The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 135 Aubrey Bergauer: Changing the Narrative for the Performing Arts

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 135. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, violinist, teacher, and high performance coach for musicians, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. Welcome to this special live podcast recording of the Mind Over Finger podcast. We're here live in the Mind Over Finger community with the incredible Aubrey Bergauer, who's a pillar in arts leadership. Aubrey, on your website, you mentioned how classical music

Starting point is 00:00:56 is your vehicle to advance society and you're definitely making waves much needed waves i might add in the classical music world you're such a force in our industry and i've been so inspired by you and your message and the profound impact you're having for the future of classical music i've been looking forward and been so excited to have this discussion with you today so thank you so much for taking the time in your busy schedule to be with us oh you're welcome those are really kind words. It means a lot. So thank you for having me, Renee. I'm only going to say a couple of things before we dive in. First, to invite all of you who are here live with us, or those of you who are listening to the episode on the Mind Over Finger

Starting point is 00:01:42 podcast to visit Aubrey's website at aubreybergauer.com. And I'm going to have those links in the show notes, of course. And there you can read her astute and impactful blog and her articles also make sure you listen and subscribe to her podcast the offstage mic the business side of arts and culture where she aims to and i'm quoting shake up the old ways of arts management and compose a different tune and i definitely want to hear all about that aubrey what that looks like to compose a different tune in arts management in 2022 and the second and last thing is to invite everyone who's watching live to put in your questions in the comments and I'm going to pass them on to Aubrey as we go. Okay, enough introduction. Aubrey, I would like to start

Starting point is 00:02:35 with you the same way I start with all my guests on the podcast and I would love to hear your story in your own words. So can you please tell us about your journey, how it unfolded and how you got to where you are today? I grew up playing an instrument like so many of you watching and listening. And I was one of kind of those kids is what I normally say. I played in my, well, first high school band, private lessons, very dedicated. And then eventually when I was in eighth grade, the youth orchestra, I grew up in Houston. So, and I played the tuba, which I don't look like a tuba player, but girl on tuba was like breaking stereotypes, totally something that Now I look back and I'm like, yeah, yeah, that tracks.

Starting point is 00:03:20 So to a player, pretty into it. And in eighth grade, I won the audition for the Youth Orchestra by sophomore year of high school. So a couple of years later, they went through an executive director change and they introduced the new person to us before rehearsal one day, didn't say much like a sentence or less, but it was enough for me to really have that light bulb moment of, oh, there's a job managing all of this. that's the job I want. And so from that point on, I mean, I continue to be very serious about

Starting point is 00:03:52 my instrument concerto competition, you know, again, one of those kids and, uh, but knew when I was going to college that I wanted to go somewhere where I could double major in music performance as well as business. So went to Rice, did the double degree and first job out of college with Seattle Symphony and Fundraising. After a little while, the Seattle Opera called and said, come run our Young Patrons program. So I went to the Seattle Opera to do that. Started really growing that Young Patrons program. That's where I started putting into place a lot of the ideas that have really become known for now. So just testing on a small scale as that scope would allow. That was the same time when digital was really starting to come into the forefront.

Starting point is 00:04:38 So, you know, I was like a 26 year old person saying I got a new thing. It's called an iPhone. Let me run ads for this. Let's look at our mobile first website. Like those weren't words we used a lot in the mid 2000s. So through that, really became data-driven, became just really aware of how embracing trends and technology can help us as organizations, help elevate the brand. And so stayed there for several years doing all of that as that role really continued to grow and change. And then Owen was overseeing the subscription campaign at one point. So really, again, just got to do a whole lot of things there. went after that, stayed in Seattle, went to the Bumbersheet Music and Arts Festival, was the

