Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#300: Nick Petrella & Andy Heise - 200th Episode!
This week on the podcast is our 200th episode! To mark the occasion, we (Nick and Andy) interview each other and reminisce about a variety of topics from how we started the podcast to our personal answers to the final three questions we ask all of our guests. We hope you'll join us! https://www.artsentrepreneurshippodcast.com/
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heis and Nick Petrella.
Speaker 2:Welcome podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise.
Speaker 3:And I'm Nick Petrella. Since this will air as our 200th episode, Andy and I thought we'd do something a little bit different Interview each other, talk with each other. What else, Andy?
Speaker 2:Look at each other Awkward silence. No, we, you know, oftentimes on this podcast. The whole purpose we started this podcast was to interview and learn from practicing artists. Obviously we Nick and I we both work in this area and teach students in this area, and so we thought maybe we'd flip the script a little bit and ask each other some questions about our own perspectives on arts entrepreneurship or how we approach arts entrepreneurship, and a little bit more about the podcast and why we started the podcast, what we hope you get out of the podcast as listeners, and maybe some future ideas for where we're going with this. I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's great. And before we begin, I just like to say the same thing that I say off mic before each recording be prepared to be underwhelmed.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yes, you know that brings up an interesting point, nick is that before each podcast episode, you and I do a lot of work to understand who our guest is. We learn about them, we read about them, we listen to interviews with them and then we prepare our questions ahead of time for that interview. Right, we have not done that today.
Speaker 3:No, we have not. This is what's the word Different.
Speaker 2:Improvisational. Oh yeah, yeah, a little musical for me Spontaneous, spontaneous. Yeah, we're going to riff.
Speaker 3:Well, I know you fairly well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we'll be okay. Uh, so bear with us listeners. I hope, I hope, you hope you get something out of this.
Speaker 3:So where do you think arts entrepreneurship is going from, Cause it's relatively new, especially as a discipline? Where do you think it's going to be in the next five years?
Speaker 2:Arts entrepreneurship in the next five years. Well, I can I? I will answer that by saying I hope it doesn't exist. I hope arts entrepreneurship as a discipline is not its own unique thing but rather just an intrinsic part of what we do in arts education, in arts programming, in, and, more broadly than that, just general self-employment and business skills that people need in order to do the things they want to do and make a living at the same time, put gas in their tank and pay their rent, and so I hope it jobs me and you who teach these specific classes. I hope we're just kind of absorbed into the whole process, the whole system, and it becomes sort of just a built-in aspect that every student in the arts gets.
Speaker 2:My know my mentor, sharon Alpe, who I worked with at Millikan University I first had her as a professor and then later worked with her professionally in the Center for Entrepreneurship at Millikan. Her perspective on entrepreneurship was entrepreneurship's entrepreneurship. Look, we're talking social entrepreneurship. We talk about arts entrepreneurship. We talk about self-employment. We talk about all of these different sort of entrepreneurship's entrepreneurship. Look, we're talking social entrepreneurship. We talk about arts entrepreneurship. We talk about self-employment. We talk about all of these different sort of flavors of entrepreneurship, but at the core of it, the thinking, reasoning and acting that are necessary for creating something new and different that didn't exist before, is the same similar, has similarities in every context, and I think that's where we need to start.
Speaker 2:Okay, great um do you want to answer that question?
Speaker 3:I don't know well, I mean, yeah, yeah, for sure, I do want to, I do want to answer it. So where it's going to be in five years, I think? First of all, without getting too academic, because you know, and I think we're going to get into why we started this podcast in the first place, it's not solely academic just because we happen to be working in academia, right now, oh, 100%, we don't have right.
Speaker 2:Most, and actually most most of it happens outside of academia right, exactly. We know yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3:So where do I think? I think awareness is key and I think it will continue to grow. I don't think it's going to be. There is going to be an academic portion of it research, case studies, different things but we need to develop students and young professionals and even high school students and people who are just doing side hustles. They can do this. So we want to be able to inspire them and to you know for what we're doing here through these interviews. You know people like me are doing stuff like I want to do, and so we can glean from that. But we have to be able to actually do it. We just can't talk about it and so maybe when we're coming up with our assignments or if we're coaching, I do some things in the entrepreneurship center.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We need to make sure that it's a practice. I mean, you know, you know how you'd feel if, if it was your, your your pilot's first flight right. Or you know, this is your first operation as a doctor. So the more we can do, the more things that we can get out there and do it's. You build that confidence, you build that experience, you start to see patterns and get better at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the confidence piece I think is so critical that's what I hear from most of my students and people I work with is like I now, if and when I decide to do some this thing, I now have the confidence that I'll be able to actually get started on it yeah, you know, too often with artists they they take their art.
