and a lot of places have local music collectives that you can find on Facebook by just looking it up by, you know, your area. Also like local meetups and stuff. Meet other musicians. Just get more of an idea of, of what the lay of the land is. And then if you're, if you're really starting to get serious, join something like the Academy or just find a community of people to support you and people that can mentor you.
Bree Noble: 01:24:04 Whether it's someone like me or somebody like other members of my Academy that are a few steps ahead of you, that can be so valuable because why do you need to figure out all the things and make all the mistakes yourself when you can avoid that by learning from people that have already been down that path. I also wanted to ask, you mentioned having a book. Can you tell us about that? I do. It's called the musician's profit path. That's, so that's what I was talking about earlier is kind of the basis for our training in the Academy and it just, it lays out, in my opinion, the trajectory that your career should have as an indie artist. And one of the big things that makes it different is I encourage people not to release any music until there's the stage three because I don't want you to go through the disappointment that so many of us have been through where you put all this money and you put all this effort into an album and then you actually don't have anyone to release it to that cares because you haven't built your fan base first.
Bree Noble: 01:25:12 So let musicians profit path takes you through all the foundational things that you need, all your online platforms and everything, and then teaches you how to build up your fan base to at least 500 people before you release your first album. So you actually have some people that are like, Ooh, I can't wait for that to come out. I'm going to buy it. I'm going to support you. I'm going to tell my friends about it.
Bree Noble: 01:25:36 So that's what the book is about. And it also highlights some emotions that we experience along the way and you know, kind of helps you feel like, yes, it's totally normal to be going through this in this stage of your career and it's okay, you'll come out of it and you know, you're not alone. And everything from lack of confidence and feeling isolated and spotlight, fear, comparison ism, you know, dealing with haters and you know, all that kind of stuff that we deal with along the way in our career. So I tried to combine the very practical with the, the other side of it, the mindset stuff that truthfully, no matter how many practical tactics and strategies that you have, if you don't have your mindset straight, it can keep you from employing any of that you can keep you stuck. And I've seen it with so many people where it's like, why is she not doing this? She knows exactly what to do and it's because her mind is just messing with her, like keeping her from having the confidence to do it, keeping her from making, you know, making her think that she's not good enough. And you know, comparing herself to other artists. And so that's why I include that because I think it is really the crux of whether you'll be successful or not. You've got to deal with that mindset stuff first before you can really start employing the tactics.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:27:03 Oh, that's great. And it's so true for many of us, right? I mean that, that whether you're a creative or an entrepreneur or both, that having the practical side and the, the tactics and the steps and the, and the things to, to, to look at for a successful process and trajectory forward to those goals that you're setting. But then also that mindset to deal with as you do become more well known and you are getting sometimes crazy super fans or the haters on both sides and just how to, how to manage that. And especially like now we are losing more and more of our privacy and people start to expect to be able to connect with you and these very transparent ways and they start to lose the fact that you're actually a human, you know, like a lot of celebrities deal with that. So you know, people think like, Oh, I want to get my music out there and I'm going to, I want to, you know, be a rock star. I want to, you know, be successful as a musician. And then they find it and then they have to deal with that aftermath. So that's great to have both of those.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:28:17 I wanted to ask, could you speak through, you mentioned that they shouldn't get going with some of that until they hit to stage three. Could you maybe explain the like name the stages and how many there are in that you go over in the book?
Bree Noble: 01:28:33 Yeah, absolutely. So there are five stages. The foundation, which is getting yourself set up and on the performing side, just becoming a really confident entertainer, not just someone that plays songs, but someone that can really command the attention of an audience, have a persona and banter and all that stuff that you need to be beyond just a musician because that's going to set you up to be able to be paid. You know, we want that. Second stage is called the promotion. And it's really about the beginnings of building your fan base, starting to get yourself out there. Engage with fans, perform at some smaller venues and house concerts, which I totally love because it's such a great experience to engage with your fans one-on-one and in small setting and really create some super fans through those experiences and get yourself out there in some local PR.
