Presentation & Negotiation Skills Gleaned from Shark Tank

I am a big fan of the TV show Shark Tank.  Each week, entrepreneurs bring their inventions in front of five millionaire/billionaire venture capitalists (a.k.a. “sharks”) who will invest their own money in a project if they find the invention compelling and capable of making a profit. While musicians and composers don’t usually create something that requires the funding of a venture capitalist, I find that we can take a few ideas from the show and apply them to our careers:

• Do something unique that makes you stand out from the rest.

Time and again, the sharks are most excited by a product that fills a need that nothing else yet covers and that no one else is doing. I have found the same idea to be true in the adjudication work that I do for various music organizations: if an ensemble’s concert series looks remarkably similar to another ensemble’s series, and these ensembles happen to be in the same region, then neither ensemble is all that unique. What concert program can each ensemble design that would be innovative and fresh, while also staying true to their mission? The same concept is applicable to composers in terms of musical aesthetics, compositions, collaborative projects, and even the types of activities a composer does to build one’s career into a viable business.

• Presentation counts.

Most entrepreneurs who appear on Shark Tank give a solid, well-rehearsed presentation. They offer clear points on what their product does, the particular need it fills, and what the sharks’ monetary investment and professional expertise can bring to their product’s potential future. Musicians and composers can learn from Shark Tank’s best pitches (click here for a list) about how to be concise yet informative, as well as engaging while trying to interest concert presenters or potential commissioners in a new project. The same is true when speaking to audiences in pre-concert activities, panel discussions, classroom or university visits, in-performance piece introductions, and so on. 

While the details of a presentation greatly matters, so does the way the presentation is delivered. Some entrepreneurs have very little stage presence on Shark Tank; others have this in spades. I get the distinct impression that the best presenters have practiced incessantly -- in front of family, friends or a mirror, and even videotaped themselves -- so as to get their pitch to look and sound natural instead of coming across as stilted and nervous. There are many factors musicians and composers can consider when working on presentation skills: the tone and inflections of your voice (i.e. avoid a monotone delivery), the pacing of your words, the expression on your face, using your hands to emphasize particular points, and keeping yourself from engaging in any nervous ticks (such as scratching your head or swaying your body from side to side). Study your posture as well – does your stance look confident? How about the way you walk into a room? Everything you do speaks volumes about who you are and how much self-confidence you have.

• Develop your negotiating skills.

If one or more sharks hear a pitch that they like from an entrepreneur, then the negotiating stage begins. This can be quite exciting as well as harrowing, as things can go right or wrong very quickly. An entrepreneur who has carefully considered all possible options (both acceptable and unacceptable) in advance tends to navigate the negotiation successfully and lands a deal with a shark. Those who haven’t reviewed their options in advance usually end up making one of the following mistakes:

• The entrepreneur hasn’t figured out how much money he really needs and gets flustered when the sharks start throwing around different amounts they’re willing to pay, particularly if the numbers are lower than what he wants.

• The entrepreneur tries to renegotiate for a higher amount once sharks start bidding (this can look greedy).

• The entrepreneur leaves the room to consult with someone else about any offers on the table; when an entrepreneur leaves the room, sharks tend to re-think their decisions and will often change their terms or even retract their offers.

Musicians and composers can learn from these entrepreneurs' mistakes so they are able to handle negotiations for any situation that involves the exchange of money -- performance fees, commission contracts, arranging tours or residencies, etc. The key to negotiating is this: know exactly what you want before you negotiate, and how high or low you’re willing to go in exchange for your services. The time to figure these numbers out is before you start the negotiation, not during it. Once you start negotiating, stay calm, listen carefully, write information down to keep the details straight, consider what you’re being offered, and give a counteroffer if the terms aren’t quite what you’re hoping for. Above all else, be courteous throughout the entire process, even if you don’t land the gig or commission that you want. You never know if you’ll find yourself negotiating at a later time with the same person, and you should always leave a good impression no matter the outcome. 