Starting point is 00:05:26 number two there over all of revenues. And now I'm putting together, first hired on as marketing director and then promoted over development and marketing as well. So that was the next sort of milestone where I got to really start putting together ideas of how marketing and development work together and aren't necessarily pitted against each other, which can happen in our institutions. And I had seen it at the prior two places I had worked on both sides, on development and marketing side. And then 2014 is when I moved to the Bay Area and took a job at this little orchestra called the California Symphony. And, you know, I'd cut my teeth at these major institutions. And then this regional orchestra called and said, we really want to do some things

Starting point is 00:06:12 differently. We hear you might be moving here. Some personal things going on that I had put that out in the ether that I wanted to move to San Francisco. And there was enough right about the organization that I thought I can raise money for this. And also important to us that the board said, no, we know we need to do it differently. They were in total financial crisis. It was a turnaround situation. And I now say the silver lining of crisis is that there tends to be more of an appetite for change because we know that pain is so much that we're ready to take a risk that maybe we wouldn't take a risk otherwise if things were comfortable so okay 2014 is where things really started changing for me here we go I get the seniority I had wanted and I decided that

Starting point is 00:06:58 I would make that organization my testing ground to really from the top as executive director over everything put together all of these different building blocks I had been building opinions on even since I was that little girl playing the tuba in the back of the orchestra and the end of the story is we doubled the audience nearly quadrupled the donor base I started blogging about it along the way and that started really gaining traction and national visibility for us so to bring us to the present I left that job in 2019 almost exactly three years ago now and I left because it was like the side hustle became the main hustle other organizations started reaching out, help us achieve the same kind of growth, help us look at audience development in

Starting point is 00:07:43 this new way that you have. And I thought, you know, I think the next move, instead of going right to run another orchestra again, will be to have this broader impact on the industry. So three years in, that's what I've been doing. And here we are. So that's the story. That's a great story. I love how all of these elements are coming together to create this perfect little magical sandbox where you could play and experiment and you said at the beginning that you you know it was kind of uh from an early age breaking the mold and it's perfect how it just happened that they needed something that was breaking the mold and something that was innovative and it's just so insightful to and interesting for me to see how all of these things came together and thanks

Starting point is 00:08:31 for sharing. And, you know, I, I'm curious to hear from you right now, as we are tentatively stepping out of the pandemic, what do you see as being the current reality of the classical music industry? Well, the current reality is not great. I will caveat this by saying, I believe that there is a better future for us. And that may be segues into some of the podcasts as well, but my own podcast but um but the but the bat we'll do bad news first and then end on a high note the bad news is audiences have not returned to pre-pandemic levels the national latest national statistic i heard was somewhere i think 65 to 70 percent of pre-pandemic audiences is where most organizations classical music organizations lie. And we know that on the whole pre-pandemic, we were already

Starting point is 00:09:31 seeing declines in audiences. The League of American Orchestras reported that at 2.8% decline a year pre-pandemic. This is pre-pandemic data. So the pandemic accelerated almost every trend imaginable, not just in classical music, but in the entire world we live in. And so that is true for us too. If the reality would beforehand was that audiences were on the decline, subscriptions on the decline, aging, all of that, the pandemic really thrust that forward. And so here we are. And it's funny, I did an exercise in, was it late 2020? I think it was late 2020, maybe early 21, I'm like still like kind of in the pre-vaccine in the, in the thick of quarantine. Still, I did this exercise doing this graph mapping out, okay, if we were declining at

Starting point is 00:10:21 2.8% a year and some experts had projected the acceleration of all trends would be 10 years. What if you mapped out that projection and that math at the time said that we would have like 56% of our audiences back or something like that. Well, now the reality is 65 to 70. So it wasn't as bleak as just a straight linear regression would have suggested, but that's the bad news. And also, I don't think we should have been surprised by that because we had that trend

Starting point is 00:10:53 in place already. Okay. Like I said, that's the bad news. The good news is that trends are reversible. And this is what almost all of my work and all of those different roles has shown. And I've been able to buck trends time and again. And whether that was bucking the trend, you know, back at Seattle Opera of no, we don't have to do print for everything. Yes, we can invest in this new digital format, which now we look at and we're like, duh. But back then it was this different thing. And, you know, oh, social media. I had to really convince people back then to launch the social media channels for that organization. you know things we just take for granted now okay fast forward focusing on retention that became very important especially at my work at the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival I really

