We were lucky to catch up with Chris Vazquez recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Chris, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Successful businesses are built on an actionable mission. Finding this mission and fine-tuning it to a place where it can be easily remembered, understood, and acted on takes time. When I started my first business, the idea popped into my head one night and I couldn’t shake it. It’s fair to say I never forgot it. However, boiling all that inspiration down into a single mission proved to be very difficult. When SoundLife Music Academy first opened in 2014, our mission was convoluted and overly verbose. As a result, it was very difficult to translate our passion and vision to our customers. It wasn’t until we learned how to clearly develop and articulate our mission that we saw true progress and growth in our business.

Today, our mission can be found everywhere—on our website, in our emails, and pretty much anywhere you see, hear, or feel the presence of our brand. SoundLife is an in-home performance-based music program. Our mission is “to instill creativity and confidence through music.” Everything we do is through this lens. When we teach lessons, the goal is not simply to improve one’s skill on an instrument but to enhance one’s sense of self-worth and self-exploration. The instrument is merely a vehicle. This is especially important for our young students, who make up the bulk of our clientele. This mission extends far beyond teachers giving private lessons; it includes our administrative staff, partners, and executive leadership. Everyone operates under one goal: to unlock creativity and strengthen confidence in each individual through every point of contact.

Using this template, I also helped shape the mission for another business I’m a partner in, GB Entertainment. This company focuses on providing jazz for private events. Initially, our mission was overly verbose and lacked clarity. However, after diving into the business and its goals, my partner and I emerged with a simpler, more straightforward, and actionable mission. GB Entertainment’s mission today is “to provide our clients with the perfect ambiance for their event.”

One of the tricks when finding an actionable mission is to imagine your business not as it is or as you see it in your mind, but as if it is something separate from you in the future. Imagine that you are no longer working in or on the business but have stepped away from it. Imagine it isn’t your business at all but a business that you frequent. Through this lens, we can broaden our scope and avoid using descriptive language that might limit us or get in the way of our true goal. Is the end goal to deliver goods or services, or is it to deliver something more? What is that “more”? With a successful mission, a person should be able to ask themselves, “Did I act within my/our mission?”

A mission statement is not just reserved for the small business owner or entrepreneur. I believe a mission statement is crucial for any individual. This could be called a personal mission statement. My personal mission is “to change the artist’s story.” This mission is my purpose. It is what wakes me up in the morning and guides how I relate to my wife, kids, and coworkers. I not only want to do things that help liberate creatives across all fields, but I want to embody that in my own life. To me, this means learning as much as I can about how to grow spiritually, financially, socially, physically, and mentally. Just like in my businesses, this mission started out much longer and more narrow, but as I thought about and expressed my thoughts on this subject, the true mission came to light.

Creatives in our society are essential yet grossly undervalued. They are often seen as unreliable, unprofessional, and sometimes even untrustworthy. How often have we seen the image of the impoverished, despondent musician? Too often. Choosing a less-traveled road is hard enough without the bias and doubt that society adds. I believe it is essential to not only live a balanced life but to help others achieve their own sense of balance and stability. Every artist who works, achieves their goals, and contributes meaningfully to their community and society at large helps change the narrative. That is what I want to be a part of.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I currently serve as the Program Director for SoundLife Music Academy, an in-home, performance-based music school that I co-founded in 2014 with one of my best friends, Michael Torres. In this role, I match students with teachers, create and optimize our workshops, in-lesson experiences, and performance opportunities, and manage student growth.

I also serve as the Operations Manager for GB Entertainment, a company I co-own with another close friend, Max Benson. In this role, I develop and manage systems that help the business operate seamlessly on a day-to-day basis. Over time, these systems improve our client and contractor experience while streamlining workflows for our staff.

Both of these roles are rooted in my journey as a session musician in Los Angeles, which began nearly three decades ago with guitar lessons in the back of a music store in Dundalk, Maryland. From there, I attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, a high school centered around arts education, and later graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston in 2007 with a degree in Music Performance. For the next 10 years, I immersed myself in the Los Angeles pop scene, touring around the world. To date, this love affair with my guitar has taken me to over 70 countries across nearly every continent, and to every state in the U.S. except one—I’m still missing Wyoming.

