We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christina Craig Gentzsch a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Christina, appreciate you joining us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
I am extremely fulfilled as an artist and creative, and I’m grateful for the successes I have cultivated since leaving my “regular job.”
I’ve had the traditional 9-5 job. I thought it was great at first because, right out of grad school, I had consistent income and health insurance, and a 401K provided through my employer. At the time this is what I thought being successful meant. From a financial standpoint, it was very practical and safe. The stability and comfort were really challenging to leave, but I was put in a situation where the company told me they couldn’t afford to keep me on and they let me go. Initially, the loss of the 9-5 was a big blow to my ego, but it gave me the opportunity to really build my teaching studio and commit myself to being a full-time musician. When I was able to achieve stability and fulfillment as a full-time musician, I was immensely happier. A company no longer decided what I was worth, I decided what I was worth. I discovered considerably more freedom with my time which is something I value! I gained the ability to grow my studio and make just as much money being my own boss as I was working the “traditional” job while working only half as many hours.
Every now and then I do think about doing the traditional career path again. This usually happens when my teaching load is a little light or I’m a little low on gigs. It’s so easy to fall into the mindset of “it would just be easier and more predictable,” but then I think of all the freedom I would sacrifice. Freedom to set my schedule, freedom to decide how much money I want to make, and freedom to decide who I want to work with. The idea of losing that freedom is actually more stressful for me than having an income that fluctuates throughout the year. When I truly understand that flexibility and freedom are more beneficial for me than easy financial stability, I get inspired to try new artistic ventures and push myself in new directions. What opportunities am I not taking? What opportunities can I create? I take some deep breaths, do some meditating and manifesting and really put out into the universe what I want, then I get my booty in gear.
Christina, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I was raised in a small town in southwest Kansas. At the time, it was definitely a community that was in its own little bubble. It was a town of 35,000 people and was the largest town within a four-hour driving radius if that helps to give some perspective. I started playing cello at age 10 in the public school orchestra and based on what I was exposed to, I believed public school elementary education was how every musician started their musical artistic journey. It didn’t really occur to me until high school that taking music lessons outside of school was an additional opportunity that was available. I eventually took some private cello lessons during my senior year of high school, but I had to drive four hours one way to get my instruction. I went to college for cello performance and quickly learned how much I had yet to learn about the music world. I wasn’t discouraged. I did my best, practiced, studied, and eventually earned my Master’s degree in cello performance. I was only successful because I had some great mentors along the way. I also had some not-so-great mentors along the way, I just learned different lessons about life from those individuals.
The timeline and process of becoming a full-time cellist and business owner have been a rollercoaster of obstacles, emotions, and learning. I wouldn’t be doing what I am now if I hadn’t taken each obstacle as an opportunity to try something new.
Teaching lessons was something I did as a part-time job in college along with taking the occasional symphony gig. It came naturally to me, I loved my students and I loved playing. These never seemed like a “real job” to me though. After I graduated, I took a full-time traditional job but kept teaching and gigging on the side. In dedicating all of my time and effort to the full-time traditional job, I was burned out by the end of the day and started dreading teaching lessons and going to rehearsals. The burnout was a big moment for me, I realized I wasn’t fulfilled in a traditional work environment. Why was a job I felt I needed to have for stability making me dread doing the job I knew would fulfill me? Luckily, the company and I parted ways, and I took the opportunity and decided to make “Cellist” my full-time job title. This leap turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. Thank you universe!
Then 2020 happened… uffda, that was rough for all of us. I couldn’t teach my students in person, there were no live performances. I used the opportunity to utilize technology and teach virtual lessons, something I had previously been adamantly against. I even got comfortable doing asynchronous lessons. I decided to get creative and try my hand at playing cello and singing at the same time. That was a huge challenge, but I was proud of myself for trying something new. As terrible as living through a pandemic was, it put me in a situation where I could really grow my studio and offer opportunities that I hadn’t previously been able to do.
After a year of pandemic life, the facility where I had been renting space to teach lessons changed their operating agreement with their private lessons contractors. The new agreement wouldn’t allow me to have the freedom that I desired in order to run my studio. So, three other musicians and I got together and founded Dynamic Music Studios, a music school created for musicians, by musicians. We used this as an opportunity to create music space, not just for ourselves, but for the community as well. I like to think of us as a music hub. We offer a cooperative partnership with independent music teachers where they can rent studio space and be involved in our studio events while encouraging the autonomy of their private practices. We also understand that, over the pandemic, musicians invested a lot in their private home studios with technology, sheet music, sound equipment, soundproofing, etc. and they want to use the space they invested in and we want them to use it too! However, operating a home studio can have its challenges with basic things like marketing, recruitment, recital coordination, and possible group lessons. Our cooperative partnership has resources for those musicians as well! Our goal was to create opportunities for collaborations for students, teachers, and musicians and I feel like we have done an amazing job of doing that in a little over a year.