Starting point is 00:11:39 doubled down on that at the California Symphony and now here we are and retention is like the word of the day we talk about getting our audiences back that's a different language to say we need to retain them so trends can be reversed is the point and that's the good news but trends are not reversed on their own. Trends are only reversed when there's some outside force helping that change happen. And so that is the change that now more and more I'm working with organizations to achieve. And I'm really going to invite the listeners to go and check out all of the amazing resources you have on your website. You did a really great profile on your work with the California Symphony that was showing some of the things you're talking about right now. And

Starting point is 00:12:29 it's great to hear from you that those trends are reversible. Yeah. I mean, the top, if anybody goes to my website, you want to like to see graphs and numbers, the most read, most read still to this day blog post I ever wrote was the long haul model on audience development, audience retention. And you can see the national stats compared to what we did at the California symphony. And to your point, it just, it shows, yes, those trends can be reversed. It's like nationwide, something's going down, we made it go up, you know? So I just believe in my heart of hearts that we can, we can definitely reverse the bad news. Yeah. And we want this to happen in the way that doesn't affect negatively the product, which is the quality of the musical

Starting point is 00:13:13 output, which sometimes we see they'll increase the number of concerts and reduce the number of rehearsals. And I think that that is not long-term thinking. Yeah, definitely. I think what's so interesting about my work is that the focus is not on changing the product. This is not, and I've had success with that approach. And so we tend, I'm painting with a very broad brush here, but we tend as an industry to over-focus on tinkering with the product as a potential solution to the challenges we face like you described it's you know adding more performances or uh or cutting rehearsals as a cost-saving measure or uh let's program movie concerts yeah exactly and so it's not that those things don't sell we know what does well at the box office

Starting point is 00:14:02 let's play some more Beethoven and Harry Potter and you know go right to the right to the bank on that but but what the problem is that that doesn't reverse the trends people come to those shows and then drop off again. And there's data after data mountains and data after data that shows this. So instead what I have really focused on is when we focused on audience retention, when we focus on changing the customer experience, let's make it less intimidating. Let's make it welcoming. Let's create a sense of belonging. When we do those things, when we focus on diversity and representation, like all of those things together, we start growing the audience and creating demand for this product and when we have that we are liberated in terms of our artistic

Starting point is 00:14:48 choices because we don't have to be so beholden to the Beethoven Brahms Harry Potter pops whatever so this is so important that repertoire alone is not the way forward we have also mountains of data suggesting that so I think it's so important that we to your point that you were making, hold our artistic integrity at the highest standard. And we can do both of those things simultaneously, growth and artistic excellence. Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to invite again, those of you watching us, if you want to put in your questions in the comment, I'll pass them to Aubrey. Aubrey, something I would really love to hear from you is your thoughts on what musicians can do now

Starting point is 00:15:35 to have a positive impact in their own musical communities and on the future of the music industry in general. Of course, everyone has a different experience and situation and I don't want to generalize, but I do think that in many cases

Starting point is 00:15:51 it can happen for us performers to feel at the mercy of the organizations we work for. We can feel limited in what we can do to impact vibrancy of our community, what we can concretely do to draw audiences in. We often feel powerless to move the needle in a truly significant way. And of course, a lot of our time is dedicated to hone in on our skills, to stay on top of the repertoire so we can do our part, the playing

Starting point is 00:16:24 at the highest level. So it's not as if we're just idling by and waiting for a paycheck, but I'm sure there are ways for us to be more engaged with how music is shared with the audience and how we can get this audience to come to us both for the projects we're hired for the orchestras and organization we work for both as freelancers or full-time players and also the projects that we put together so what advice do you have for us I love this question thank you for asking this question. I have three ideas, three pieces of advice. Everybody can take it or leave it as you'd like. So the first is social media. I don't know if that sounds silly or trite or not, but I'm going to give an analogy of a different business for this one. I've been super fascinated

