Small But Might Episode 17: Nicole Colbeck on helping artists make space in their businesses for creativity

Nicole Colbeck’s decades-long journey in the music industry has led her from promotion to production and from planning to management. For over a decade, Nicole has used this experience in her business, Little Acorn Creative Coaching, to assist artists with their business strategy, individual projects and to help them find space in their businesses to breathe and let their creativity flow. 

If you would like to learn more about the interesting world of music management, production and coaching, listen to Nicole’s fascinating journey. You can learn more about Nicole on her website, as well as on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Full episode transcript:

Karen Wilson: Hello, and welcome to the Small But Mighty Biz Stories podcast. I'm really excited to have the lovely and talented Nicole Colbeck on to share her business journey in the music world of Ottawa and beyond. Welcome, Nicole, tell us a little about you and Little Acorn.

Nicole Colbeck: Thanks, Karen. I'm so excited that we get to chat today about Little Acorn. Little Acorn started about 10, 11 years ago on the heels of having worked in the music industry through festivals and conferences, and large events, and then leaving that for a little while. Then I befriended a musician that I knew before, we clicked, and he did a house concert at my house.

On that visit, we started talking and we just became friends, and over the following year, we would talk frequently and I would be nothing if not opinionated about what he should do next in his career because he would ask me, as well, and all of this-- Anyway, he would say, "You know you're my manager. You know you're my manager, right?" And I'd be, "Oh no, I'm not your manager," but then that's what became our relationship, and I became his manager.

That was 10 years ago and that's still what I do today with a bit of a pivot. I now do creative coaching, as well, so that's what Little Acorn is. It's primarily creative coaching, but also, some music management.

Karen: You mentioned that you'd had interactions in the music industry prior to forming Little Acorn. Tell me about that, where did you get started?

Nicole: Many years ago, about the mid-'90s, I was in a choir and the co-director, at the time, and I, through various happenings, started a small production company called Pathway Sound Productions. It did not do well. We were working primarily in the Christian music industry, and it was at the time when Christian broadcasting in Canada was illegal. We were part of turning that around at the time, so that was an interesting part of my life, and that's how I came into the music industry, per se.

Then when we were promoters of Christian music, because we couldn't use radio play and all this-- our concerts were very poorly attended. We should have been called Pathway Sound Concession Stand because we made more money there than we did on ticket sales. Anyway, but our events were impeccably run just because it was important to us to treat artists well and audience, and all this.

Some other promoters got wind of the fact that we were doing this and asked us to work on their events, so specifically Chris White from the Ottawa Folk Festival who was a friend. We were long-time attendees of the folk festival, my business partner and I, at the time. They asked, would we take on their stage management? Shortly thereafter, we became Nutshell Music. The name was more memorable than Pathway Sound Productions. People always got that quite confused.

Nutshell Music became the name of the company, at the time. We worked on festivals, primarily. We, at the time, did the Ottawa Folk Festival. We, for a number of years, were the primary production company for Bluesfest. When it hit its 10th year and had 10 stages, that we were there. We were the production company backstage working with the volunteer base.

We did the Glengarry Highland Games, and Shelter Valley Folk, and all these amazing festivals that I'm so grateful to have been part of. Eventually, it just became what we did, and we were known for running a really great event, and so we started doing conferences and whatnot. My role, generally, within that context, was always backstage manager, which is not a role that will resonate with people, backstage management, but at large festivals, we found it was a necessary role, so it was great. I loved it very much. My role, primarily, was liaison between stage management, so the crews on stage, and the hospitality teams, keeping that liaison between.

Karen: I find all of this fascinating because I've grown up doing various types of performance, and so I have a wee, small taste of what it's like to be backstage. What is the difference between having a team that manages like you do, versus no management, or maybe not quite as thorough management, and well organized? How does that look to the artists and to the audience?

Nicole: That's a really good question. Backstage and stage management met at the word "management", in that context, is very different from artist management, in some ways, but in some ways, it's the very same thing. It's like any manager, you take all of the pieces and there's an overview, and you make it all work smoothly, right? That's what a manager-

Karen: Exactly, yes.

