We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matt & Laurel Trost. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matt & Laurel below.

Hi Matt & Laurel , thanks for joining 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?

Working full-time as professional musicians has its ups and downs. Laurel and I lucky to be making a full-time living from our creative work, however it hasn’t always been easy and it wasn’t always this way.

Both Laurel and I worked casually as musicians prior to meeting in 2014. In 2014, we realized we weren’t interested in the 9-5 grind and wanted to pursue our passions in music together. We both began hustling after and before work as an acoustic duo.

Over the years, we slowly built our music business. We learned songs from a variety of genres to keep things fresh and have something for everyone; We looked past the Twin Cities to more rural areas for gigs in an effort to expand our reach and be a bigger fish in small pond; and we spammed the hell out of our social pages. Laurel would send 25 emails a week at the beginning and eventually 50-100 per week when leaving her day job. It was a numbers game. We knew this. We needed to get our name out there to as many people as possible. We wanted to share our music and spread a little kindness.

We had a dream to work full-time and we were doing everything we could to make it happen, even if it meant our sanity.

To be honest – we thought about giving up a lot. It was exhausting living two lives. One during the day, one at night and on the weekends. But slowly but surely we started making enough $ to think about quitting our jobs. We knew it would have to come in phases, if we were being realistic.

Laurel left the 9-5 grind first in January of 2020. She hit the ground running and booked us solid for summer 2020. Then the pandemic hit and it all went to hell.

Needless to say, it was a tough few years for all of us. We had spent years building our brand, creating awareness for our music and everything halted.

So we reinvented ourselves and did weekly live-streams that ended up reaching over 10,000 people. We still have people come up to us today and tell us they would tune in on nights we performed. It was our way of staying connected with everyone when the whole world was disconnected. And for that – we’re grateful. It also made us learn and adapt on a regular basis, grow our technology skills and forced us to connect with people in new ways.

One of the things we did during the pandemic was also try to stay connected to our venues we had worked with. It was important to us to keep the relationship going and to especially let them know that we were all in this together. Hopefully when the time was right to book again, they’d have us on top of mind.

But the no money part was difficult. And getting back to performing after a summer off was hard on our bodies. Plus, venues were now working with depleted budgets. They had been hit hard by the pandemic too. Everything was against us but we knew we could do this if we could just get our foot back in the door.

We hit the ground running again and started emailing our previous venue contacts and new ones. We spammed social media. We looked beyond the Twin Cities and also offered negotiated rates and the ability to be flexible. Bar and venue managers appreciated our willingness to be flexible and started booking us again.

After a fairly successful 2021, I left my full time job and opened up our second business – an online sports card shop called Dynasty Comics, Cards & Collectibles. We were now full-time entrepreneurs working as professional musicians and business owners, and honestly we still can’t believe it.

We were barely making it but we had to try to live this new life and adventure. For the first time in 6 years, my wife and I were also now on the same schedule.

We worked tirelessly over the last 18 months building back our brands and feel grateful to be 50% booked for our 2023 season already. Because of our efforts from the very beginning on social media, our willingness to travel a little further and our often persistent communication, we have a fan base that now expands through the entire globe. We’ve received opportunities to work for large corporations, beautiful wedding celebrations and even a national sports team. We negotiate rates on the daily, but our base rates have gone up as our experience and talent has also grown. We’ve built a little credibility in the industry and feel much more established than when we first started.

We believe that’s due to our flexibility with rates, willingness to travel and our communication. Oh, and also our music we hope!

Often times we wonder if we could’ve gotten here sooner. We probably could have if we stuck to our guns and refused to negotiate prices, or only took gigs that served us. But we aren’t like that as people, and we weren’t going to build a business that hurt other people’s bottom line or business either. We strive to work with people and businesses, not against them. We believe in transparent communication and respect. If you have that, you’ll go far.

Matt & Laurel , 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?

We’re a husband and wife acoustic duo based out of the Twin Cities. We perform over 200 shows a year throughout the Midwest and play a variety of genres over 8 decades. We have a soft spot for the 80s, 90s and 2000s so you’ll hear plenty of that.

We also love to add a little humor and banter in our act. Since we’re married, there is no shortage of fun and laughter.

We work full-time as musicians and entrepreneurs, also owning an online sports card shop, Dynasty Comics, Cards & Collectibles.

We provide music for public shows at wineries, breweries, bars, city festivals and more. We also provide private music for weddings, corporate events and more.

Laurel and I strive to make you feel something with our music. We believe music had the power to do that, and if we all feel a little more, we will become more in touch with ourselves and the world around us. Feeling our feelings big and small creates room for empathy and growth. We truly do what we do to hopefully be a bright spot in your world and help you feel all the feelings around you.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect is being able to do what we love and make money doing it. It’s a job to some, but to us it’s our life. And to do it with my wife is icing on the cake.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Society could benefit from more empathy, understanding and open-mindedness. Often we get sucked into our own lives and forget that others walk different journeys. Musicians and creatives want to be treated just as you treat your accountant next door. We just want to be seen as a legitimate career. Just because it’s our passion doesn’t mean it’s not work and it’s not difficult. It takes practice and effort just as others living and working a 9-5 job do.

We are all equally important, and we must remember that we all bring value to our community, and especially deserve to be respected and paid for that value. Musicians are no different.

Contact Info:

• Website: Mattandlaurelmusic.com
• Instagram: @mattandlaurel
• Facebook: @mattandlaurel
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCtPDmamEcaLqJAGE6qro_BA
• Other: [email protected]