Speaker 3:I mean, of course it's personal because it's their art. But you know, if you're going to do anything in sales, you better get used to the word no and maybe infer it as not at this time. But I think a lot of artists, no matter what they do, they just say, oh, they don't like me or they don't see a use for this. And well, could be true, but maybe it's not at this time or maybe that there's another need down the road. So you just got to be able to brush that off and that's where that confidence comes in. Sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Confidence and resilience as well, yeah, yeah. So going back to Nick, when we first started this podcast, I remember you coming in my office. Do you remember this conversation? Oh, yeah, yeah, what do you? How do you remember this conversation about getting started with this podcast?
Speaker 3:So we had talked together a couple years it might have been three years and I remember walking into your office and saying you know what? We could write a book, right.
Speaker 2:We had been kicking that around yeah.
Speaker 3:Exactly. I was, like you know, been there done that? Why don't we do a podcast? Exactly, it's like I, you know been there done that. Why don't we do a podcast? So it's timely. Uh, you know, weekly podcasts just share others, uh, ideas, concepts others have of successful people and we talk about what success means as inspirational and how others can learn as vicariously through the paths that everyone takes. There's no one right path. So that's how I remembered and then just you said, yeah, let's do it. And then me walking out and at home that night I looked for artsentrepreneurshipcom, I think, and I think that what was taken at the time I hadn't looked in four or five years. And then Arts Entrepreneursurship and Leadership podcast was available. So got it and we were off and running.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do you remember it? Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I've been an avid podcast listener for a very long time and so I had always wanted to kind of get into the podcasting game and this was like, it was just like very, not serendipitous, but the timing was right. And, speaking of timing, we had those early conversations like at the end of probably 2019, right, so probably like late 2019. And then we were really gearing up, getting everything ready to go and we actually recorded our first interview Pilot, yeah In. Was it February of 2020? I think so. Yeah, february.
Speaker 2:March, something like that, and then, of course, the pandemic hit. Yeah, and so that you know, and luckily so, we did kind of hit pause. We didn't like immediately take off there, right, we had there were a few months, I don't think. We released our first, had our first release until maybe October of 2020. Yeah, Because we were just kind of everybody was figuring out what's happening in the world, mm-hmm and. But it worked out for us, right, because the classes we were teaching, the things we were doing, how do you bring those stories into the classroom when you can't bring people into the classroom anymore? Right, exactly, pursue and plug right into our, our classes. As everyone was flipping to online, um provided us an asynchronous format that students could could get some of the same content and experiences that we we would get in an in-person class um, now just on their own time and directly into their ears.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think, anecdotally, what we're doing is working, but we don't publicly announce our numbers, but the numbers are good. We're in as of what last month. We're in 89. We have streams or downloads in 89 countries, and it's fun when. So we're a sponsor for art without limits and we're going to be sponsoring some things that you're doing. Yeah, and when people you know how did you hear about this organization, this event, and it's nice when people check the podcast? Yeah, absolutely so. And hearing from faculty who are using these, as you know, mini case studies? Absolutely, and you know asking questions about it. So there is an impact. Be nice to know exactly how much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'd love to hear from you, the listeners, if you've listened to an episode and it had a significant impact, or maybe if you are using these in your classrooms or programs or whatever in some sort of regular format, please let us know. We love those anecdotes. It also allows us to go after some sponsors that allow us to cover our expenses for this podcast, right? Exactly, sponsors that allow us to cover our expenses for this podcast, right?