Nicole: -in almost any context. When it comes to stage management, very specifically, the stage manager's the boss. That's the person who's directing the team to do everything correctly on stage, and so as a backstage manager, it was the same thing. If anyone had a question, if I didn't know the answer, I knew who would know the answer, and that was from everything--

We had these massive binders that had all the contracts and all the riders. The contract riders, which are the hospitality specifics, and all the brown M&M stories that you hear, and some of them are actually very true. Keeping all of that together, and keeping track of who needs to be where at a time. I guess the difference when it comes to the artist is that they feel well-cared for if they walk in, and their contract has been respected, and that's evident in what's on stage waiting for them or what's back at the hotel waiting for them, or the rides that they need to be accessing to get from point A to point B.

From an audience point of view, I guess the irony is that you want the audience not to notice that there's been management. You want it to be so seamless that you don't notice the management team or the service team if you like. From an audience point of view, I would say, probably, a well-managed event is when you go home and you go, "That happened by magic," or you don't even think how it happened, it just happened.

Karen: Yes. Well, we were talking, pre-show, about how you first became aware of my existence, which surprised me because it was around an event. My former partner, Lara Wellman, and I had a social media conference, Ottawa's very first social media conference, years ago, and you were an attendee at least one year. I think that would have been our first year, too.

Nicole: Yes. I think it was. I think that was the first one, yes.

Karen: One of the things that we used to get comments on every year was how punctual everything was. That was one of the things that was really important to us in planning that event. I can totally see how that clear management path is so important at any event that you're doing.

Nicole: Yes, I remember having a huge, like five-foot-tall whiteboard backstage where we would write the schedule down. We would look, and if we were off by three minutes, it was my job to go and change all the times, so the tumble-down time, and see how soon we could catch up, and how few changes we could make tumbling it down, and where we could buy those minutes back because it was so important to us, so I understand what you describe.

Karen: Well, and you're dealing with people who've paid-- For example, Bluesfest and the Folk Fest, these are widely attended events. I think Ottawa's unique. It's unique to places that I've been, where we have such a large number of highly-attended festivals.

Nicole: Yes, exactly. You're absolutely right. Even, we can talk Ontario-wide. There are over 30 festivals that happen in Ontario, music festivals that happen between May and September, let's say. There's about 30, and that's a lot.

Karen: That's a lot, yes, and we have a very decent chunk of those in Ottawa.

Nicole: Yes, you're absolutely right. Even though we've seen changes in the different festivals, so Ottawa Folk has become CityFolk and the various things. It's never because the public is not interested in attending, so that's fun.

Karen: Yes, it's very interesting. Then you go from event management to artist management. I love the story of how this happened because it's clearly something that you had a lot of expertise in and just hadn't made that connection until someone made it for you. 

Nicole: Well, that's exactly-- and I resisted, which is very funny as well. Manitoba Hal who currently lives in Nova Scotia-- he was moving from Manitoba to Nova Scotia. It was, if I'm not mistaken, the first weekend of February 2010, and he was playing as he went through. A mutual friend had contacted me because they knew that I did house concerts, and Hal was looking for an Ottawa house concert opportunity, and so I said yes.

It was a double bill with another artist, Nancy Beaudette, who currently lives, I believe, in Massachusetts. That day, he came to play, and he was early arriving. He originally was supposed to arrive around four, he arrived around one, but let me know. He let me know, and I said, "Yes, yes, okay. Fine, come." Then I put my groceries down and we chatted for three hours, and, oh my gosh, I looked at my time and I said, "I have 40 people coming to my house tonight, I need to go and do something." That was the moment we realized that we really clicked, and so he stayed in touch. He made his move, and he's been in Nova Scotia ever since.

As we stayed in touch, he says, "You know you're my manager, right?" And I think I resisted because even I was worried about the miss-- how do you say, misunderstanding or misidentifying exactly what a manager does? Because I kept thinking, "I'm not going to book shows for you. I'm not going to do it, and I'm not going to take money on your behalf. Those are things--."

I didn't say that, but that was my perception of part of what a manager did. I didn't want to book shows, that's a booking agent's job, don't want it. I kept saying, "I won’t be your manager, I won’t be your manager," and then he said, "But you are, so like whatever." We formalized it in the November of that year after he had been there. We currently still have an open-ended, commission-based contract, and I've loved it ever since.