I highly recommend watching a few episodes of Shark Tank to see various presentation skills and negotiating strategies. Full episodes can be watched at ABC Shark Tank; you can find episodes (or even individual pitches) on YouTube as well. There are also a number of great online articles about giving presentations and the art of negotiation based on Shark Tank strategies; here are two:

• How to Pitch an Idea to Shark Tank, Science of People

• 7 Must-Know Negotiation Tips From Shark Tank, Forbes Magazine 

Ultimately, the music business is, quite literally, a business.  By developing one's business skills, musicians and composers will be better situated make more of the gigs that come their way as well as create their own opportunities.

Terra Nostra Update: Part I Completed

The first page of the oboe part for Terra Nostra 

I have dedicated this spring and summer to working on Terra Nostra, my oratorio commissioned by the San Francisco Choral Society and Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choirs, with only brief pauses to teach at Fresh Inc Festival and make an arrangement of a traditional Hungarian-Romani folksong (Jarba, Mare Jarba) for Chanticleer’s upcoming season. As of today, I am printing and binding all of the scores for Part I entitled Creation of the World and will mail them in a few days to the San Francisco Choral Society. This is a moment that has been twenty-two months in the making, and I’m psyched to be on the cusp of completing the first stage of this massive project! For those of you not familiar with Terra Nostra, I’m writing a three-part oratorio about our planet earth, how humanity is impacting it, and what we might to do to find a balance that works for us as well as the planet.  I have written two blogs discussing earlier phases of the project: Beginning Terra Nostra and Digging into Terra Nostra.

I often get questions from audience members about what factors go into composing a new piece. For today’s blog, I discuss three general points that greatly impact how I compose, and how these factors shaped Terra Nostra, Part I.

• INSTRUMENTATION: The combination of instruments used in any piece comes with its own unique set of balance issues, especially when these instruments are accompanying singers.  Some instruments easily outbalance others (i.e. a flute in its low register will lose against a trombone in its high register), so a composer spends a lot of time calculating and compensating for potential balance issues.  I discovered I was having a different sort of balance issue with the project: when the commissioners and I drew up the contract for Terra Nostra, we agreed that the chamber orchestra would be comprised of strings, piano, and three percussionists.  By May, however, I realized that the orchestra could really use winds and brass to balance the choirs at several key moments, particularly when the adult choir is singing at full blast. I also began hearing woodwinds in the accompaniment of some of the lighter movements, which (at least in my head) added some very nice contrast to the ever-present strings and piano.  So, to add more power and increase my color palette, I asked the San Francisco Choral Society if we could reconsider the instrumentation. They were very gracious in letting me swap out two of the percussionists in exchange for four woodwinds and three brass instruments.  This swap has paid off nicely, with far more effective loud sections as well as nuanced quiet moments.

Excerpt of the vocal score

• PROPORTION: This is key for all musical aspects of any new piece.  On the most basic level, proportion deals with the piece’s structure: is the opening too long, or the ending too short? Does the music steadily build tension to a climactic high point, or did the music stay too relaxed, causing the high point to sound weak?  With Part I of Terra Nostra, these were certainly questions that I dealt with, but there were some other proportion issues as well.  For instance, I needed to balance the number of minutes I composed for the adult and children’s choirs against how many minutes I gave to the soloists.  Part I is 20 minutes long; I allocated a little more than half of that time to the two choirs while the rest went to the four soloists. Proportion is also important among the amount of minutes I gave to each soloist. I couldn’t possibly give all four singers an aria in each of the three Parts, or else the choirs wouldn’t get to sing at all!  In Part I, I solved this issue by writing a four-minute aria for the baritone (“Smile O voluptuous cool-breathed earth!”) while the other three singers have shorter solos embedded in a movement that they sing in combination with the adult chorus (“In the Beginning”). I will follow the same line of reasoning when composing Parts II and III, ensuring that each of the four soloists have an aria of their own somewhere in the oratorio while also joining with the choruses (or each other) in other movements.