Bree Noble: 01:29:31 And then by the time, and there's like benchmarks along the way of like how many people you have on your email list and stuff like that. And so by the time you get to stage three, you've got 500 people on your email list and you can create an album and know that there will be people there actually waiting to receive it and want to help you to promote it and support it and all that stuff. So that's called the expansion stage because we're kind of expanding in every direction, doing bigger venues and more people on your email list and just, you know, expanding obviously your catalog of music. The fourth stage is called the automation, which is, you know, you put some, some things into place that help you handle kind of your communication with your fans a little bit without you having to always do it yourself.
Bree Noble: 01:30:23 Get bringing a few people, one or two people on your team, whether they're paid or volunteers to just help you. Because when you go through the expansion, there's a lot to do and you might get burnt out if you don't get some people on your team. And then the final one is the profession, which means you have ascended to the place where you can be paid as a musician. What you feel you're worth and you're working. It doesn't mean that you're working full time as a musician, this musician, it means that you're, you're working to the level that you want to be working. You're satisfied with where you've ascended to as a musician, whether that's part time or full time. And at that point you can do lots of other cool things, new income streams like music licensing and custom songs and maybe do some, a lot more like corporate gigs and stuff like that.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:31:15 Thank you. That's awesome. That's great. Where can people get your book?
Bree Noble: 01:31:19 It is on Amazon. Just look up the musician's profit path or look up my name. It should come up. There's a paperback version and a Kindle version in most countries.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:31:28 Fantastic. All right, well now it's time for some fun wrap up questions. Oh, okay. You didn't warn me about this. Okay. I always like to just do like a couple, you know, a few fun questions just to, you know, have a little bit of lighthearted wrap up fun as we is. People call it rapid fire questions and lightning round and all that stuff. But I just like to do some fun questions at the end. Has a piece of music ever directly influenced your life?
Bree Noble: 01:31:59 I would probably say Adagio for strings. So I worked at the opera during September 11th and we had already planned this like this really big like fancy concert in Laguna beach was going to be this, you know, really big concert with this party beforehand and all this stuff. And it was happening the weekend right after that. So when September 11th happened, well, you know, the rest of the world was like reeling and stuff. We were reeling but we also had to have an executive meeting to say like, obviously we cannot still do this concert. We have to figure out what we're going to do instead. And what we decided to do was to have our chorus perform Adagio for strings and, and dedicate the evening to September 11 and have it be free. And so it was amazing. It was one of the most amazing performances I've, I've ever seen in every time that I hear that choral version of it. It just brings me right back there.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:33:09 Wow. Yeah. I love that song. What obsessions do you explore on the evenings and weekends?
Bree Noble: 01:33:19 Other than my obsessions with the top 40, which still go on by the way, cause you can listen to that on Sirius XM, the 80s channel. Yes. let's see. Obsessions. I, I have to get outside every day. So I used to live in the mountains and I was used to being outside all the time. I'm in nature. I don't live in the mountains anymore, but I have to get outside every day. So that's one thing I am, I'm obsessed, strangely obsessed with the old style candy bar. Bidot honey. Oh my gosh, I remember that. Yeah. So my grandma used to keep it in her candy dish and so, but it's really hard to find. So every once in a while I'll like buy a two pound bag on Amazon and try to hide it in my closet so I don't keep eating it.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:34:10 That's great. Thank you for sharing that. That's awesome. That's, that's awesome.
Bree Noble: 01:34:17 Completely random. Like I don't think I've mentioned that other than my husband. Like most people don't know about that one. So,
Gabe Ratliff: 01:34:23 Oh, that's so great. What is something you believe that other people think is insane.
Bree Noble: 01:34:29 Okay. Wait, something that I believe [inaudible]
Gabe Ratliff: 01:34:34 The other people think is insane.