Creating Dynamic Music Studios was a huge undertaking, but it was a great learning experience and sparked an interest in business ownership and entrepreneurial motivation. Artists must continuously think of new things that they can offer the community and what I can do personally as an independent musician is grow my personal offerings. There are so many opportunities with blogs, TikTok, and social media reels. I’m currently in the process of creating a video subscription series for lessons. Thinking of the demographic where I grew up as a kid, I don’t want young musicians to be limited in what they can achieve because they don’t have access to private lessons. How much relief would the orchestra teacher have if students had that extra instruction available to them? Or, what about the adult student that has a full-time job or a family and finding time for lessons doesn’t fit in the conventional time frame? What if they could learn music when they wanted and where they wanted to fit their lifestyles? I don’t want anyone to not pursue music, simply because they don’t have access to what they need. If I can help them, I will find a way to do so!
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
Oh my goodness, there is a list! I have a high-energy dog that requires long walks every day, so I’m constantly listening to audiobooks and podcasts.
When it comes to focusing on myself and my goals:
You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
The Law of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks (also any of their YouTube videos with “Abraham” Hicks)
Unf*ck Your Life podcast hosted by Lisa Grunden
Where Do We Begin podcast hosted by Esther Perel
Re-Thinking podcast hosted by Adam Grant
When it comes to strategizing for business inspiration and growth:
You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
9 to 5ish podcast hosted by The Skimm
The Real Estate InvestHER Show podcast by Liz Faircloth and Andresa Guidelli
How’s Work podcast hosted by Esther Perel
WorkLife podcast hosted by Adam Grant
Apologies for the language in some of the titles. Sometimes, it just feels good to let those words rip and it gets down to the meat of things. Jen Sincero is a brilliant writer and she narrates all of her books when you have the audio version. She is funny and real and I always have moments in her books where I think to myself “I thought I was the only person that felt that way or struggled with this!” Esther Perel and Adam Grant are both psychologists. Esther focuses on relationships and working on the concept that there is no right or wrong, it’s “both and…” Adam is an organizational psychologist and his podcast WorkLife talks about the day-to-day things that we struggle with at work and how to make them suck less. 9 to 5ish and The Real Estate InvestHer Show podcasts are fantastic for encouraging women entrepreneurs and giving insight from real women that have created great careers for themselves and sharing their struggles to get to where they are. The others have really helped me get my mind and my energy going in the direction that is best for me. People joke about mind over matter, but there is a lot to be said about getting your thoughts and intentions aligned and seeing the results.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
This is going to sound crazy, but I really struggled to unlearn the idea that you were only a “real” musician if you were poor and living in the big city. Now, what do I mean by “real”? Most everyone is familiar with the starving artist character or the story of the small-town kid that couldn’t live their dream until they made it to New York. There is so much glamor associated with that character and that storyline. I am comfortably living in a small midwest college town, creating music, inspiring young musicians, and successfully supporting the arts in this community. However, there was a long time when I kept thinking to myself “it’s not good enough because you aren’t in Chicago like that musician someone else mentioned, or in New York like that former classmate from graduate school.” It’s a really terrible feeling to be successful, but not feel like a legit professional in your industry because you aren’t selling your soul to take any kind of paying gig and driving six hours five days a week only to barely make your monthly rent in Chicago or out on the coast. It took a lot of meditation and some good therapy to get to a place where I believed in myself and valued what I have to give to the world. Comparing my successes to others was not healthy. I am not them, they are not me. I am my own person with different experiences and talents, I am exactly where I need to be for me. I don’t need to fit into any kind of predetermined image that had been ingrained in me from my past. No one can determine my worth or my success except for myself. I’m really proud of what I have created and accomplished, and I’m proud of the life I live and the artist that I am.
Contact Info:
- Website: christinacgcello.com
- Instagram: christinacgcello
- Facebook: Christina Gentzsch – Cellist
- Linkedin: Christina Gentzsch
- Other: dynamicmusicstidiosia.com
Image Credits
Heather Henning with CliftonMarie, Photography Danielle Brunk