Speaker 2:Exactly In case you didn't know, nick and I are not currently sitting on the beach drinking pina coladas, collecting our royalty checks from our arts entrepreneurship podcast. That's right. That's after this airs. That'll probably be next week. Yeah, sitting in our cozy offices in Cleveland and Kansas city recording, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:So when I look back and and see that we've released, you know, 200 episodes and it's it's first of all, elephant in the room our 200th episode is actually episode number 300. And why is that and why is that? Well, again, remember I said I was an avid podcast listener and one of my favorite podcasts at that time, and still, is this American Life. And they numbered their episodes by season. So at the time when we started the podcast, I was like, oh well, maybe we'll do seasons or something like that, I don't know. So I started with one and then zero zero, or one zero one, so that would be season one, episode one, and then episode two would be one zero, two, one zero three, so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:Well, as it's turned out, we're not really episodic, we're more serial. Right, we just kind of keep going away. Or are we episodic and not? See? I don't, I can't remember. We are serial, it just keeps going Right, going right. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, yeah, um, and so the numbering actually started at 100 and we just kept going because otherwise we'd have to go back and change all that stuff and that would be a real bummer.
Speaker 2:Each week it would be a bigger bummer every, every new episode we release exactly, so gets harder and harder to turn back.
Speaker 3:Well, you asked. You said how do we start? I'm thinking I don't know, just go with one. And then you had a reason. I was like, okay, that's fine.
Speaker 2:That's mature, Exactly yeah whatever, I remember lobbying pretty hard for that. I think, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well congratulations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here we are, episode number 200. Episode. Yeah, here we are Episode number 200. Episode number 300, which is our 200th episode. It's kind of like when you order checks, you don't ever start at 001. You start at anyways. So there's a lesson in there for somebody wanting to start a podcast. That's right. There's a personal finance lesson in there. Next time you order your, when you order your first checkbook, do like we did for the podcast and start with 100.
Speaker 3:That's it bid for the podcast and start with 100. That's it. Well, it's funny and you were talking about two different people, two different ideas. What's it like working with another person?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I tell, when people that listen to the podcast and say, man, you guys have been doing this for a while, how do you do that? I'd love to start a podcast. How should I do that? How should I approach it, because you guys have done it for so long, I said, well, the first thing I would do is get a partner. The partner and again, remember, partners are equal assets at the table, right? So, as we'll talk about here, we have you and I, nick, have complimentary skills, which is what makes this work.
Speaker 2:Um and so so I always tell people get a partner and then come up with a system, a format that you can use. Whether or not it's going to work, I don't know, like you don't know until you've done a few right. I mean my editing processes and our questions and like our whole process has evolved over time. But we've got it to a point where it's pretty like, hey, we have an interview coming up in a couple of weeks, okay. Then we just like, go right, it's pretty formulaic at this point, hopefully not in a bad way.
Speaker 3:Oh no, Makes it much easier. Expectations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because kids teaching and everything else right. We're much easier Expectations and we have built accountability and rapport with each other over time and we know that on Monday morning there's going to be a new episode of the podcast.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and that consistency, and it's really a couple things Did you want to finish?
Speaker 2:Am I forgetting something? No, no, I just didn't want to interrupt with that.
Speaker 3:So what's the best way to say this? So we are. It's one you're kind of like. Probably what I am like to you is a workout partner. There are probably days that you're busy, you don't want to do it, you have a young family and vice versa, so there's that. So I don't want to let you down, you don't want to let me down, and then we have people listening to us, okay. So there's that. Anybody looking to work with another person and this is kind of how I've approached it you have to find, first of all, sets are totally different, and I think that's where the complimentary interaction comes from. Yeah, of things, financials, we're pretty have a similar approach, and so I think that has also helped quite a bit.
Speaker 2:Totally, yeah, no, I love what you said there. Find a good human being, which we've heard from every single interviewee that we've had on the podcast. Right, be a good person. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Complementary skillset. And what was the third one?
Speaker 3:Same vision. Have Same vision, have a shared vision. Have a shared vision. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And again, that comes from working together.
Speaker 2:Like you're not going to just oh yeah. You're not going to find a good partner just like walking up and down the street saying, hey, you want to do this, you want to do this Like a good partner. For the thing you want to do is probably somebody you already know or somebody you will meet and work with in some other capacity. Yeah, and then by working with them, you'll uncover some other opportunity that you could both pursue together. Right, it takes time yeah, I mean we.
Speaker 3:So we had taught for three years, right?
Speaker 1:were there any surprises.
