Archive for the ‘Seminar Info’ Category

Seminar A: Business Plan

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

How to Sustain a Well-Tuned Business Plan

We are excited to launch a new seminar geared toward the needs of advanced young artists and emerging professional singers. During the seminar, each singer will create a career “business plan” and commit to a schedule to revise and refine. The session is designed to take an intimidating and often stressful process and make it practical and accessible to even the busiest of emerging professional singers.

This seminar has been a work in progress for some time, and we have gathered the input and feedback of so many educators and professionals. A special thank you goes out to educator Dr. Dana Brown, mezzo-soprano and career consultant Dorothy Byrne, and consultant Mislav Kos.

The Details:

Target: For advanced young artists and emerging professionals.

Honorarium: Please email info@velvetsinger.com for pricing.

Duration: The seminar is designed to last two and a half (2.5) hours.

Workbook: The seminar uses a customized workbook, which provides an efficient and practical platform for rich discussion. Please Download the Workbook completed with example answers.

Objective: The seminar helps singers create a career business plan and adopt a continual process for refining their plans going forward.

Impact: Singers will leave the session with a dramatically improved sense of self-awareness and empowerment over their path. The seminar begins by discussing the relevant issues a well-crafted plan is designed to help solve.

Integration: Some singers may have previously drafted a business plan through school or privately. We will build off of those experiences and integrate our work into one process.

Singers will:

  • Assess strengths / weaknesses
  • Identify / mitigate risks
  • Analyze priorities
  • Define and rank goals
  • Create a marketing strategy
  • Articulate core values
  • Compose a career vision and mission statement
  • Create a schedule to revisit / refine

Workbook with Example Answers

Click on any page to pop open a larger view.

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Seminar B: Organization Strategies

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

From Dissonance To Harmony: Strategies For Organizing Your Career

The objective of the seminar is to help equip classical singers to gain long-term professional fulfillment through the discipline of career self-management. Getting and staying organized is the key to being empowered, positive, and ready to move up to the next stage. In this seminar, singers establish the core administrative and technology skills that lead to success.

The Details:

Target: For students and young artists.

Honorarium: Please email info@velvetsinger.com for pricing.

Duration: The seminar is designed to last two and a half (2.5) hours.

Workbook: The seminar uses a customized workbook, which provides an efficient and practical platform for rich discussion. Please Download the Workbook completed with example answers.

Objective: The seminar focuses on cutting edge technology, planning and organizational skills. Rather than asking “top-down” open-ended questions, this seminar is a “bottom-up” equipping experience. Getting and staying organized is the key to being empowered, positive, and ready to move up to the next stage, and technology can help.

Impact: Each singer leaves with a tangible plan in place. After establishing a priorities list and aligning goals, the seminar culminates in a proclamation of one “action item” from each singer. We make an audio recording of the action items and then email each individual clip following the seminar.

Technology: Participants should bring their laptop computers. They will learn how to take full advantage of several cutting-edge tools including Google Alerts and OperaBase. Attendees will also earn a free trial of Velvet Singer Software and receive hands-on training during the workshop.

Singers will learn:

  • How to run an effective freelance business
  • What information to track in a professional journal
  • How to develop priorities, goals, and action items
  • How to maintain organization over the long-term

Workbook with Example Answers

Click on any page to pop open a larger view.

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Pathways and Agency — How To Ignite Critical Thinking

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

In administering the Self-Management Questionnaire to literally hundreds of singers, I discovered that most singers have a very long list of activities that they “would like to do, but don’t.” Why is that? Why do singers experience such intense disorganization resulting in frustration and hopelessness? Can we do anything to help?

A study on “Hope Therapy” written about in Medical News Today claims that hope is a very high predictor of long-term fulfillment and general well-being. In the study, Jennifer Cheavens, assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University found that hope is something that can be learned and in turn, something that can be taught.

So what is hope? Different than blanket optimism, hope is a realistic expectation of satisfaction through developing and working toward goals. It sounds complex, but it can be made simple. Be goal-oriented. Enjoy the process. Do the little things. Stay flexible.

Then how do we teach “hope?” Hopeful people tend to have both high “pathways” thinking (the ability to generate options) and high “agency” (the will or motivation to pursue those options). Singers as with all free-lance artists tend to fall into one of these four types:

Agency
Low High
Pathways High Scattered Savvy
Low Entrenched Inflexible
  • Scattered – Delightfully excited about singing yet lacks a certain focus to deliver consistently.
  • Savvy – Stays aware of options and practices well. They are very “teachable” and leave good impressions.
  • Entrenched – Worries about the future affect their motivation and ability to enjoy the process.
  • Inflexible – Puts in the hours toward a specific vision and tends to be grumpy outside of their comfort zone.

Velvet Singer seminars help the scattered find focus, shows new options to the inflexible, gives the entrenched the tools to dig out, and makes the savvy more efficient.

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