I think cutting my teeth on that contract, and cutting my teeth as an artist manager allowed me to find that voice and to say, "This is my management style. This is how I manage, this is not how I manage," and to really find what that is, and to become confident with that, because it's potentially not common. My style of management is not common in the music industry.

Karen: Interesting. Tell me a little bit more about your style of management, and what are artists looking for when they come to you?

Nicole: My style of management is a partnership. I think it's most easily described by saying that-- Let's take Hal as an example. Hal Brolund and Nicole Colbeck are a team co-managing if you like, and we both work for the entity of Manitoba Hal, who is the artist. It's easy, when your artist has a stage name, to imagine those different hats if you like. If anything, I am a strategist, so I strategize with the artist.

I will lick envelopes or fulfill CD orders, but that's not my job. I will do it when we both see that it will be helpful for me to take on some of the jobs that need to get done, but for the most part, it's not my job. My job is to strategize. I see my job as the strategizer and the keeper of the brand. We discover the brand, we work on the brand, and we make sure that the decisions that are being made every single day are serving that brand.

I believe what artists are looking for when they are looking for a manager is maybe a different question than you asked, because artists come to me, if they know how I work, they're looking for something very different than what I think a lot of artists think they're looking for when they're looking for a manager. I'm being a bit coy here, I guess, but I have had situations where an artist is actually looking to have someone to take all the work off their plate.

That's a valid, valid thing because, as an artist, I just-- As you well know, Lara is my business coach. Lara Wellman is my business coach, and we recently did an organizational flow chart workshop with all the different roles and different hats, I guess. Well, it's no different for an artist. They wear all of those hats, from publicity to publishing, to just everything. Management and booking agent, and all these things.

Karen: It's really a business.

Nicole: It is. It's a business. No doubt about it, it's business. Of course, artists are looking for help to get stuff off their plate. The artist that I'm looking to work with understands that I'm not that manager, there are some managers who absolutely do much more of those kinds of things than I do. When an artist is looking for a partner in strategy, that's the kind of artist that I'm looking to work with. For the most part, that artist is a mature, established, and self-managed artist with experience having self-managed and is looking for fresh ideas and fresh avenues into the industry and into their next steps. That is my client.

Karen: You're basically the business coach for your artists.

Nicole: Yes, that's exactly it. I've thought of that many times when I copy things that Lara does for me, things that have served me well I go. I go, "Mm, I could do that with my clients," or the realization the cobbler's children have no shoes? Yes, I'm so the cobbler.

Karen: I say that, I use that phrase all the time when I tell people that, "Yes, I'm a marketer, but I hire marketing help."

Nicole: Yes, I get it. It is so hard to really know what that next best business step is for myself. Whereas if I'm sitting across the table from an artist and we spend that three-hour session where we really dive deep into a career and go, "Okay, what's the next best step? Oh, it's so clear to me," so it's funny, yes.

Karen: Oh, I love that feeling, too, because there's a lot of parallels in the work that I do in those moments when you're on a call with someone and you can see it so clearly for them, but they don't see it because whatever-- It could be a million different things that are blocking them from being able to see it because when it's your business, you're so close to it and you don't necessarily have the perspective that a third party can bring into it. That's why someone like you is so valuable to growing an artist's career.

Nicole: Yes, I think you're right, and, yes, that I am so valuable, but to say it's so important to have someone in your corner when you're-- Right? To me, if I boil down to one thing that I bring to the table for an artist, it won't be, "Oh, stick with me, kid. I'll make you a star." No, it's none of that. It's not that I have all the answers. It's not that I have all these juicy contacts that are just going to pave the way to success, and all this.

It's that I will be 100% in your corner and say, "Okay, let's roll up our sleeves, and let's get you out of this struggle that you find yourself in because guess what? It's not really a big struggle. You're feeling it, but come on, let's comb it all out, you will see. There are first steps and next steps, you will see." I guess that's what I do, and that's what I've been doing for years. I think that, more recently, I'm seeing a shift in the need for it.

