We were lucky to catch up with Kaylee Flores recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Kaylee thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with a fun one – what’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?
Something a lot of people would disagree with me on is that you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do. In your career and in your personal life, you can make the decision to only take on projects, responsibilities, relationships, and obligations that help you grow and don’t weigh you down. I say this not to shame people for continuing going to jobs they hate or staying in relationships they’re unhappy in, but to empower them to take charge of their lives, realistically weigh the consequences of their choices, and start saying no to things that don’t serve them. Our culture pushes this idea that we have to go through really hard times or some level of exploitation at one point or another in order to be valued and fairly compensated in our professions and even partnerships. In the last couple years I started to realize who that idea really benefits, and it’s certainly not your typical employees working themselves to the bone in hopes of a promotion one day, or the person who gives their all to their partner who will never fully value or appreciate the effort.
As a musician and creative, I’d be asked to do free performances all the time, and a lot of industry “professionals” will say you have to do this kind of work in order to make it anywhere. But who’s telling us this? The people who benefit from our free labor, right? I just stopped doing those gigs unless it was for a cause I believed in, because as a sole proprietor, my time is really needed and more valuable in so many other places. In turn, I started seeing a lot less unpaid work being asked of me and an abundance of paid opportunities for various projects come my way.
The belief that you have to willingly be exploited to move up in the world is bound to bleed into our personal lives, which becomes really unhealthy for us and the relationships we form. Once I graduated and truly only had to work and take care of myself, I had no excuses for doing things that made me unhappy. I realized that being around people I didn’t like, answering every phone call and senseless message, and accepting responsibilities I didn’t have the capacity for, didn’t actually make me the good person I was trying to be. If anything, it made me unfairly resentful of people who were simply expressing their needs. It’s okay if our inability to meet others’ needs disappoints them; people are capable of handling disappointment. Everything changed when I realized my own needs and boundaries were worth stating and enforcing too, and the people I choose to keep in my life are deserving of that honesty from me.
Most recently, during the release of my self-produced debut single “A Time,” a song about power and accepting truth, it started to really set in how much power and control I have over my decisions and how I choose to pursue my everyday life. I decided to be really intentional about who I allow to have access to me and what I invest my time and energy in. It is a daily practice to maintain this mindset, but it has drastically improved how secure I feel in my relationships and how well I show up for others and myself.
Kaylee, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Kaylee Flores and I’m a singer-songwriter, producer, composer, audio engineer, musician, public notary, and general creative. For as long as I can remember I was taught piano by my mother, so I grew up learning and composing music. It wasn’t until I was a teenager though that I started really identifying as a singer-songwriter, began performing my own sets and shows, and would daydream of producing an album one day.
I’ve known two things since I was a kid: I wanted to be a musician and I wanted to own my own business. I had a really complicated and turbulent upbringing, so music was as much as a therapeutic need for me as it was a passion. Working full-time and being financially independent as a teenager only emphasized to me that the only way I’d have significant time for my music goals was by being self-employed or making music my job. For many reasons and because I wanted to start my career as soon as possible, I graduated high school and college early while songwriting, performing regularly, and learning various skills across a multitude of industries. With hopes of being a songwriter for a publishing company or producing music, I earned my Bachelor’s in Recording Industry Management with a concentration in Commercial Songwriting and a minor in Entrepreneurship. As life would have it, I graduated college less than a year before the pandemic. After years of job applications, hundreds of rejections, having recorded music with no time to produce, and almost a decade of working full-time in the service industry, I decided it was time to take my career into my own hands.
In the summer of 2022, I quit my full-time job and within months I produced and released my debut single “A Time,” a song I wrote about a battle with power, control, and the truth, and shortly after I released my debut music video to “A Time.” I am extremely proud of the amazing effort that went into this project that was so personal and healing for me. My entire team behind the song and music video went above and beyond to create something incredible. Since its release, I’ve played a music festival, had a performance that aired on Nashville public television, and spent the last year producing more music with upcoming plans to release my debut album.
