37: A Classical Musician is a Company of One
I was talking to someone the other day that said each classical musician is a company of one and they don't often realize that yet. Do you think that's a good analogy?
Yeah. I mean, it's like, they're-- they're ugly words in our in our culture: corporation, business, money, all these different things are like, "Ooo scary." But we need to learn that money is just a personification, in this reality, of value. If you do something that's valuable to someone else, you should obtain money for it. And so businesses make money, corporations make money, individuals make money. And when-- when you, kind of, just like, we-- we build these negative stigmas around business often for good reasons, because of things that have been done in the past, but you have to realize that business itself isn't bad. Just like power itself isn't bad. It's how you use it and what you use it for.
And that's the key distinction. So if your goal is to make beautiful music for the world, your business, that is your business, and you should be paid for your business. And there's no shame in asking for that, especially when you take tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to get an education. You deserve, you deserve to be paid.