Karen: Well, the music industry has changed so drastically. I just think about the last 30 years. 30 years ago, there was a really clear path for artists to become known. You had those stories of artists that randomly get discovered, but you always heard-- I had friends who would move to Nashville or they moved to wherever to try and get discovered. Most of my friends didn't, but it's not so clear anymore because now, radio stations don't get the same listenership. You don't have the same marketing around albums. Everything's digital, people aren't buying albums the way they used to, so it is a really different world.

Nicole: That’s exactly right. One of the shifts we had been making, probably since about five years ago to be fair, is a shift that everyone is feeling very deeply right now, which is there are two things that were happening that we responded to very early on. I say "we", it was primarily Hal and me, because he was really my bread and butter, and my primary artist, but I have had other artists throughout those 10 years that I've worked with, and it really boiled down to two things.

One was, touring is no longer a viable means of sustaining a career, and nor are CD sales. If both of the avenues that are the prime avenues of revenue for artists have dried up because of streaming, primarily, in both cases, but also because of streaming from a radio-play point of view, but also, from a CD sales point of view-- Streaming has really cut the industry down at its noose, if that's the right expression, so because of this, we were already making major shifts in these artists' careers.

Some of these shifts were revisioning income sources, so, "What do you love to do? What of these things can we begin monetizing?" For example, right up until pandemic times, I worked closely with actually local artist, Kate Weekes, who lives in the Wakefield area. She's awesome. She's a storyteller as well, as being a musician. She's inspiring. She's really, really great. We were already talking about, "So, what do you love to do?"

"Well, I don't mind teaching," and so, "Let's ramp up the teaching. What other things do you--?" "Well, I love to write." "Okay, so how can we leverage those loves and both boost your appeal or your engagement, and therefore, boost live show and CD sales, but also, directly monetize?" How can we directly monetize? With Hal, that started many years ago when I said, "You know, when you answer people's questions about the ukulele--," because he's a ukulele blues musician, "When you answer a question, your eyes light up. Have you ever considered doing workshops?" And so workshops became a huge part of his income.

Karen: Oh, I love that.

Nicole: Again, it's just diversifying your income streams, and how important that is. Now, everyone is realizing the importance of it.

Karen: Well, I was thinking, as I was getting ready for this today, this pandemic has been gutting for so many performers. Not just musicians, it goes beyond musicians for sure.

Nicole: Yes, the theater and dancers. Oh, yes, you’re right.

Karen: Yes, and what is so fascinating to me is that in the midst of all of this global trauma that's happening, there is this collective movement amongst artists that the show must go on.

Nicole: It's true.

Karen: It's so fascinating to watch this happening because there's been some beautiful pieces of work, and they're not getting paid for it. They're just putting it out there because there is this compulsion to create, and it's part of, I think, what makes music and artistry so important to the world, in general, because it exceeds the souls of the artists, and then it feeds the rest of us as well.

Nicole: Yes, absolutely. I think that it also brings us to what you describe, this compulsion to create brings us to a sad part of it, however, because during these times when artists have had to go beyond just diversifying their income streams, going beyond that, and having to take jobs that prevent them from being able to do things that help sustain their musical career, it's disheartening. I want to say almost literally. Obviously not literally, but it is in that figurative sense of tearing their heart out because they now have had to give up on their career basically, and not all artists, and not wall-to-wall throughout an artist's career.

Yes, we're seeing some of the live streams, we're seeing the collaborations that could never have existed without pandemic times, the projects that happened. There was a project between-- I want to say the great global match which was between the Nordic countries, and Australia, and New Zealand, I think.

Karen: How?

Nicole: They paired bands up together and a band would play to this band's audience, on streaming, and then they'd do it with the other-- Now, apparently, it really screwed with the algorithms because of promoting each other in these strange and new ways, which I won't pretend to understand how that happened, but apparently, it got things a little bit confused for a little while, post this event, but the heart of the event, the spirit of the event would never have happened if we hadn't needed to do these things. Some of the fallout, I think, they need to tweak how to either avoid or deal with the weirdness of the algorithmic fallout.

