In this episode, I got to chat with Bree Noble of https://femusician.com/. She shares how she has diversified her income streams so that her business hasn’t really changed, even while being “sheltered in place”. As a musician herself, she knows the challenges musicians — especially female musicians — face, and aspires to provide the support she wishes she had earlier in her career.
Visit https://femusician.com/ to grab her free download of 19 Proven Sources of Income You Probably Haven’t Considered For Your Music Career!
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15 Minute Marketing Map
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Transcript of the episode with Bree Noble
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (00:02)
So I’m here with Bree Noble and Bree, I would love for you to tell me a little bit about yourself and your family.
Bree Noble: (00:10)
Sure. So I am married to an English professor. We live in Claremont, California, which is about 45 minutes East of LA. And we’ve been married for over 25 years. Hard to believe. We have two kids. We have a daughter that is 16, just about to turn 17, and she’s a junior in high school and the other one is 11. So it, you know, we, we have a very, I think our family is pretty well, like, you know, used to dealing with each other, but it’s been pretty interesting.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (00:53)
Yeah. I feel like we’re all, a lot of us are going through that too. I’m at a similar, where we’re we’re used to being around each other a lot, but in the current situation it’s, I mean, it’s just all the time now. I didn’t realize you were so close to Los Angeles.
Bree Noble: (01:14)
Yup. Yeah. It’s we’re like on the very, very edge of LA County.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (01:19)
Very nice. And so tell me, how do you make money?
Bree Noble: (01:24)
I help musicians learn to market themselves online and offline, a lot more online right now. And I help them to become confident about promoting themselves, their music and I help them with multiple ways. I specifically focus on female musicians in the membership that I have called the Female Musician Academy. It’s just a really safe place for females to talk about the struggles that they have as musicians.
Bree Noble: (01:56)
And being independent, not having a support system. And a lot of times feeling like, like an Island not knowing what to do and having good guidance. And then I also help musicians to release their albums with my Rock Your Next Release program. Which is great for right now because people are still listening to music. Like I’m listening to more music than ever right now, so I’m, I’m excited about helping musicians do that.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (02:24)
Yeah. Same here. I’m usually a, I mean, I love music. My background is actually in music, but I find that I listened to a lot of, a lot more podcasts in general, but now that we are home more and I’m not driving in my car, which is usually where I listen to podcasts, I just want something that’s not silence and not toddler sounds in the background. So yeah, I’m also listening to a lot more music right now.
Bree Noble: (02:54)
So it sounds like, you know, a good place to listen to music is in line at the store. My daughter was, went over to trader Joe’s yesterday and she was like I’m not gonna stand in this hour long line and everybody’s standing six feet apart in total silence. Oh my God. I would totally bring my Spotify in my headphones if I was doing that.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (03:16)
So what does your, what does your day to day look like?
Bree Noble: (03:21)
So what’s great about my business is my business has not changed whatsoever. I have the same, the only thing that’s changed is actually the fact that we’re talking right now would never happen because from this, this hour, I’m usually getting my kids ready for school. So it’s kinda nice. I don’t have this broken up time. When I start working, I can just work for like at least four or five hours straight now, which is, which is kinda nice.
Bree Noble: (03:47)
But it’s, you know, I’m working in my office and I’m doing webinars or podcasts like this and writing our a lot of articles right now because people are wanting me to be a voice to help musicians get you know, replace their gig income. So that’s kind of what I’m doing at the moment. I do some coaching, I’ve got my membership, I meet with them about once a week. And then, you know, the kids, they’re pretty self sufficient with school. Thank goodness they’re both working online and you know, my high schoolers very responsible so I don’t have to worry about her. My 11 year old, I’m just helping her navigate like the technology of canvas and zoom and things like that that she wasn’t used to having to deal with. Making sure that she actually gets up, you know, and she gets online with her teacher at 10:00 AM, but things have shifted to be much later in the day for me, which is weird.
Bree Noble: (04:47)
It’s great for me cause I get up early and so I could just get like a solid, like five hours worth of work done before the kids even get up. But we’ve definitely instituted a rule of like, yes, you must get dressed every day. You know, you must be up by nine at the latest. You know, my high school, she’ll kind of get up and read in bed cause she’s got a lot of readings, so I’m okay with that. She’s pretty responsible. But you know, we’ve started to try to Institute these house rules of like, you know, if you’re eating lunch in your bedroom, you’re not allowed to collect dishes in there and you know, you can roll, you know, go some new place. Don’t do homework in bed. That’s another thing. Like my 11 year old, she wants to be in bed on her, on her Chromebook.
Bree Noble: (05:34)
I’m like no, ask to be at the kitchen table. That’s fine. But it’s not good to just hibernate in your room all the time. Yeah.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (05:43)
So I’m sure that your, your experience working from home is also helping that because you can, you can help them not start habits like start bad habits that way.