Bree Noble: 01:34:38 Hm. That's a hard one. Gosh, I, I, I think I'm pretty sane. I don't know. I believe that getting up at 4:00 AM is a good thing cause I do, I get up at 4:00 AM. Wow. Well think that's insane. So I mean a lot of people like it's aspirational for them, but they just can't do it. And I get that. I'm just built weird.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:35:06 I've tried it. I've tried the early I've done. So the earliest I got that I could kind of hold on to was around five 35 five or five 30 the 14th
Bree Noble: 01:35:16 Unfortunately I'm so used to getting up at four that now I wake up before my alarm. So sometimes it's three 30.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:35:23 Oh wow. Yeah. Cause you've just totally got your circadian.
Bree Noble: 01:35:26 Yes. Rhythm all which of course I also fall asleep at eight 30 at night because of that. So I was going to say, yeah, you're going to bed early too. Yeah, it's kind of, it's a problem. But I've always been that kind of person. Like as soon as it starts to get dark, I feel tired and I don't focus at night.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:35:42 Yeah. That was the way it used to be right before we had alarm clocks and all that electricity. Yeah. And electricity. Yeah. People would go to bed when it got dark. They didn't have, you know, read by candlelight and I'm living in the 18 hundreds. I don't know. It's just a naturalism. How we were before technology in the, the industrial revolution. Is there anything else that you'd like to say or, or last parting words that you'd like to share with the audience?
Bree Noble: 01:36:12 Gosh, I don't think so. I feel like, I think it's really cool that, that we met though, because I feel like we have such similar backgrounds and similar ideas about music and entrepreneurship. So it's just been really fun to talk to you here. Here. Oh, we met totally by chance. So, you know, you never know when you're gonna meet someone that just fits.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:36:31 Yeah, I was going to say I, I w I wasn't sure if I, if it fit into the show or not, but I have to give a shout out to David Siteman Garland. Good old DSG. Cause I actually, you know, got his create awesome online courses and you were my mentor for joining the course and we got a a like an hour session of, of you helping guide me on my path with where I am with my course. So thank you again and I'm so glad to have you here. It's been such a treat.
Bree Noble: 01:36:59 Yeah. It's, it's really fun to be able to be able to help other people create courses and all kinds of different areas. So it's always fun when I meet a music person cause most of the time it's not.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:37:09 Right, right. Yeah. Well yeah and such a kindred. I agree. I mean I just, and I was, as I was researching for the this interview, I was like God man, hashtag badass just done so much. And I love that. I love that, that passion and fervor for especially women musicians. And cause I, I connected with that as well. A lot of those people that you mentioned, you know, Sarah McLachlan and, and, and, and all of these singers, I mean Sarah Brella, S Tori Amos and just there were so many people that I also connected with in my journey with music and, and my support for women in the creative, the creative side and with entrepreneurial side. I'm just such a, an advocate for them and and, and appreciate the work that you're doing. And so I'm, I'm honored to have you on the show, so thank you so much for sharing and, and your story and the work that you're doing. It's great. Thank you. It's been, it's been really fun. You ask great questions. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate that. My last question is where can people find you on the interwebs? Okay,
Bree Noble: 01:38:21 Find me a bree noble dot com or femusician dot com F as in female, E as in entrepreneur, musician dot com. They both go to the same place and you can check out those podcast episodes. Also, we talked a lot about women of substance, so that's at W O S radio dot com and you can find all the ways you can listen to the podcast on that website as well. We're on iTunes and Spotify and all the normal places.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:38:48 Love it. All the things, I mean your thousandth episode on one podcast and almost 200 on the other. Get it. I love it. Awesome. Well Bree, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure and absolute honor. Keep up the great work and we'll be talking to you soon.
Bree Noble: 01:39:09 Thank you. You too.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:39:13 Well that's it for this episode. If this is your first time listening, thank you so much for being here. I really hope you enjoyed the show. The Artful Entrepreneur podcast comes out bi-weekly and is available every other Thursday for your enjoyment and all links and show notes for this episode can be found at theartful dot co if you haven't yet, please subscribe to the show and leave a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you'd like to be a guest or know someone that would be a great fit, please go to the artful.co/guest and thanks again for listening. Until next time.
