从“失败音乐家”到“优秀创业者”（上）From musician to entrepreneur（1）

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从“失败音乐家”到“优秀创业者”（上）From "failed musician" to innovative entrepreneur（1）

CHRIS HATZIS 
Eavesdrop on Experts, a podcast about stories of inspiration and insights. It’swhere expert types obsess, confess and profess. I’m Chris Hatzis, let’seavesdrop on experts changing the world - one lecture, one experiment, oneinterview at a time.

You’re studying to be aclassical musician. You’ve done your training, and you’re pretty good at it,too. But you just miss out on that gig in the orchestra that you wanted so bad,or maybe you don’t quite get to the next stage of your development. Now what?What else can you do with all that knowledge and skill? How do you turn setbackinto success? It’s not really about failure, but more about reassessment,realignment, and reinvention. It's also the realisation that you probablyalready have all the ingredients you need to change and succeed. 

Today we meet a person who hastrodden this very familiar path. Susan de Weger is a French horn player, infact a self-confessed “failed musician”, who sidestepped and went on toestablish a multi-million dollar IT consulting practice in Europe. Shesidestepped again and found her way back to Australia, and is now associatelecturer in Music Entrepreneurship at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music atthe University of Melbourne.

Completing a Masters of Music inPerformance at the Conservatorium as a mature-age student sparked Susan’spassion and talent to reframe music education for the 21st century. She alsocreated and heads up IgniteLAB, a world-class professional development programwhich supports students of the Conservatorium to dream and design sustainablecreative careers. Susan is a vocal and passionate advocate for entrepreneurshipand innovation; a living, breathing example of the transferability of musiceducation to success across industries.

Susan de Weger took some timeout to chat to our reporter Dr Andi Horvath about her life, her choices and herwork.

ANDI HORVATH 
Let's start at the beginning, Susan. Tell us about the French horn playerstudying in the music faculty.

SUSAN DE WEGER 
Andi, I grew up playing in brass bands, which a lot of brass musicians do, withmy dad and my sister, and that's what music making was for me, it wasn't aboutnecessarily high-level orchestral aspirations of winning a job in an orchestra,it was really about making music with other people. I was very fortunate to getan offer to go do an undergraduate degree at a conservatorium and went in thereand had a really good experience making lots of music with other people butknew that making music is only part of the job of a professional musician, andall the other parts of it like the high-level performing that's incrediblystressful, that was really not the right part of the world for me.

So, I looked - it was thinkingabout how I could use my musical training to be involved in music but thatwasn't high-level performance in an orchestra because at that point that wasreally all that was presented to young musicians about an outcome out of amusic degree was a job in an orchestra. I'd been lucky to be involved in doinga bit of box office management and stage management as a side gig when I was astudent and could see that there was a lot that went on in the back end ofputting performances on and was lucky enough to have a realisation at thatstage that I was good at organising things, there was probably opportunity forpeople who were good at organising things and I was really passionate aboutmaking music and helping musicians.

That was where I thought I wasgoing to go when I finished my degree, but I failed my first attempt at that degree,which is not an uncommon thing to do, and was really left at that point prettyadrift about who I was as an artist, because I wanted to remain a performer buta performer in a way that was about making music in the community and beinginvolved in putting stuff on rather than high-level professional orchestralexperiences.

ANDI HORVATH 
So, you felt like a failed musician?

SUSAN DE WEGER 
I was a failed musician, and this happens a lot and it's not just forperformers. I think it happens a lot for young people, is their self-identityand their professional identity are really mushed together and it's very hardfor them to separate those two things. My thinking went along the lines of“I've failed my music degree, I am a failure”, and that was really the internalstory that stuck with me for the next 16 or 17 years - that I was a failedmusician. It was so bad at that point that I actually had to walk away frommusic altogether.

ANDI HORVATH 
You told me earlier you become the story you tell yourself.

SUSAN DE WEGER 
Mm.

ANDI HORVATH 
That's what happened.

