La Bene Vita

Branding

I've been reading an e-book with author advice from one of Penelope's Facebook friends (The Writer's Adventure Guide: 12 Stages to Writing Your Book  . It's okay, as far as advice goes, but not particularly well-written or engaging, so I'm glad I snagged it when it was free. It reads like a giant checklist. I will admit that I agree with the section about branding, and it got me thinking about my brand. I'm doing a great job of branding myself as a musician, educator, kid-friendly personality, and entrepreneur. I'm not sure how "writer" will fit into the mix, unless I'm sticking to the existing brand, which means I can write about music, education, kid-friendly stuff, or small business. And everything I've read (and agree with) about launching a writing career (read: writing "business") suggests you should find a niche and stick to it. You want to build a reader base who loves not only your books, but you, the author. They love you when they come to expect certain things of you. Since I already have a brand that I've worked hard to cultivate, it makes sense that I should stick to that brand, if I'm going to use my stage name as my pen name. And it makes sense to use my stage name as my pen name, because I've already worked so hard to cultivate the brand. Why start from scratch?

I'm mulling all that over. I need to evaluate the projects in the pipeline and see where they fit the brand. If they don't, they're out (or, saved for a different brand - i.e., a different pen name - though "out" is more likely, since I doubt I have the energy to brand two different pen names.)

Whatever I decide about writing, I need to keep working on the existing brand to build the music school business. It's funny, but when I petitioned to get support for the Chase grant, my Facebook fans, Klout score, and Twitter followers unexpectedly skyrocketed. The "votes" campaign took a lot of energy on my part, and I probably rubbed some people the wrong way with my begging. It's such a fine balance, branding.

Meanwhile, our student count at MTMS   SUCKS, our cash flow SUCKS, and we owe a shitload of quarterly taxes that date back to our initial volume drop in April and May. I thought we were out of the woods on the spring exodus, but I forgot about accumulated taxes. Stupid taxes. Luckily, I have a flexible line of credit, because I'm going to need to borrow to get through this month. So here's hoping we're out of the woods until next April, and that I can come up with a game plan to anticipate this problem NEXT April before it happens. Because if this is a permanent we've-passed-the-honeymoon-phase slump, and not just a spring-and-summer-in-the-music-lessons-industry slump, then I may have a serious problem.

September will tell us whether we're opening campus #2 or struggling to pay the bills in campus #1 next fall.

All of that makes it hard to think about a writing career. Not that I'm supposed to be thinking of a writing career. I'm supposed to be waiting until "retirement" to do that. But I don't like that plan, because when you stop doing something, you lose the skill. If I stop writing, I'll have to spend time building up the skill set again before I could do anything useful with it. I'd like to be practicing now. I stopped playing six days a week at Potbelly, and now my music performance set list has decreased from probably 20 hours of music to maybe 5 hours of music, and my fingers hurt if I play two days in a row. It takes practice, and so does writing.

I never thought I'd ever say this in the summer, but c'mon, September. I need to know where you're taking me.