Karen: That is so fascinating, though. First of all, you make such an important point about the loss of ability to practice your art, often driven by financial reasons, and then just this collaboration is so much like what you experience as a musician. Musicians got to make music, and they will come together and do it in unique ways, and find a way to do it. That is really cool. There isn't the fear of lifting up other musicians because it's not competition in the way that we think of with other types of businesses.

Nicole: That's right. I think competition between businesses is more of a myth than we realize, even in any business, but in the arts, in particular, I think.

Karen: Yes. I tend to think that the whole idea of competition, especially for small businesses, is a silly mindset to have.

Nicole: I think so.

Karen: Collaboration can get all of us forward more than viewing each other as competitors. Also, we tend to look at our competitors a little bit too much, some of us. I personally just don't pay much attention to people who do the same kind of work that I do because I have my own thing that I'm doing, so I just don't let it distract me, but, yes, it's hard.

Nicole: Totally. I've, the last few years, had the joy of kindling a friendship with a local manager here. Her name is Sarah Porter of Porter Music Management, and she's golden. She has these ridiculously strong instincts about strategizing with artists. She also doesn't mind doing all those jobs that I don't like. She doesn't mind doing it, she's awesome. She's just driven, but she's driven by the passion of supporting artists.

She and I have had the opportunity to talk. I would say we're talking all the time, and we realized, not terribly long ago, that we do the same thing, but it had not occurred to us, which is really silly because we do basically the same thing. Then we realized, also, that we come at it from such a different place and with such different end-goal dreams for ourselves. For me, I look to remain small, I want to stay at the heart of where creativity is, and I really want to help artists there, even if I'm working as a manager or as a creative coach, whichever angle you want to come to this with.

For her, she has dreams of working with international touring artists. When we realized that if we just talk a little bit more about what these end goals are, we see, A, there was no competition there anyway, but also, now, we're talking about, how can we work together more? And how can we work together more? We've officially set up a weekly huddle and we just talk and talk.

Karen: Oh, that's awesome.

Nicole: I think that's the direction that the music industry is taking, I'm hearing that kind of stuff a lot more. A lot more attention to mental health, a lot more as in many industries, and a lot more attention to collaboration in every sense. Yes, musical collaborations, but also, business-wise, as you were describing.

Karen: Well, I love that, too. We talked, earlier, about getting that outside perspective on your own business, but then the collaboration that comes with business owners that are working in the same space can be so incredibly valuable. I work with so many different marketers who some people would, on the surface, say, "Oh, well, you're both marketers, you must be competition," but we're not really, just like you and Porter Management.

We do things differently, we're looking at different clients. We're providing different services, whatever the case may be, and so there's very complementary perspectives that come together, and that can be so powerful for my clients and theirs, the same as it is for you and Porter Management's plan.

Nicole: Yes, exactly. I think that when Sarah and I talk about-- whether it's one of my clients and something I might be struggling with or one of her clients and something she and her client might be struggling with, A, there's a cone of silence, and I think that's a thing that we both really value.

Also, it is not just that set of fresh eyes, but when A talks, and then B talks, there's a C that gets created that never would have existed if A was alone or B was alone. There's this-- I want to say magic. I think that's overused, but it is. It’s magic that, all of a sudden, it's like, "Oh, I would never have thought of that, and neither would ever have thought of that thing." It's like, "Oh, okay. Well, let's do that crazy solution because that's what's going to fix this situation," or whatever.

Karen: Yes, that's so cool. I love that.

Nicole: It's the magic of, I think, every collaboration. I had pins made for my business quite a number of years ago. I still have a bunch of them, I have to say, as happens with swag. It said, "Little Acorn plays well with others." That was at the core of my business and still is, in a lot of ways. It's, be the person in the room that everybody wants to work with, be the artist that people want to hire again, that they want to work with you again kind of thing.

Karen: It's very on-brand because you want to be in harmony with everything around you.

Nicole: Absolutely. 

Karen: That's one of the things I love about music, is that there's so much that you can say in messaging.

Nicole: Yes, absolutely. Well done, I have to write that one down. It's good, and it's true because Dan Levitin who wrote This Is Your Brain on Music or wrote The World in Six Songs and other things, talks about-- because he's also a neurological wiz, I don't know. He must be a doctor. Anyway, this isn’t important, so we might just edit that part out. He's just a real smart guy. He talks about how when two people play music together, there is something released in the brain that is only ever released when you are either in love or taking care of an infant.