Bree Noble: (05:54)
Yes. Yes. And also exercise. I mean we’ve, we’ve agreed that we’re not going to have a forced exercise time, but they’ve all agreed that they want to exercise once a day in some way. That’s great to give them a lot of options, you know? W going on walks, I always go on a walk every day. It just helps me. But we took a bike ride yesterday, you know, I’m encouraging my daughter to roller skate and things like that. As long as it’s not raining right now it’s raining.
Bree Noble: (06:21)
But I think it’s supposed to believe thank goodness cause I feel as a work at home person, I feel crazy if I can’t get outside and I’m not the kind of person that likes to walk in the rain, but my one daughter does. So she loves it when it’s raining and she’ll go for a walk even more likely to do that in the rain. So I think that’s important to just get out in some way every day.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (06:45)
Absolutely. I feel the same way. Just, yeah, some sort of, some sort of fresh air, even if, whether it’s a walk or even if it’s just sitting outside and I don’t have a yard, but I have a patio and so we’ll go and we’ll sit out there and with a toddler we got to get that energy out.
Bree Noble: (07:04)
Oh yeah. For sure. I remember those days.
Bree Noble: (07:06)
But yeah, I’ve encouraged them. Like you guys go sit in the backyard for a change of scenery and you know, we have a patio with a table and there’s some nice fruit trees back there and stuff and it’s some semi-private, so you know, why not? There’s actually a little park, like, I mean, probably three houses down from us. It’s like one of those mini parks and community and just go sit on a bench and, and do your reading for awhile, you know, and watch people walk by with their dogs feet away. Right. Exactly. Great.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (07:38)
Cool. So, especially seeing how your, you said your business really hasn’t changed that much. What is one thing that you do each week to move your business forward?
Bree Noble: (07:50)
Right now, well, it’s, it’s really about relationships. So right now the relationships that I’ve been forging, either it’ll be like some kind of affiliate, a webinar or something, or maybe what they want me to do is like do something on their platform.
Bree Noble: (08:11)
So I’ve had people asking me if I can do a webinar about alternate sources of income from musicians just for their just for their customer base, just because they want to help their customers. And I, you know, I don’t, I’m not gonna pitch or anything, but it’s just me getting in front of them and I know that that will help my business in the future. You know, just seeing a light out there to help help musicians in this hard time, you know? So for me I’d say it’s relationship building and finding a way that I can communicate with the people I already have relationships with and then just reaching back out to people that haven’t talked to in a while in my space to just see like how we can collaborate in some way.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (09:03)
Absolutely. And I feel like right now people who may not have been as used to connecting online, now we have to. And so there’s so many more people who are actively looking to make those connections online. It’s been really great. I’ve seen all of these like just coworking calls popping up where people are saying, Hey, like, let’s just get on a zoom call and work together. And I’ve met so many new people that way. It’s been really, it’s been really nice.
Bree Noble: (09:35)
Yeah, it’s, it’s cool because I’m not a person that goes to a lot of conferences just because I have kids and it’s hard to get away and all that. But you know, other people, their thing is that they connect with people at conferences. And so I’ve kind of felt a little bit behind the curve in that area, but now I’m like, Oh, I’m right on the same curve now because you know, I was actually going to speak at a conference in a couple of weeks and that got canceled obviously.
Bree Noble: (09:59)
So you know, I feel like it’s almost making it easier for me to connect because of the fact that I didn’t do a lot of conferences and so I wasn’t in that realm. And you know, other people are now looking for other ways, not conferences to connect. So it’s kinda cool.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (10:19)
Yeah, absolutely. And even just some basic things like those of us who are used to connecting with people online, we understand the technology, we know the groups and just, we may have just more ideas because we’ve done so many of them. So we can share that with these people who are new to the online community.
Bree Noble: (10:42)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I’m, you know, I’m, I’m trying to make sure that I understand that not everybody knows how to use zoom. You know, like I just, it’s a second nature for me, but nowadays there’s people getting on and I think it’s great, you know, people are, it’s only going to help me in the future because it’s encouraging.
Bree Noble: (11:03)
Like for example, musicians, more musicians to learn how to live stream or learn how to use zoom because they might want to do a concert on zoom or something. And then, you know, those are things that I, I teach in my Academy and also we do our stuff on zoom. So you know, when they come into the Academy later it will feel a lot more natural to them. Cause sometimes we, we actually have a call in my Academy called tech talk Tuesday because I do have, you know, some people in the older generation that are in my group and they just don’t feel comfortable with the tech. And so I found that that’s a really popular call because there’s so many things that they don’t know how to do online. And you know, now during this time, I think a lot of them are just having to learn this, which is, which is great, I think because we really do to be, be diversified.
Bree Noble: (11:55)
You never know what’s going to happen in the world. And I’m just thankful that we have these opportunities to replace, you know, for example, for musicians, gig income, to be able to go online and to be able to do like a donation, you know, a PayPal me or something and say, Hey, like I got five gigs canceled this month, you know, and you know, can you help? That kind of thing.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (12:20)
Absolutely. It’s, it, it’s making it very clear that we need to have other options and we have to make sure that we’re set up and not even just set up for it, but just be open to new ideas and a new normal as people have been saying. So I’d like to take a couple steps back and ask also, how did you get into this field?