Starting point is 00:17:18 by Peloton. So if you're a Peloton fan, you're probably like, yeah, if you're not, you're like, oh God, here we go. But what Peloton does very well that I want classical music to do better is they leverage their talent there for them. It's instructors for us. That would be our artists online incredibly well. So for example, at the end of classes, they're not saying follow Peloton on social media. They're saying, follow me. And they add their handle. And what that has done for Peloton is I forget the exact numbers the the the instructor talent Instagram accounts for example is I forget millions and millions combined there's like 50 instructors and combined you know all these millions of followers the brand account Peloton brand account

Starting point is 00:18:05 is like one-fifth one-fifth of that total following of everybody else and so these instructors they're not just saying in all their social media channels, all their Peloton stuff all the time, you know, they're doing, they're living their lives like the way any of us do on Instagram. They're working in the garden, they're cooking dinner there, you know, whatever their other hobbies are. And, um, it has added so much brand. I don't know, like rabid fandom, because we connect with people, humans connect with other humans more than we connect with a business or brand any day of the week. And so they've done this exceptionally well. And then I think of something like an orchestra or an opera company, or even a smaller ensemble and, or even solopreneurs,

Starting point is 00:18:55 so many musicians are solopreneurs or freelancers or whatever. You have so much power that the brand doesn't have. And I so badly want us to find a way to better harness this. So if you have any inclination to be active on social media, please, please, please do it. I know that's not for everyone, but if that is your inclination, don't hold back is what I'm trying to say. Okay. That's thing one piece of advice. Number two is auditions. So this goes back to diversity representation. And I really think our audition process has talked about change has, has ways that can change to be more equitable more fair the statistics for orchestras in America if you don't know are that two percent of professional musicians are black or brown and that's under indexing on the amount of

Starting point is 00:19:54 black and brown talent that's out there more than that is graduating from top music schools every year. More than that are taking auditions. But, you know, when things like when the screen comes down at the end, that's allowing a visual bias to creep in, whether we want to or not, it just happens. Again, we're humans. So we have to think about that. We need to consider, even if we're not going to have the argument over screen up or down, we need to consider who are we inviting to auditions. We invite people to auditions all the time. So let's be more intentional about who we inviting to come, things like that. So we need that kind of, that kind of change. When I'm talking about audition process, I'm very aware that I'm management talking about an artistic

Starting point is 00:20:37 issue. And so I don't want that to come from somebody like me. I want these changes to come from excellent artists who also see and have a better viewpoint than I do on how can we improve processes like audition process, tenure process, a whole nother category. We could talk about how do we make this more fair, more equitable? By doing that, that is a step that helps us become more representative of the community around us. So that's thing two. Thing three, I've now forgotten. Great. It was really good, I'm sure. This is why I edit that out. I did think of it, but go ahead. Okay. Let's hear it. Let's hear it. I was just going to say the third thing, this is sort of be involved. I was talking about retention and centering our customer. So be

Starting point is 00:21:29 involved in that. What does that mean? It means, and this is where you have to really evaluate how much time are you going to volunteer back to the organization? Or maybe organizations can come up with a pay structure for this, but things like, you know, when we need to call donors and say, thank you, the number one reason donors don't renew is they feel like they're not thanked enough. It was so funny to me. I just got to share this story at the California symphony. You know, I would call donors as executive director and thank them all the time. And they'd be like, oh yeah, great. Happy to support. Anytime I got musicians, board members too, but musicians especially to help call and thank donors or donors at a certain level that we really wanted to give