Speaker 3:Am I doing anything differently than for sure?
Speaker 2:yeah and I remember the first again sitting here and in my office. I remember the first Again sitting here in my office. I remember the first meeting that you and I had. I had just come to Kansas City and Sabrina had said you gotta meet. Nick, you gotta meet Nick, and that was so. There's a first meeting for everyone, right? That's right. So you don't know, we didn't know at that time where that would go, or.
Speaker 3:No, I think that's good. I think there's a lot of good advice in there and and what's the quote? If you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, get a partner yeah absolutely, yeah, you know, and uh, how many episodes is that? So that's almost four years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah that's fairly far in podcast time it's.
Speaker 3:It's almost exactly four years uh, today, pretty much yeah yeah, as of the recording, yeah, I mean, what's the stats? I mean how the podcast over 50 of podcasts ever, yeah, lasted only a couple episodes, two episodes or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I remember we pulled a bunch of that for a conference.
Speaker 3:We presented that.
Speaker 2:So it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It takes time to build the working relationship and the systems and processes that work for you, right? Well, nick, before we lose all of our listeners, I think we should just wrap this up, and I think we'll wrap it up the same way we always do. And so we've reached the point of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions, and the first question is what advice would you give to others wanting to become an art entrepreneur?
Speaker 3:I think the best thing to do is literally do it right. So get out there and get that experience. Find people or mentors who will tell you the truth about whatever you're doing, not just what you want to hear. It may be painful, but it's going to help you in the long run. And don't just listen to one person. You can triangulate listen to many different people and then do your art. Do what you feel you want to do, and the market will guide you along the way. It will let you know if what you're doing is if there's value in it. There's. No, it's no different. If it's a performance or, say, designs, things that I've done, you know, if things start to sell, you'll know that you have something there that's that's of value. So that's that. So that's that's what I would, that's what I would suggest. How about you? What advice would you give to others wanting to become an arts entrepreneur in your art form?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I was going to say the exact same thing again. Probably a result of us working together for so long is that you just have to get started. You don't know anything for sure until you try it or test it right. And you don't know and this is something that you've talked about before too, nick is you don't know what you don't know, and the only way to find that out is to actually take a step, take another step, take another step and then, all of a sudden, you discover something you didn't know existed before, uh, which could actually be the, the real opportunity or the real thing, that, that that you kind of want to sink your teeth in, or not. Maybe you do that a thousand times and it's just kind of a iterative process, uh. So, yeah, getting getting started, uh, is absolutely, um, the most important, important piece of advice I would have.
Speaker 2:And here's the thing Getting started doesn't mean you have to launch the full vision of whatever it is you're doing.
Speaker 2:So you tell some people, well, you need to just get started, and then they think, okay, well, that'll take me about five years to get to that point.
Speaker 2:No, like, think about it as in, like, as soon as we're done with this conversation, what are you going to walk out the door and do? That's going to years to get to that point. No, like, think about it as in like, as soon as we're done with this conversation, what are you going to walk out the door and do? That's going to help you get to that vision of five years, and it's not easy to do. Again, oftentimes I think we talk about entrepreneurship as building this thing like this thing that's other and bigger and different than ourselves, when, in actuality, in order to get started, we and bigger and different than ourselves. When, in actuality, in order to get started, we are that thing that we're building and so taking that approach to it to get started, I think, makes it both feasible to do as well as gives you some proof of concept, some information, more information that you can use going forward.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's great. Well, let's do this. Let me ask you the second question so you get an opportunity to answer first, because it sounds like we had a very similar answer for the first one. So, andy, what can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Speaker 2:accessibility of the arts. You know this is something that I I think about my own personal experiences, because that's that's what I have, that's who I am Growing up in, jacksonville, illinois, small town in central Illinois. It's not small, I mean relatively it's pretty big compared to the other farming towns and things, but about 20,000 people. You know the arts were existed. I remember going to see the Jacksonville symphony orchestra at Annie Myrna chapel at Illinois college, right in the middle of town, you know, probably once a year growing up, while I was in elementary school, you know, beyond that, like there was an art department in my high school but I was again. I was in band and orchestra and I think for me what made music accessible was I grew up in the church, so seeing church musicians it turns out one of the musicians in the church, violinist, taught orchestra at the elementary schools, so kind of already had that connection which again probably helped with the confidence to take that leap of of going and taking lessons, um with them and um. So yeah, I think it's that exposure at an early age that makes it accessible. Uh, so how? Any any ways that we can do that. You know, I think you know some of the and so. So, thinking about how that influences my work and what I do, a couple of the initiatives that I'm working on right now that that'll be in the spring.