Bree Noble: (12:50)
Well, I, so I started out, actually I was a musician myself. I was touring and all that. And I started an online radio station back in 2007 which has since become a podcast and it was serving female musicians being a platform for their music. And so because of that, I ended up working with female musicians and finding that they had a lot of the similar frustrations. And you know, that been something that I had learned over the years. So I started helping them with those things and that’s where I started with my membership and of course, and all that. But it really started with having an online platform like that. And you know, that’s as far as the diversifying thing, like my business is very diverse, which I’m so thankful for right now. You know, I’ve got my podcast my music podcast and we have sponsorships and stuff.
Bree Noble: (13:46)
So there’s money that comes in. We take some money to pay for our time to review music. So there’s some money that comes in. You know, there’s my membership, there’s my new course that I promote to my own audience and also with affiliates. And then I have other coaching income that I work in another program and then I have, I’m an affiliate for other people. So that’s another way that income is coming in for me right now. As you know, things are a little bit uncertain. I don’t have to worry about all my eggs being in one basket. And I think that’s really important.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (14:25)
Absolutely. So, so wrapping up just a little bit, from your experience, what is the advice that you would have for someone looking to start a similar business to yours?
Bree Noble: (14:40)
You know, if, if you can, the easiest thing to do is to serve in a way that like you would have wanted to be, you know, if you’ve got, if you’ve gone in a direction where you’ve made progress in something and you were frustrated with it in the beginning, like I was as a musician not knowing how to market myself and all that being kind of a mystery to me and was able to push through that. Now I can help those people. So if you have personal experience where you’ve overcome something, you know, don’t just assume that like, Oh well everybody knows that, you know, because once, usually once you get to a certain amount of, you know, knowledge level or confidence level, you start to think that it’s, it’s, it starts to feel second nature and you think like, Oh everybody knows this stuff.
Bree Noble: (15:30)
Right? So don’t assume that like there are people that are back at that stage that you were and they still need to learn this stuff. And I constantly try to remind myself of that. Like with online stuff, like you were saying, like not knowing how to use zoom, it being like a total mystery. I remember thinking like inserting a link into an email. Like I just couldn’t figure out how to do that. Or like how to run a, a giveaway or just, you know, things that are so second nature to me now. And I think back about how I learned those from different people. And you just think about the things that you’ve learned over the years that seem obvious and second nature to you. And those are things that you can teach other people and then just start reaching out to people that are where you were, you know, before.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (16:21)
I love that.
Bree Noble: (16:22)
Yeah, because I think that the hardest part is we just think we don’t have anything to teach or we don’t have any, any knowledge that other people don’t have. And that’s not true.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (16:33)
Yeah, absolutely. We all have something that, that we can help someone who is two steps back from us with for sure. So what is it that you would like to share? What do you have going on somewhere that people can go to find out more about you?
Bree Noble: (16:51)
Well, I think right now, I mean, I’ve had this resource for so long, but right now, and it’s been popular forever, but right now it’s even more important than ever. It’s my 19 sources of income. For female musicians that you probably haven’t considered for your music business. So there’s some that you might be doing, but then there’s some in there that you might not.
Bree Noble: (17:13)
So you can grab that at F as in female, he is an entrepreneur, musician . com FEmusician.com or also known as fem musician.com. That is where you can find that’s right on the front page there. And then you can also listen to my podcast and other things at that location. But I think diversifying income is so important right now. And so if you are a musician or an artist in some way or creative, I think this will help you kind of think outside the box.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (17:43)
Great. And I’ll include that link in the episode notes. Thanks. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. It was great to learn more about you and I know I already know you a little bit but it’s been great to hear more about your day to day and your family.
Bree Noble: (17:58)
Oh, thank you for letting me share. And I just really, I really feel for all of you moms that are, you know, not used to being home with kids cause it’s, I’m looking at another six or seven weeks of this, you know, and it’s been, what, one week so far, so and it feels like it’s been fixed. Feels like it’s been forever. Yes. So, you know, and especially the moms that like work and had some kind of, you know, I know when I was first starting out, you know, I had a preschooler and she went to preschool two days a week and that was what I needed to get my business started. And you know, now you don’t have that. So I really feel for you and I just pray for all those moms, the sanity of them. Cause I remember being with kids at that age and I’m just thankful my kids aren’t right now, but I can, I can completely imagine what that’s like. And so I’m just, you know, keep, keep moving forward and, and know that there’s a lot of other people that are going through the same thing and just seek out support. There’s a lot of support online.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (19:07)
Absolutely.
Bree Noble: (19:09)
Thank you so much.
Ann Marie O’Braskin: (19:11)
You’re welcome. This was fun. Thanks. We’ll talk soon.