Episode 030 – Andrea Miller on Vision and FOMO
Transcript
Hey, everyone! I’m back!
It’s been quite the adventure since my last episode. I moved into a new house, welcomed a kid into the world, and learned a thing or two about coffee. Not because the sleep-deprivation that comes with having a newborn requires a lot of coffee, although it does, but I learned about coffee because I became the general manager of a coffee shop for most of 2019. The entrepreneur in me can never pass up the opportunity to learn a new business, and this shop needed someone to build and implement systems, which is totally my jam.
So that’s where I’ve been, but we’re not here to talk about that. I want to talk about where we’re going.
I’ve had the privilege of talking to a lot of you on social media the last few months and the topic of vision keeps coming.
What are we doing… Why are we doing it… How are we doing it…
I’ve been self-employed in some capacity since I was 15, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that time spent developing a vision is time well spent.
I see it in clients, too. The clearer their vision, the better the results.
So in honor of relaunching the podcast, I’m doing a solo episode to share some questions I’ve thought about and continue to think about to craft a vision for my business.
Maybe they’ll help you develop a motivating vision for your studio, too!
Now, there are a lot of angles we could take here, but since teaching music is such a highly relational business, we’re going to look at our businesses from the perspective of people who interact with our studios.
I’ve got three categories of people, and some questions to ponder in each category.
You’ll be able to find a printable version of these questions here:
Go ahead and pause the podcast as you take some time to think about these questions.
These questions are all about imagining what could be.
To me, having a sense of vision, means having of sense of where I want to end up and using that to guide my path today. The point may be fuzzy at first, but I’ve always got my eye on that point off in the distance and, over time, it comes into focus.
Now, vision has a nemesis. It’s called FOMO.
Yes, my friends, FOMO. The fear of missing out. You’ve probably met.
FOMO pops up along the way and tells us that the direction we chose – that we were perfectly happy with before – is no good and we should instead chase after this other thing. #shinyobjectsyndrom anyone?
FOMO also tells us to look at what everyone else is doing to determine what we should be doing.
Worst of all, FOMO makes it impossible to be content because there will always be more paths to take than we have time.
While preparing this podcast, I was in an epic struggle with FOMO. After an hour of writing down thoughts and ideas, my podcast outline had expanded to about 15 episodes worth of content and I didn’t want to cut ANY of it. You know…because they’re ideas! Good ones!
That was FOMO talking. Clearly, it was time to revisit my vision and goal for this episode and reign it back in.
Over the next few weeks, the podcast will be all about building a sustainable studio. You’ll hear the stories of several music studio owners who have developed different business models for their teaching studio.
As you listen to these episodes, try to keep your OWN vision in mind. Just because one teacher is killing it with group lessons does NOT mean that you should also be teaching group lessons. The important thing is to identify what YOUR goals and priorities are, and then find a way to make YOUR vision sustainable.
I hope today’s exercise has been helpful.
If you want to do more visioning for your studio and learn how I make that grand vision into something tangible, I’m going to be holding some live calls on this very topic in the coming weeks. Follow Music Studio Startup on Instagram or Facebook to get all the details.
Resources
Visioning Questions
Connect with Andrea
Website: https://musicstudiostartup.com/