Speaker 2:Well, last year we launched a conference called the scale conference S C A L E. Last year we launched a conference called the SCALE Conference S-C-A-L-E. Not that the world needs another acronym, but it stands for Student, creatives and Artists, learning, entrepreneurship, scale, scale Conference. This is building off of an existing previously well, it still exists, but it was a conference called the Self-Employment in the Arts took place in Chicago. Kind of offering. That conference during the pandemic and a couple of colleagues and I said well, we, somebody should really bring this back Like this was a really transformative experience for students.
Speaker 2:Again, that exposure to these topics and entrepreneurship, innovation for artists that maybe don't have it. They don't have it in their curriculum, they don't have time in their in their programs to take these types of classes, but they know it's important and they think it's something they want to know. They don't have it in their curriculum, they don't have time in their programs to take these types of classes, but they know it's important and they think it's something they want to know. So how can we make that information, that experience, that practice accessible to them? Well, let's do a conference on, like a Friday afternoon and a Saturday. We'll invite people from the region to come, schools from the region to come, students can come, region to come, schools from the region to come, students can come.
Speaker 2:It's a two-day, day-and-a-half conference where they learn both sort of some inspirational stories, kind of some of the things we talk about on this podcast, but also some very practical and tactical things as well. So that's the SCALE conference that's going to happen February 28th and March 1st here in Kansas City in 2025. Simultaneously, this is maybe more exposure, accessibility on like, how do we get this sort of information to people who have influence over students and that sort of thing working on the faculty side, administrators side of things in higher ed. At the same time, we'll be doing the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education Conference, the SAEE conference here in higher ed. At the same time we'll be doing the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education Conference, the SAEE conference here in Kansas City, and those two things will be running simultaneously. So the idea is that students can bring their faculty members and faculty members can bring their students and it'll be a great experience for everybody.
Speaker 3:No, that's a good idea and it leverages one and the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure so you have them both. You know, hotels, shared resources, exactly shared resources shared experiences, like if you bring, if I'm a faculty member and I bring my students, like that's going to be a shared experience that we have and we can build on um throughout our classes and throughout whatever um. Oh yeah. No, that's great. So I'm really looking forward to those two events, again with, with the hope that this spreading the accessibility of this type of information and this type of programming more broadly. How? About you It'll help, yeah, so go ahead.
Speaker 2:How do we make the arts more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Speaker 3:I think that too often people in the arts were so busy working in whatever we're doing that we don't take time to work on what we are doing and to help grow the ecosystem. And the one thing that I decided to do is host events kind of like what you're doing. And we created this event. It's at Kent State and it did exist, but very few people had gone to it. It's a couple dozen people. But then we opened it up and started advertising.
Speaker 3:So Art Without Limits, we bring it's kind of like an in-person version of the podcast in a way. So a whole day of speakers at a variety of different fields and just through donating time, our talents, whatever our resources might be, some people contribute money money, of course, the university puts in some things. This past was just last month. We had 1,001, 1,090 people attend this and just what it's like 677 high school students showed up. So there is a need. If anybody's listening to this, I'd be happy to help you do this or tell you what we did and how I think it worked, because that's what we need to do to ensure the arts are more accessible, and it's so much fun to see young artists or young musicians asking questions, interacting. How do I get to do this? I see you're traveling around the world, or I see you're doing this. How did you get this commission? That's huge and I don't know of anything that's out there like that.
Speaker 3:Certainly not in that scope, sure and yeah, so we're going to try and do even more next year. Our goal is to hit 1500, nice.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that inspiration piece. I think think sort of both of both of what we said. Was that inspiration Absolutely Inspiring, that vision, like I didn't know you could do that, I didn't know that existed, oh exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're making a living doing what I like, right? I didn't know that because I only went to school to be whatever Sure absolutely Right, and everybody around me doesn't know that that exists either.