Karen: Oh, that's fascinating.

Nicole: There's something about creating music with other people. This explains, a lot, why people want to collaborate musically. Also, take that, and take what we have learned about the brain. They talk about the brain, and how if I play the piano, there are parts of my brain that light up. Well, if I imagine playing the piano, those same parts of my brain will light up. If I watch someone playing the piano-- if I watch for a moment, those parts of my brain will begin to light up.

I draw the line that says when I watch two people creating music together, that same thing is being released in my brain. That's why we love to see live music so much. These are all things that we are learning about our brains, and so it's only telling us what we already knew, and as you said earlier, just how pivotal music is to our soul.

Karen: Well, as you were describing that sensation, I was thinking of all the different times I've experienced that because I grew up in a musical family. I was in band all through school, I went to music school in university, and I think one of my most favorite things ever was-- I grew up in Tallahassee, Florida where Florida State University is. That's where I went to music school. I was the third generation in my family to attend the university.

Nicole: Isn’t that cool? Wow, I love that.

Karen: Yes, I always thought that was fun. There is an auditorium at Florida State, the Ruby Diamond Auditorium, and it holds about 1,500 people. They used to have, every-- Well, they still do, although I think they didn't this past year, with the pandemic. They have this concert every year called the PRISM Concert, and it is the coolest thing I've ever been to. To get tickets was practically impossible, you had to be really fast to get them.

What it was, was the entire instrumental side of the music school-- the symphony orchestra, the Marching Chiefs, the band, and then all these different ensembles would perform. They had little stages set up all over the auditorium and then you had the big stage at the front, and you would just go from one performance to another, to another, to another. At the end of the night, the Marching Chiefs would match in doing their fourth-quarter fanfare, which is this big brass-heavy piece, and it gives you chills to hear it. It's a 400-piece band and a 1,500-seat auditorium.

Nicole: Incredible, incredible.

Karen: The sound was so loud. Oh, just thinking about it, I get chills. It's so amazing.

Nicole: Of course. I'm getting chills, I would love to witness that. Oh my gosh.

Karen: It's one of my favorite things ever, and I was so lucky. During the time that I was in music school, I got to sing in the first-ever choral PRISM Concert, which didn't have the same punch as the instrumental one, but, oh, wow, it was fun. That kind of stuff is so fun.

Nicole: Wow, so great, and so important. CBC just had a piece, Honking is the new applause, and it's a short documentary. I forget who created it, but it is about a choir in Calgary, I think, who, I guess long story short, ended up doing a concert, each choir person in their car. They realized that they couldn't do it through Zoom or other streaming because of the technical lag or whatever, so they did shortwave radio. Just basically car radio, so somehow-- and, again, I don't remember the detail, but they got onto a channel. They would all tune in to the same channel and they would rehearse, and they would sing together, and it would all be in time.

The choirmaster would stand on a box and have the 14, whatever, cars and he leads this choir. They decided they would do a concert, so they had approximately 200 cars attend, and hence the name of the documentary. Well, my husband and I, Roger and I are sitting there just a couple of mornings ago, and I am sobbing with remembering what that has felt for me, whether I was singing in the choir or in an audience, or whatever. Just the extent to what we miss, what we are missing right now. Again, whether we're singing or not, it feeds our soul.

Karen: Oh, that's a beautiful story.

Nicole: Oh, it's so great. Well, I would encourage anybody to track down the documentary because it's well worth watching or listening. 

Karen: I wanted to ask you about house concerts because this is something that I wasn't aware of. I don't think I had ever really heard of house concerts growing up in Florida. Then I moved to Ottawa, and I never had heard of them until maybe seven or eight years ago. It is quite an interesting way to tour and to do concerts. It's very intimate. It just sounds like such a unique way to do it and it's so foreign to what most people are used to, with the Taylor Swift's and the other big-name musicians that get so much attention.

Nicole: That's right, it is. It's super intimate. It's really great.

Karen: Is that a way that more localized musicians are touring more often than trying to go to bigger venues? Or what's the approach with that? Because it's super interesting to me.