Starting point is 00:22:04 that extra special touch point. Oh my gosh, they could care less. They couldn't care less who I was, you know, they, they would get so excited. And then I kid you not, even one time it was thank you notes, not calls. Some orchestra members wrote some thank you notes. We gave them the stationery stamps talking points wrote these donor thank you letters I started getting thank you notes back at the office from the donor saying thank you notes and calls from the donor saying oh my gosh I got the best note from the violist oh my gosh not the next concert where you point them out to me you know it's just I was like okay hi I'm Aubrey hi you know but they didn't care about me so all to say you know things like that just again the power that artists have

Starting point is 00:22:49 is just so great. And I'm not endorsing free labor. Like I said, there could be a pay structure for this type of work, but I don't know. It's just so valuable is what I'm trying to say. It's that connection, this direct access to the musicians from the patron's perspective, and also giving a chance to the musicians to thank the patrons and the donors. yeah yeah it was interesting what you said about social media because one thing I see a lot around me and that I also feel at times is this fear of sharing that we might be you know we might feel like we're showing off for our colleagues so there is sometimes a certain reserve from musicians to share openly about their activities on social media but I think that you're right it is so

Starting point is 00:23:42 important someone who does this so well is Holly Mulcahy who was a guest on the podcast episode four where anytime she posts I want to fly to you know Kansas and go listen to her perform she she does this so brilliantly and she really is good at creating this connection between the music the musicians the location the coffee shop near the hall all of this is just so what you said it creates this energetic um you know vibrancy where people really feel like they're fans yes exactly and how and i agree i think holly does this brilliantly i think she's brilliant in so many ways and i mean how many people then go to a concert and want to see her they're not thinking about maestro necessarily they're not thinking about

Starting point is 00:24:33 the hall or whatever else we normally do in our brand marketing they're thinking i want to see her. And I want to, it's not just, I want to see her play. Like they're just interested in her as a person. And that's, as you said, that's exactly the connection. Yeah. Yeah. So that's going to be my challenge that I, I give all of us, if you're listening and you're a professional musician is how excited are you about your next concert and share about it on social media? What else do you see in terms of pitfalls? What do you commonly see out there and things that we could stop doing? We being musicians or we being institutions or all of the above? Yeah, maybe all of the above, both organizations and musicians. So some of these pitfalls that you

Starting point is 00:25:22 most commonly see in our industry. Let's think here. Well, this is a pitfall. I don't know if it's something we need to stop, but the pitfall is the lack of data. And it's not to say that the data isn't out there. So I guess, so there's nuance to this answer. There's a lot of, there's a lot of research out there. There's a lot of data we have as organizations, even small organizations have some sort of data, even if it's, you're so little, it's on a spreadsheet, like you've at least got patron records of some sort. So we're collectively, and this is not universally true, but collectively pretty bad at harnessing that data and this is what tends to happen is then we tend to blast everybody with every message come to the next concert come make a donation okay if

Starting point is 00:26:14 somebody's only been once and then it's been like several months since they came don't ask them for a donation that's not the right next step so it's things like that where we need to be that's using our data for segmentation is what i'm describing there's also data of um i don't know we we get so again painting with a broad brush but we get so concerned about what if we make some changes to the experience what if we what if we tell people they can have their phones on but don't take video like you know what's going to happen well our course and our core audience is going to leave and i don't mean to be controversial with phones on or off but i'm using it as an example to say that the core audience is not going to leave there by the time, because we can use data to

Starting point is 00:26:58 answer this. The data shows that once somebody is a renewing subscriber for three years or longer, those renewal rates are like 90% or higher. Once somebody is, but the, somebody who's a first time attendee, it's the opposite nine out of 10, 90% don't come back. So it's like, we're, we're overly concerned about the longtime loyal subscriber and yet we're like bleeding out new people and and yet here we are saying we need new audiences so when we look at a question again maybe this is i don't mean to be pick a controversial example like phones on or off but um but when we look at a question like that like let's look at the data who who are we alienating and what what can that cost us right now so um things like that are what i'm trying to say we can we can be better at data