Speaker 2:So therefore they're like okay, sure, they're not much support in that Exactly, but maybe hopefully they're at least a little bit supportive and not naysayers, but nonetheless they don't have that experience either. So you have to find that experience.
Speaker 3:They're going to go back to their respective towns with that confidence Exactly. Wait a minute, I can do this right. I'll never forget because when I you know, growing up in a steel mill town just north of Pittsburgh many years ago and having people laughing at me, how are you going to? You're not going to make a living doing this, playing drums, being musicians who's going to pay you? Well, it turns out that if you're decent at anything, money will follow. That's not why you do it. No one goes into music to make money right, or any of the arts right. You have the starving artists, but getting that confidence, interacting and, let's not forget, building that network hugely important.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, and I'm thinking about both of our responses to this. And it was really in the creating of new products and services within the context of the organizations that we operate in that people are like oh, you teach entrepreneurship, so you must be an avid entrepreneur. I was like, well, not necessarily, but let me tell you what I do do. And I think it was Joe. I was talking to Joe Parisi the other day from UMKC and he said well, I'm an academic entrepreneur. I was like, oh, I like that phrase. So creating new programs, structures, whatever within an existing organization, sort of like the entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship mindset oh so an entrepreneur, so an entrepreneur within an academic institution, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, all right. Well, lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've been given?
Speaker 3:what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've been given. You know, I I keep coming back to you. Just got to get up and do it. So when I was a little kid, my father would always say if we were selling something for school or whatever and we're talking like eight years old or whatever get up there and talk, talk with the adults. What's the worst thing that's going to happen? If they tell you no, well, you can ask again later or you just go find something else. And so that, I think, is the most important thing Just go out there, do it and find a way, focus on what you want. And then the other thing is understand that opportunity rarely comes at an opportune time. It's going to be work right time. It's going to be work Right. So if you know that going into it, I think that's going to help you contextualize what's presented to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did somebody give you that advice, or that's just you're tacking that on to number one.
Speaker 3:Well, my father gave me the first one. It was just like you got to go out there and do it, and then I kind of rambled there.
Speaker 2:No, it's all good. No, it's fine. It's fine, exactly it's fine.
Speaker 3:It's fine. So what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice anyone's ever given you?
Speaker 2:I think I've mentioned this in the podcast before, but my bass teacher, Diana Ray at Milliken University, pointed out to me that I make funny faces when I play the bass, so that was helpful.
Speaker 3:That wasn't just mean-spirited.
Speaker 2:When you talk about find mentors and people that are honest with you. You know this was this was the relationship that she and I had. I mean she, she could tell me, she could just tell me things and that's kind of how that was kind of her personality too.
Speaker 2:She just kind of like very direct Um. But my father also, uh said if you're going to do something, you might as well do it right. So I've taken that to heart in most things that I've done in my life. Similarly, along the same he also said. He also said there's a difference between tightening something and squeezing the shit out of it.
Speaker 3:That's good practical advice.
Speaker 2:Well, what I think it is is, you know, it's kind of like the. I have this graphic that I use and I'm sure you've seen it. It's not mine, it's like out there, right, it's like it's an invoice and it says invoice $1,000. And then it's itemized. It says, um, nuts and bolts or something like that, or equipment or supplies, or something that says $1. And then it says knowing which bolt to tighten $999. So I think, ultimately, what I'm saying is I think it comes back to that it's that time and expertise that it takes that you build. Anybody can tighten a nut, right, and you're like, oh, it's supposed to be tight, I'm just going to tighten it. But it's the knowledge, skills, abilities that you have and that you accumulate over time that allow you to know, a which bolt to tighten and, b how tight to tighten, it bolt to tighten and be how, how tight to tighten it.
Speaker 3:Well, Andy, I think we have enough stuff here to edit into a functioning podcast episode and I think it's a good idea. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's uh, it's fun to uh, like I said, flip the script and have conversations that we don't normally get to have because we're so focused on asking other people's these questions.
Speaker 3:That's right, that's right. Well, thanks so much and we'll see you soon, okay, thanks.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. If you like this podcast, please subscribe. Visit artsentrepreneurshippodcastcom to learn more about our guest and how you can help support artists, the arts and this podcast.