Beyond my work with the companies I co-own, I remain an active performing musician. For the past six years, I’ve had the privilege of working with Air Supply in a subbing capacity that fits my schedule and needs perfectly. The difference now, compared to when I was in my late 20s and early 30s, is that I can pick and choose the work I take. This is something I spent many years working toward. For a long time, I was the person taking every gig, every audition everywhere, for everyone, and for pretty much anything. Fortunately, I had amazing role models who helped guide me in the right direction, leading to my interest in entrepreneurship.

As I mentioned, my mission is to change the artist’s story. I love sharing my experiences and insights in the hope that they might help artists of all kinds develop their own sense of control over their destiny. Speaking with teens and young adults who dream of one day making a career for themselves in the arts is something I am incredibly passionate about. Any success I’ve had wouldn’t have been possible without the guidance of strong mentors, and I aim to give back as much as I can. Witnessing the impact SoundLife has on the students and families we serve, seeing the contractors at GB Entertainment thrive, watching our clients smile, and connecting with audiences from the stage—these are all part of my mission. Living that mission every day and setting that example for my own children is what I am most proud of.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Any working artist will tell you that reputation is everything. As a guitarist in Los Angeles, simply playing an instrument is the least impressive thing about me. This city is brimming with incredible musicians of every size, shape, age, and style. When you walk into an audition here, thinking you’ll win the gig by being better than someone else is naive.

What truly wins the audition is being better at playing the game. So, what is the game? The game is being played all the time, everywhere, no matter your career. It encompasses all the little things within your control. As a musician going into an audition, your gear, preparation, and relationships with the people in and at the audition are all part of the game. How you dress, especially in relation to the artist you’re auditioning for, is part of the game. Your demeanor during the audition, how you relate to other musicians, and how you interact with people in the room—all of this is part of the game. Even the rapport you create with other musicians in the hallway before and after the audition is part of the game. Learning to play this game is like any other skill—you practice, apply, and repeat.

When I began my career in my early 20s, I was terrible at playing the game. I was self-focused, self-centered, and deeply insecure. I was so inwardly focused that no matter how good I was at my craft, I could never make the impression I wanted because I was too absorbed in myself. The biggest hack in the game is to look at everything you do through the lens of service. How can I help? What can I offer? What is needed?

When someone is able to shift their perspective and relate to the world through the eyes of service, success becomes inevitable. When I made this shift, everything changed. I became known as someone reliable, easy to work with, fun, adventurous, and most importantly, someone who knows how to be part of a team.

As the years went by, my personal reputation helped open doors for my businesses. My business partners wouldn’t have teamed up with me had I not learned to play the game. They wouldn’t have trusted me, nor would they have had any reason to be excited about working with me.

At SoundLife Music Academy and GB Entertainment, we apply the same philosophy to build strong reputations with our clients. We are here to serve. We are here to serve our clients, our contractors, and most importantly, our mission.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

It’s no secret that word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow your business. But more than that, growing your business through referrals means providing a service that consistently exceeds client expectations.

As a musician, working by referral is directly tied to building a strong reputation. It’s about playing the game. Beyond just showing up and doing your best, it’s about leveraging your strengths, protecting your weaknesses, and being as effective as possible in both supporting those around you and meeting their needs. To do this effectively, I realized that I couldn’t be everything to everyone. I needed to understand my strengths and weaknesses, then focus on amplifying those strengths and shielding myself from those weaknesses. This process took time, but I accelerated it by seizing every opportunity and forging strong relationships with everyone I encountered. Had I been passive, this progress would have been much slower, if it happened at all.

When we started SoundLife, we went through a similar process. In the first few years, we worked hard to spread the word and enlisted the help of those we knew. However, growth was slow. It took about four years to clearly identify our mission and leverage our strengths to serve that mission. Once we did, we could exceed customer expectations, clearly define our brand, and effectively communicate what makes us unique.

The same approach applied to GB Entertainment. Our client base grew initially through the trust of agencies that subcontracted our groups. Established agencies would never subcontract an artist or group they weren’t confident could deliver a service that exceeded client expectations. Building that reputation requires consistency. One mistake could set a company or individual back by months because every touchpoint is an opportunity to build trust. Trust takes time to build, but can be destroyed in an instant.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.soundlifelessons.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soundlifelessons
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soundlifelessons
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-vazquez-79a973a5
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/soundlifelessons
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/soundlife-music-academy-los-angeles-2
• Other: www.gbjazz.com
  www.instagram.com/gb_entertainment_

Image Credits

@indulgent life photography
@delia bush photography