SUSAN DE WEGER 
It was, yeah, and I didn't have anyone who had a broader experience of whatemployment in music could be to say to me hey, it's okay. It's okay to not wantto be a professional performer, there's lots of other opportunity for peoplewith music degrees, not only in music but outside of music because the kind oftraining we have is really distinctive and unique and the way we think isreally original. Yeah, and I just didn't have anyone who had that sort ofexpertise to be able to guide me.

ANDI HORVATH 
You know what, I think we're birds of a feather because I felt the same, exceptI was a failed scientist, and so the same deal. I was lost at sea with what doI do with all this science, so what did you do with all that music? You saidyou left it behind; where did you go to next?

SUSAN DE WEGER 
I actually moved interstate, I had to get out of Dodge [laughs]. I had to getaway from the life - all the cues that were surrounding me about failure, whichwere really strong, so I had to get out of town. Again, this is a very commonstory, it still happens, I see it in students all the time. I ended up gettinga job producing an event called the Rock Eisteddfod which was a pretty bigevent in the '90s in Australia. Many of us would have seen the TV specials,Sydney Entertainment Centre, and I got into large-scale tour management becausethat was involved in the music industry. It was involved with working with verycreative people, it was organising very complicated things, so it was all thestuff I thought I wanted to do for orchestras but ended up doing it in more ofa commercial sector.

ANDI HORVATH 
Wow.

SUSAN DE WEGER 
That was really exciting, I got to tour around Australia and I got to createthis event for Indigenous communities in the far north of Queensland which wasthe biggest scale live event that had been put on in that part of the world. Wehad the Governor-General coming in a helicopter and we had broadcast to Channel7, it was super exciting. So, I did all that for a couple of years and then Iwas very lucky to get offered the opportunity to go to the UK and be themanager of that business as well as the producer. I did that for a little bitlonger and introduced the event into Northern Ireland.

I was very lucky, I had to workwith the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a lot of health and social justice issuesand education, so it was a really broad opportunity to see hey, my training isreally incredibly valuable to do all this other stuff and it's given me greatskills like I can listen really well, I can put myself in other people's pointof views. I was starting at that point to get a gist of actually I've reallynot just been taught to train [sic] the French horn, my mind has been trainedto think in quite a distinctive way.

Then I was pretty burnt out fromtouring for a while and my business partner had started an IT practice that wasgoing pretty well and they needed a general manager for that and I thought,hey, I'll have a crack at that, that looks okay for me, and ended up gettingstarted with that business. At that point I think there were six staff and thenwe within three years had about 30 staff and a turnover of a couple of millionpounds with clients right across Europe. That's how I ported my music traininginto business was that I'm good with people, I can listen, I can organisecomplicated things, I don't flap under pressure, because as performing artistsyou can't do that. That's how all of my music training transported into being afounder of this multimillion dollar IT practice.

ANDI HORVATH 
All right. You're in the UK, you're in a multimillion dollar business; how doyou make your way back to a music faculty?

SUSAN DE WEGER 
I had small children at that point and had wanted to come back to Australia somy boys could be educated here. Another amazing opportunity that I was grantedthrough that career was actually negotiating a sale of that business, soworking through the due diligence with the lawyers and the business brokers andbeing acquired, so that acquisition process was really fascinating, actually.So, the business was acquired and I moved back to Australia at that point andwent back to the city where I'd done my undergraduate degree and again had allthese cues coming at me from the Susan who was in the early '90s as anundergraduate degree, and the pain or the needing to resolve this self-identityas a failed musician just became too much.

I also looked at my littlechildren and I thought I need to have a much better attitude to who I am as acreative person than I currently do, because I'm so hard on myself about the -about my creativity and the need to perform and I've just squashed that in abox because two dudes on a panel in 1994 said I was not very good and I choseto believe that. I just thought maybe those dudes weren't right after all, youknow? Maybe 15 minutes of my creative self is not enough to make an accurateassessment about what I'm capable of doing and who the heck makes thesedecisions anyway about what's good or what's good enough instead of - all thatsort of stuff. It was a time for me to come back and really say I just don'twant to have this story going on in my head anymore about that.