• DECISIONS, BIG AND SMALL: Every day, we make dozens, if not hundreds, of decisions: what to wear in the morning, what to eat for breakfast, when to leave for work, and so on. When composing, I become very aware of how many decisions I have to make for every detail: What poem should I set to music? What pitches should I set to a particular phrase of the poem? What rhythms best suit each word in the phrase? How loud or soft should the phrase be sung, and should any of the words be articulated in a specific way? When writing an oratorio, the number of decisions can become overwhelming. To alleviate this stress, I set daily goals of what I want to accomplish; some days, the goal is to compose new material, while on others, it is to flesh out the piano reduction for orchestra. By compartmentalizing the work down into smaller bits, I can handle the day-to-day pressure of working towards a much larger goal. As I progressed through Part I, I noticed that I lost the most time when I waffled back and forth on particular elements of the piece; for instance, I changed my mind multiple times on the instrumental scoring, dynamics, and articulations at two structural high points. In our daily lives, we don’t tend to worry about the small decisions as much as the big. The same is true with composing – I easily made decision after decision on much of the material, but incessantly worked and re-worked several key passages over and over until the music felt just right. While I’m hoping to solve some of these “waffling” issues faster when composing the next two Parts, I suspect that this state of indecision is part of my process, and that sometimes the process just can’t be hurried.

I’ll start working soon on Parts II and III; at the moment, however, I can’t wait to finish binding the scores of Part I and send them off to San Francisco! Part I will premiere on November 15 (8 PM) and 16 (4PM) at Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. Please check out the San Francisco Choral Society webpage for concert information.

Using summer’s “down time” to boost your career

Traditionally, summer is the time of year when composers have “down time.” There aren’t as many concerts to attend, sheet music orders to fill, or grant/awards applications to assemble. Although composers can explore a good number of national and international summer festivals (as a participant or audience member), they generally have fewer professional opportunities during this season than in any other. 

While you should take a break to soak in some summer rays, it can be very beneficial for your career if you utilize these months to get a number of business items done that you might have been putting off during the year. It is equally valuable to use the time to expand your current portfolio and consider future opportunities. Here are my top seven suggestions:

1. Update your biography, C.V. or résumé, and works list. Add in all of your recent achievements and pieces.

2. Revise your scores and get your notation in great shape. Throughout the year, I make notes in pieces about possible revisions or notation issues. I dedicate a few weeks every summer to adding these edits to scores. You never know when someone is going to want to perform one of your works; having all of your materials ready to go makes you appear far more professional than if you have to tell a potential performer that you need to make revisions first.

3. Update your website. Nothing makes your career look worse than a website that hasn’t been updated in a year or two (particularly if you have an “upcoming performances” section that ends in 2012!). If you don’t have a website yet, now is the time to do it. There are a number of do-it-yourself web programs that you can master yourself without (hopefully) too much frustration. I use Rapidweaver, which is very customizable with inexpensive add-on elements that allow you to build a site that suits your needs. If you prefer to hand this off to a professional, you can hire a website developer to do this for you; however, be aware that you’ll probably need to pay the developer to handle future updates.

4. Register recent pieces with your performing rights organization (ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC), and then report the past year’s performances of your works. Reporting performances results in getting royalty payments.  While this process can be time-consuming, it is completely worth getting paid.

5. Could you arrange any of your works for a different instrumentation? For instance, do you have a brass quintet that you could expand into an arrangement for wind ensemble? Or a violin and piano piece you can rework for flute and piano?  Many composers get more mileage out of their catalog by creating new versions of existing pieces. Aaron Kernis has arranged a few of his works with great results. For example, Aaron originally composed Colored Field for English horn and orchestra; he later created a version for cello and orchestra, which subsequently won the Grawemeyer Award.

6. Brainstorm proposals for upcoming grant applications. Annual deadlines for Guggenheim Fellowships, the Rome Prize, and Fromm Foundation commissions can sneak up on you during the year, and a well-conceived proposal can take some time to craft. You might also utilize this time to get fellow collaborators on board for your proposal should you need (or want) to apply with their support.

7. Make a list of your “dream” projects. I find this to be very important, as it is very easy for others to control our composing agenda. If you have specific projects in mind that you’d like to pursue, then you’ll be ready to suggest ideas if someone is interested in doing something with you. For instance, do you want to write a chamber opera? Would you like to organize a consortium commission for you to work with saxophone quartets? Once you make your list of dream projects, brainstorm what the next steps are to make each of these projects happen.

Basically, between your barbeques and pool parties, schedule some time to tackle some items from this list. Your career will be in better shape once fall returns.