Starting point is 00:27:45 trying to think if there are other pitfalls. I already blasting to everybody. I already said that overly communicating. I'll keep thinking that's a big one for me though, is just not letting, not having a culture of data always, or, or thinking about there's a bias about this, but where we overweight an anecdote over the numbers. Well, one donor is so cranky and Mr. so-and-so he said he's gonna stop giving if we do this okay if mr so-and-so is a mega mega major donor that's one thing because sadly the reality is we rely on those made overly rely on those major donors but if mr so-and-so is not that big of a donor don't overweight that story so much because it's one gift and i mean i give this example of the california symphony people say

Starting point is 00:28:35 I did not, the people complain about the changes you made. I had one super crank, this is a subscriber, not a donor, come up to me in the lobby, super cranky at a performance one day saying, if you tell people to clap when they like what they hear one more time. So there we go. Not phones, applause, when to applaud. We said, clap when you like what you hear. You tell people to applaud one more time.

Starting point is 00:28:59 I'm out of here. And you heard me say, we doubled our audience. and in my head, I'm like, what does the data show? What did the numbers show? We doubled our audience. I'll take that trade of losing one person any day of the week. So don't overweight the story is what I'm trying to hear. Go back to what are we seeing in our actual numbers here? So hopefully that helps a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. What are some of these things that you see that turn audience away after their first experience? Or, I mean, you talk about this so well on your website too. So again, if you're listening to this, go on Aubrey's website and read all of

Starting point is 00:29:34 these articles. But in a nutshell, some of these things that work really well and make it inviting for audiences. A lot of it I've learned is the words we use. So copy on our website, copy in the program book, even social media to a degree. We do a couple of things. We did this user experience research project at the California Symphony. The article on that is the Orchestra X project for anybody who wants to go find it on my website um what we found were things like audience feed newcomer audience feedback about like wow you've so much words on the page so many words on the page it's very hard to like parse that out they're like i remember them saying we did this research in 2016 and they this was pre-election they were like we're used to reading

Starting point is 00:30:22 140 characters about trump and hillary like and yet you've got paragraphs and paragraphs on your website. This is not a political statement. It's just what they were saying about like the bite size information they wanted. And, um, I remember thinking, right, right. Okay. Got it. Let's pare that down big time. Just keep the most interesting bits. Another thing is we learned from that same project that a lot of newcomers, um, have a real knowledge gap. So we, as the company would use words like well just think about the words on any program overture concerto full symphonic work overture maybe they didn't always know that meant you know probably like a 10-minute piece of music they didn't know that concerto they did not know that meant soloist with

Starting point is 00:31:14 the orchestra you know these words that we just use all the time when we know them they didn't know and it's because this stuff I has not taught in school anymore so today's and these were not super young. These were millennials and Gen Xers. So all the way up into their thirties and forties and just didn't, again, didn't know because it wasn't taught. So then some of them didn't even know all the names of the instruments in the orchestra. Like that for me was such a mind blowing moment. I can't remember not knowing the names in the orchestra of the names of all the instruments in the orchestra. And so they don't know that. So then they read a word like instrumentation now I'm thinking program book instrumentation two two two or what you know and

Starting point is 00:31:58 no way no way and so those things meant there was a disconnect and it meant they it translated to them to the emotions of they felt intimidated they felt unwelcome they didn't know the unspoken rules about when to applaud that's why we later changed it to just clap when you like what you here um they just didn't know and so because of that felt isolated and felt unwelcome and then the diversity piece definitely came up that i guess that this was 2016 this was long before the edi conversation at the forefront today and they were like wow i remember somebody saying for a place that prides itself on culture i look around and feels pretty uncultured yeah i thought well that cuts yeah so um anyways just so much we learned and so it's a real it's a knowledge gap

Starting point is 00:32:51 and it is our job as institutions I say now and I believe I had to change my own thinking on this to fill in that knowledge gap so that newcomers come and say this is a place where I am welcome no matter my knowledge or prior experience with this art form this is a place where I will learn something and come away knowing more than how I entered and not in a snooty way but in a way that people smart people want to learn so yeah um and then and then i will feel something too i will i will finish this ending also on good news which is when we talked about the music itself with these newcomers awe awe was the emotion they almost all were universally shared so it goes right back to the product is not the thing we need to be over tinkering with yeah it goes back