As I had just left my job and was preparing my first release, I knew in my heart that it was time for me to pursue entrepreneurship like I had always envisioned for myself. That summer, I founded Go Big Sounds, a sole proprietorship that offers creative and professional solutions. Go Big Sounds is a one stop shop for piano and music lessons, remote and mobile music recording and production, virtual assistance, equipment rental, business plans, resume writing, and so much more.
What makes Go Big Sounds really special is that I’m committed to casually adapting and intentionally evolving with your projects’ goals, needs, and budget. I’m extremely proud of the relationships I’ve built with my clients and students, because we’ve managed to create the professional relationships I always imagined I’d have where we trust, value, and respect each other as humans with everchanging lives and needs. I really don’t like to make a big deal out of things like changing plans or punctuality, so if certain details, deadlines, or schedules change on either of our ends, all that needs to happen is for us to communicate and adjust accordingly. I try and work with everyone, and I’m well aware and sensitive to the impact that adverse life experiences have on how we navigate life in general, but especially social or high pressure situations. I want everyone I work with to always feel at ease, regardless of if they’re 20 minutes late, had to reschedule last minute, or are just having a bad day. Go Big Sounds is a safe place led by love and empathy where I welcome authenticity and vulnerability.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
I’ve always been very vocal in person as well as on my platforms about my experiences and how they shape and affect me to this day, and the things I’ve lived through resonate with a lot of people. I’m upfront about my beliefs, my struggles, my wins, my shortcomings, and my feelings of self-doubt and confidence that swing back and forth like a pendulum. These different aspects of my life heavily influence my songwriting, the people I choose to do business with, and the performances I choose to participate in. I’m committed to protecting myself from being disrespected or exploited, and to only performing and working on production sets with upstanding people. I have and will continue to turn down festivals and shows if I know they have unsafe people on their lineup or staff.
People know they can expect honesty and the truth from me, and like in any relationship, trust is one of the most important aspects of business. I’ve been consistent in building a name for myself within my community through public performances, advocating for progressive political action on the local and federal levels, and simply meeting and connecting with so many people over the years of working in hospitality.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
One of the hardest lessons I had to unlearn has been that everything I do and create must be perfect in order to be valuable. It is a particularly hard lesson to unlearn for those who have endured long term traumatic experiences where our safety was dependent on how well we could execute certain behaviors/personas for whomever required this of us. Perfectionism could sometimes keep me safe in my childhood, but I’ve learned that that may be the most important thing it will ever be able to do for me.
As I carried unattainable expectations with me into adulthood, they not only kept me stagnant and stopped me from pursuing challenges, but they weighed me down with floods of negative feelings anytime I was humanly imperfect. There are so many things I held off for so long due to being scared of not doing it “right” or being a beginner, but just like practicing an instrument, you have to make mistakes and mess up dozens or hundreds or even thousands of times before you ever perform with confidence which, in my opinion, is more important than performing with no mistakes. I knew this growing up playing piano, but it wasn’t until I was an adult that I had the courage to apply it to my own life. I definitely could never have quit my stable full-time job and started a business if I still thought I had to do everything according to a perfectly mapped out plan.
Besides my own past, I feel like a lot of us were socialized at a young age to think we have to be “put together” at all times. Of course, in a life that guarantees unexpected change, this is simply impossible. Thankfully, I do think our culture is starting to shift away from the idea that people have to look or act a certain way beyond just human decency. We’re beginning to collectively acknowledge that there is so much more to life than meeting the unrealistic standards our society puts on us, standards that quite frankly are rooted in white supremacy. Since I started working on unconditionally loving who I am along with the messing up that comes with being human, I learned that there’s a lot of value in our shortcomings, and there are countless more opportunities waiting for me when I subject myself to the possibility of failure than if I had limited myself to only what I’m confident in. The journey has been both beautiful and difficult, but I can now see very clearly that the growth and knowledge I’ve gained through my trials and errors is what has always led me to success.
Contact Info:
- Website: kayleeflores.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kayleeflorez/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kayleeflo
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaylee-flores-9777261b7/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kayleeflorez
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYbeY_nzz5z0eDNXH5ldBVA
- Other: gobigsounds.com
Image Credits
Bad Iguana Productions, Israel Garcia, Sunshine Scott, Corey Scanlon, Mulan Throneberry