So, I picked up the horn and wasnoodling away a little bit in my - it had sat in a cupboard for 16 years on theother side of the world, so I had to get it out and give it a bit ofmaintenance; it was a bit sad [laughs] it had been left alone for a little bitlonger. Then I did an audition and passed an audition to work with theQueensland Symphony Orchestra, so at that point I thought yeah, maybe I canactually play this thing, maybe the dudes were wrong after all and who knowswhat was going on in their world for that 15 minutes 20-something years ago. 
I started working with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and the QueenslandPops Orchestra playing professionally and moved to Melbourne for personalreasons and thought, I don't know why but I just want to go back and study andgo a little bit deeper into what this might be, and so in my early forties withtwo young children I decided to tackle a performance master's degree, which isnot a very common thing to do. I was double the age of everyone else in thatcourse. I didn't know why; it was one of those... just I have to, I don't know,but I know I'm going to figure out because I've been challenged before. I'venot been fearful of challenge and I've not been fearful about discomfort in allmy other career choices, I've been able to stick in that place of being fearfuland unknown and feeling unprepared and unready so I know that I've done it andI know that I can get through it to figure out what's going to happen.

I came back and started myperformance master's degree and on about day two of that journey had this justlightbulb moment where I thought I see now how all the crazy things I've donethat are not connected around the perimeter of the circle are connected to thecentre of the circle by this need to help other people to have - to know whatsuccess could be for them and to equip them with the tools to go do that.That's how all the little bits and pieces fell in the one place. Then I lookedat it and I thought again, there's opportunity, it fits with my personal valuesand I'm really passionate about that thing and so it totally made sense. Yeah,that was a real revelation for me.

ANDI HORVATH 
So, Susan de Weger reinvented herself in this expertise that collectedeverything she'd learnt up until then, and your expertise is of course helpingmusicians become entrepreneurs. Now, in some ways, musicians really arefamiliar with the gig economy. They are familiar with the notion of the sidehustle, that is, being a musician, or the other way around, so they're amusician by passion but their other work is a side hustle.

SUSAN DE WEGER 
That's right. I think that's an important thing to distinguish for artists isyour - and we can replace music with anything, this equates just as much toscience graduates or to law graduates, if your craft, whatever that craft it, Ithink we've got to figure out whether that's going to be for fun or for funds,because those two things are really, really different. What I love - I do a lotof work at secondary school and I say to our young artists, I would lovenothing more than for you to come in for music, for you to train in music andfor music to remain always for fun for you performing and let's use yourtraining to create funds in different ways. Being a musician does not meanhaving to get paid to play or having any of these external markers of playingwith a famous symphony orchestra. There's wonderful value and meaning in lotsof different ways of expressing our creativity. So yeah, I was able to connectthose two things back together.

ANDI HORVATH 
Now, you've redefined the notion of concert. Tell us about that.

SUSAN DE WEGER 
Yeah. I think particularly for our young artists who are training today,there's this trope about classical music is dead and it's been going on forabout 30 years now, and I don't think it's true. It's just changing and it'sevolving. Our performers are changing and evolving and our audience is changingand evolving as well. In the same way that if you maybe went to a barbecue atsomeone's house in 1980 you'd expect some curried eggs and some asparagus outof a tin, that would not maybe cut the mustard at a barbecue in 2018 wherewe're expecting haloumi and chorizo kebabs. Well, it's the same sort of thing;we're still classical music in some areas, they're still serving up asparagusin tins and chunks of ham and Coon cheese stabbed into a pineapple. It's reallyimportant that we look at actually what our audience might like, what ourcompetition is for their attention, how they like to spend their disposableincome, what's meaningful to them and then how we curate to that.

ANDI HORVATH 
The whole digital era. 

SUSAN DE WEGER 
Exactly.

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