Starting point is 00:33:37 to the connection and understanding the person we're trying to connect with how it's going to be received by them and how it's going to make them feel. Yes. How it's going to make them feel a hundred percent. Yeah. I saw a post you, you put in recently about someone trying to navigate a website to buy some tickets and I've experienced the same thing. And I feel like that's another thing is how easy can we make it for audiences to find that information as you were saying but also you know buy a ticket and show up there I mean many things could be said about Jeff Bezos but the one click purchase is a brilliant move right that's right and there's research that backs this up too this is Zoe Chance at Yale she's at the Yale School of Management her research underscores

Starting point is 00:34:32 this she and she has said um in some of her work that she's published the number one indicator of a customer purchase decision is ease more than price we talk about prices a lot in classical music you're charging too much are we accessible more than price more than i forget what else what are other things we consider more than schedule more than um if it was a tangible thing more than color right more than all these other things ease is the number one indicator of patron behavior and the easier it is we make something to do the more likely people are to do it period and so yep one click purchase good so many times at orchestras we make it very challenging to select a seat figure oh god the newcomers back to that same research study at california symphony

Starting point is 00:35:19 where some of them were like i guess a is the first row i'm not totally sure and i was realizing right okay okay no judgment they haven't been to a theater a million times like the rest of us have I guess, I don't know, but you know, just things like that, where it's like, we don't make it very clear or very clear on the seat map that the stage is right in front of row A. You know, it just makes it difficult. And this particular example that you were citing that I posted about, it was a major, major institution. And my friend was like, I cannot buy the damn ticket on my phone. And I, I just think it's inexcusable in 2022. We're losing people. That's why it's inexcusable. we're losing people yeah I totally agree with you and I think also for us as musicians and

Starting point is 00:36:03 educators and parents and neighbors is how can we invest in I know you're big on the long-term effect so how can we nurture the future audiences and really bring our kids to concert and keep teaching young kids and make music really exciting for these younger generations yeah I think a few things I think so much of what we already said is true if if mom and dad feel welcome they can bring their younger ones with them I remember I've worked multiple places where there was a rule about who is old enough to come to a concert you know and it's like okay not every five-year-old acts the same first of all two can we let mom and dad have some discretion over this three um no we don't want anybody wailing or being just um you know so disruptive that it's a problem but

Starting point is 00:36:57 also this goes back to creating a place that's welcoming too and um I don't know I've been I can remember concerts where like we had a kid in the aisle conducting and I just I don't know you can decide wow that's so distracting and I can't believe they're doing that. Or you can say, Oh my gosh, that kid feels so welcome and comfortable here. And they're so absorbed in what we're doing. Like, I think that's magic in a bottle. So I know not everybody feels the same way, but it's really trying to challenge these mindsets we have about what's okay at a concert. I think it is okay. If a kid is like, this is what I want to do, you know? So yeah, Yeah, absolutely. Aubrey, thanks so much for this. I don't want to keep you here all day,

Starting point is 00:37:45 although I do want to keep you here all day. But how about a round of rapid fire questions before I let you go today? Let's do it. So what is a habit that you have that you think is in part responsible for your success? Discipline. I am very disciplined, meaning, you know, I talk about don't solicit somebody too soon for a donation. Let's segment our audience. Let's really cater to the customer, meaning like what is that first-timer experience? Like all of that is very disciplined. I guess I'll leave it at that. Discipline and iteration maybe would be the two things I say. That's not a very rapid answer. And checking your data. Checking the data, yeah. You know, what doubts or resistance have you had to face on this journey,

