We recently connected with Jess Magee and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jess thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Becoming a professional creative has been a natural progression throughout my life and I’m very lucky to be able to earn a full-time living doing what I love. My parents enveloped me in music, art and culture growing up. They exposed me to the vast world of creativity and fostered a deep love of the arts, especially music. That led me to get involved in all things music through school including band, full orchestras, plays, regional and state ensembles. Music allowed me to get a great college education and travel the world. I always knew I wanted to be involved in the arts, but never knew in what capacity because I didn’t want to teach or be a professional performer.

Life led me to a simple ad for a receptionist at a little music lesson studio. After meeting the owners, a gem of a family, I knew this is where I would be able to grow and thrive – it was such a welcoming and positive environment. Skip to 12 years down the road, I now oversee all studio happenings, the eclectic and amazing faculty, the office staff, and over 850 students that study music weekly! Over time I’ve learned from the ground up how to manage a vast schedule with a million moving parts, organize hours of recitals, book events around the valley, do PR, ads and social media and work and so much more! This role has allowed me to be creative, thrive in my strengths and strengthen my weaknesses. No day has ever been a bore and I’d choose this road again and again, it’s an amazing community to be a part of!

The steps I took to get to the position I’m in now, was to get a college degree and be open to any and all opportunities until I found the best fit for myself, keeping an open mind and heart. If I knew what my daily life would be like back then, I would have taken more business and management classes, social media courses, attended more leadership conferences and received as much education in this field as possible.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Jess, I am a musician and artist and I get fulfillment from being a connector in my community and making a difference! I am the studio manager at Music Maker Workshops in Ahwatukee, Arizona. This music lesson studio is a women-led, family owned and operated music lesson school that has been serving the community for the past 25 years!

Kids, teens and adults are encouraged to not only learn music but learn to love music. What set us apart from other schools is the supportive and positive environment we’ve cultivated, and opportunities the students at the school have access to. We create fun studio wide monthly practice incentives, provide performance opportunities around the valley, host monthly jam nights, recording sessions, camps throughout the year. Every year the studio has been operating we’ve taken feedback to heart and worked to improve the students’ experience, striving to inspire and make a difference in each students lives!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Our social media has gradually gained traction over time. We stick with posts that our audience will resonate with, and that have to do with the business subject matter. By only viewing any 3 posts, the viewer should know what the business is about so it’s important to take time to post quality posts in the main feed. Quality over quantity. We’ve amped up our reels and stories and try to make them interactive, a few examples are asking followers questions in posts, promoting “tag Tuesday” and featuring follower photos, letting our them choose songs they’d like our teachers to play or even posting an “ask us anything” in the stories. We post daily and try to make sure there’s a mixture of light posts, meaningful, entertaining, educational and informative so we’re resonating with a wide variety of folks.

For anyone just starting out, make sure you follow accounts that would be a good audience and applicable to your business, a good model, or even may have posts you can reshare. I always keep the number we follow below the number of followers. Tag accounts in your posts and this helps drive traffic to your account, also comment on the accounts you follow that may have followers that would be prone to adding your page – in no time the number of followers will climb.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

In order to best support creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem, we need to make sure it’s accessible to all young minds, no matter the location or community. Schools are increasingly pulling funding for their arts programs, but what is forgotten is that involvement in the arts helps in a lot of other integral areas of studies like math, science, language and often receive higher test scores, in addition to helping build confidence, discipline and a sense of community. Going to live shows and supporting artists, purchasing music and art, supporting local artists, all of these things help a creative community thrive.

Contact Info:

• Website: mmwaz.com
• Instagram: musicmakerworkshops
• Facebook: musicmakerworkshops
• Linkedin: musicmakerworkshops
• Youtube: musicmakerworkshops
• Other: Pinterest @musicmakerworkshops

Image Credits
Jess Magee