Nicole: The answer to that question probably depends more on the host of a house concert and what kind of music they want to bring in and present to their audience. That's a short answer. It depends, what the host would like to do, because for the most part, when you host a host concert, you don't get paid at all. I won't even say, "For the most part," I can say pretty much across the board, you don't get paid. Your payment is this incredible magic that happens that you get to have music in your home. Not just that, but you get to have this live music, and you get to share. Like to say, "Hey, my friends, come into my house, get a load of this. This great musician that I really love."

Karen: It's really a very strong expression of support for the artist.

Nicole: It is very much so. I won't claim to know the actual origin of house concerts, I suppose, but I will say that most likely, it comes from, in a couple of different ways, the old arts salons where a rich person would have an artist come in, and they would be a patron, so whomever. Mozart would come and play in my living room, and I'm very rich, and he would gain patrons through doing this. He wouldn't necessarily get money that night, but he'd get fed, and he'd get housed, and he'd have all this. Plus, he would gain patrons so that when he went to the butcher's, he could say, "Put it on so-and-so's bill," so it became a patroned life.

That's one of the threads that people talk about when they talk about how house concerts became a thing. More practically, and probably more recently, like you said earlier, artists got to play. That it's bigger than them. Being able to say, "Oh, I'll gather up some friends and you can come and play," or, "I'll gather up some friends and a few people would play," and then there would be money because we know that's an important thing, a hat would get passed around. How that got worked into the music industry, if you like, is that when an artist creates a tour, builds a tour, they have what we call "anchor dates".

It would be maybe the NAC Fourth Stage or it would be Kingston Playhouse, or it would be the St. Lawrence Arts Center in more just bigger-- maybe 100 seats to 300 seats, or even bigger, but then those program on Fridays and Saturdays. Then there would be a week full of nights in-between, which we call "dark nights", and so, for the most part, house concerts that really help and support artists can happen between these anchor dates.

That's how it became a really strong part of the more modern industry of music to the point where many artists will have only house concert tour because, just if you do the math-- At my house, I can fit approximately 30 people comfortably, 35 if people don't mind squeezing or sitting up on the steps. I have had as many as 42 people, and as few as, I think, maybe 11. If you think 30, and I am asking people to drop into the hat $20, so you do the math there.

Where if I am an artist and I get hired at a small club, there's no way that's going to be the money that comes through. It's very rare to be able to exact that kind of fee. Artists are very grateful to be able to play that kind of a show, and, of course, there's the opportunity to sell CDs. It's almost 2:1 people will buy CDs, which is a ridiculous ratio at a concert. It would not be that at a bigger concert, you'd never sell to half the people who are there, but at a house concert--

Anyway, I could go on and on about house concerts and the magic that they are, and the way that they do support artists. There's an organization called Home Routes and they create circuits. There's a Northern Manitoba circuit, there's a Nova Scotia circuit, there's a Northern Ontario. There are a bunch of circuits throughout Canada that are maybe 10 to 12 shows in the span of two weeks. An artist can do this tour and it's organized by this organization. That's really cool as well.

Karen: Yes, I love that. It reminds me, I toured with a singing group in 1995. It's been a while.

Nicole: Oh my gosh, Karen, this is so awesome. I'm learning new stuff. Wow, it's so cool.

Karen: The tour I was on, I toured Western United States, Canada, and Alaska. We played churches, were the venues, and then families in the churches would host us. The house concert reminds me of that because every single night, we were staying with someone different and getting to know them. It was so fun and interesting, and a great way to get to know the area that you're in.

Nicole: If you're playing every single night, that's one thing, but often, it's you might have two in a row, and then you have a dark night, so you might stay for two nights at this person's home, and then they might take you around, and all this. It's the same when it comes to house concerts because, for the most part, a house concert, it'll be, as a host, I provide dinner, and then there's the concert.

During the concert, the intermission is usually no less than 20 minutes, for sure, and usually, it's even more so that's the people who have spent $20, or $25 in some cases, or more, or less can rub shoulders with this artist and ask questions, and just be part of it in a really intimate way. Then, of course, there's a second set, and then they stay over, and then they have breakfast. For the most part, this is what an artist gets when they come.