Starting point is 00:38:33 either internal or external? Well, talking about change always comes with resistance. In any context, change is hard and that's the nature of change. So just really having to prove again and again and again that these ideas have been vetted, tested, authenticated multiple times, multiple organizations um and then some of that's gender too being a being an ambitious woman who wants to run a major company there's there's definitely resistance to that so yeah in all of those ways some some resistance yeah how about you the skills that you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play their instruments everything we've talked about I mean just consider what is what is the work when you're not playing

Starting point is 00:39:32 what is the way you could like just think more about the audience as you're performing I mean I think growing up I was like this too like I performed because I took great enjoyment from it but and then so that's true for probably all of us but can we think beyond ourselves a little more as we're coming through the ranks growing up and just I think that helps start to give us this empathy that we need than going into a professional phase of our lives to make those audience connections. So I think that's what I'd recommend. I love that. What about a piece of advice that you received and you'd like to pass on to the listeners? I think a great piece of advice I've received is that the career path, this goes right on the heels of the resistance,

Starting point is 00:40:17 maybe the career path doesn't have to be quite so linear um I was very nervous originally to go to first to leave go from symphony to opera which is the end of the day we're selling tickets we're raising money orchestras play and both like I mean it's not that different but I was nervous about that and then nervous to go to a music festival and I've learned over the years oh and then go to a smaller regional orchestra but I've learned over the years no I feel so much more enriched in my experiences because I have all that. And it's given me so much more to bring to every job and client I work with going forward. So maybe this is discipline to a fault. I thought I had to be on the path and the path I had defined for myself was very narrow. And instead to break free of that

Starting point is 00:41:04 and say, no, no, no, no, no. There's a lot of different ways we can do this. And success can look a lot of different ways and true for performers as well. We don't have to all go in a job at a major symphony. That's just ridiculous. So, yeah. And if I expand on this a little bit and go back to what we were talking about earlier is how creative can we become in trying new things with our audience, with our programming, with how we achieve diversity, all of these things. Yeah. Pushing the envelope, breaking the mold. Love it. Yes. Finally, what is something that the listeners could do today to positively impact the future of the artistic and musical community? You've shared many good ones. Yeah, I think I would just reiterate, you know, if there's anything

Starting point is 00:41:56 I have said that has resonated, you know, follow that, you know, maybe that means, yeah, I'm going to put myself out there on social media a little more, or maybe it means, you know, next time the development team asks for some help with donors, I'm going to say yes to that or or maybe it's wow I serve on the players committee and I have thoughts on auditions like we need musicians to help advance those all of those things so I would say pick anything that I said today that felt um relevant and helpful to you and like take action on it I love this that's so great Aubrey I'm gonna put all of the information on how to find anything about you in the show notes, but is there anything that you want to share about maybe some upcoming

Starting point is 00:42:44 fun projects that you have? And I know that you occasionally have some online group courses. Yeah. Oh, you're so great setting me up to talk about all this. Yes. Please follow me online at Aubrey Bergauer on all the channels. I'm most active on Instagram and LinkedIn these days and the website, aubreybergauer.com. As we said before, I do offer, in addition to my consulting work with organizations, often virtual courses. I've got one going on right now. The wait list is now open if somebody is interested in doing that in the future. So yeah, please follow me in those places. I'm always putting out more content like this and would love to connect with you online. Yeah. I love that. You know, I think one of the things that I'm walking away

Starting point is 00:43:28 with is getting involved in, especially in the area of connecting, connecting with the audience, but also connecting with the management of any organization I'm involved with. Like, how can I contribute as well? And as you say, we're not trying here to provide free labor, but there are ways that we can do this in a way that is meaningful for us and will create, hopefully, a long-term, you know, positive impact. That's the goal. We can reverse the trends.

Starting point is 00:44:04 We can do it. Awesome. Aubrey, thank you so much for spending this time with us today. I really appreciate it. The pleasure is all mine. Thanks for having me. Thanks to everybody for watching. If you're watching live, for listening, if you're listening later, it's a good day. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks, Aubrey.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 135 Aubrey Bergauer: Changing the Narrative for the Performing Arts

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