When I have counseled artists with whom I work, I will say, "You belong to that host from the moment you walk in, to the moment you walk out," because that's their only payment. That's their payment, is the opportunity to basically be your friend. 

Karen: Your business is Little Acorn Creative Coaching and Music Management. We've talked a lot about music management. Tell me about the creative coaching.

Nicole: Sure. The creative coaching, there are people in the United States who have formalized and certified the idea of being a creativity coach. That's awesome, that's really great. It gives that certification and all this. I do not have that. I chose the phrase "creative coach" being really aware of the two ways it can be taken. It's, help someone be creative, but also, it's actually a creative way of approaching the music industry as an artist. Let's get creative about how we can come up with a plan for you.

Karen: Oh, I like that

Nicole: It's fun, right? I haven't used it in my marketing. I haven't really talked about it a lot, but I'm aware that the phrase should be "creativity coach" to help you with your creativity, but it's not just that. It's being creative. I want to help artists find-- I think they can be creative in their craft quite fine without my help. Where the struggle comes in is to be creative in finding ways to make space for that in their lives, especially right now when it looks and it feels like their lives have no space for creativity right now or for being creative. It requires being creative with that.

To me, what I do with people right now, or these days, is more short-term for the most part. It's, "Let's sit down, let's create a situation where you and I will talk about where you're at right now, where you want to be, where you need to be. How we can fill those boxes that create a path on the way to-- remembering that you could be creative and have a sustainable career as well," whatever that means.

Karen: I love that. I think that, too, if you're worried about the business side of things, it could really disrupt creativity.

Nicole: Yes, absolutely. I think that's what artists have always struggled with. I think it's the eternal conundrum of artists. "The business, why do I have to do the business? All I want to do is play." I get it.

Karen: Totally, and it doesn't help that in general, we have devalued music and artistry, in general, as with the school programs being cut, and then the piracy in the late '90s, early 2000s, and now, streaming services. All of those things have severely choked the value that we put on these things that we rely on to stay somewhat less chaotic in our minds and our hearts. It's something that we so need at a soul level, yet it's not valued.

Nicole: No, it isn't. I think along those lines exactly is that if I were to not talk about the exact coaching or the exact field in which I work, what I realize is that when I get-- I struggle with anxiety, very real struggles with anxiety, and there are times when I cannot breathe to the bottom of my lungs without choking or coughing or that feeling of tight throat.

I believe that a lot of artists right now, that's what they're experiencing, so no matter what it is I'm doing, my goal is to help people take a breath to the bottom of their lungs. Tad Hargrave of Marketing for Hippies talks about your greatest pain point is the road to your niche. If you speak in business terms, well, it's exactly that. That, to me, is why I do what I do. The coaching is exactly that, is believing that I'm going to do this anyway.

There's a great Gillian Welch song. I won't remember the title, but part of the lyrics are somebody's figured out a way to make money off my stuff. Well, they've also figured out, "I'm going to do it anyway, I'm not going to stop." It's a deeply sad song but it really speaks volumes about what's going on in the industry. That's where I come in, is let's get creative about how we can make a sustainable plan so that you feel that you can breathe.

Karen: I love that. That is so beautiful. Nicole, how can people find you?

Nicole: Oh, goodness. Probably I'll be standing out on the streets hoping that people will be, "Come, come," and I'll give them hugs the moment I can.

Nicole: My website is littleacorncreativecoaching.ca or .com will get you there too. I'm on Facebook, I'm on all the socials, in some way or other, if it's Little Acorn Music Management or Little Acorn Creative Coaching. I'm very easy to find, I think.

Karen: We'll make sure to put the links into the show notes so everyone can easily get to those places.

Nicole: Thank you.

Karen: It has been such a pleasure. I think we could've gone on for a few hours. 

Nicole: I think so, too, Karen. I look at the time and I feel very honored that you would give me so much time, but also, I feel very embarrassed that I've kept you so long. 

Karen: Oh gosh, no. I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

Nicole: Good. What I also know for sure is that we'll chat again very soon.

Karen: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Nicole, for joining me.

Nicole:My pleasure. My absolute pleasure, Karen. Thank you. Thanks for this opportunity.