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Aubrey Bergauer helps organizations optimize the business side of the arts: grow audiences and donor bases, build relevance and visibility, utilize technology to elevate and extend the brand, and ultimately generate the revenue needed to sustainably fund the art that’s produced. Discover how Aubrey doubled the audience and quadrupled the donor base at the California Symphony, and learn key strategies from her new book, Run It Like a Business: Strategies for Arts Organizations to Increase Audiences, Remain Relevant, and Multiply Money – Without Losing the Art. Whether you’re in music, museums, theaters, or beyond, this episode is packed with insights to work smarter, not harder!
Guest
Joining me today from the San Francisco Bay Area is Aubrey Bergauer, who has been called “the Steve Jobs of classical music” (Observer) and “the Sheryl Sandberg of the symphony” (LA Review of Books). Aubrey helps organizations optimize the business side of the arts, including growing audiences and donor bases, building relevance and visibility, using technology to elevate and extend the brand, and ultimately generating the revenue needed to sustainably fund the art that’s produced. As chief executive of the California Symphony, Aubrey propelled the organization to double the size of its audience and nearly quadrupled the donor base. Her work and leadership has been covered in media including the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur and Symphony magazines; and she is an in-demand speaker at universities and conferences in the US and abroad. Aubrey’s first book released in February of this year: it is called Run It Like a Business: Strategies for Arts Organizations to Increase Audiences, Remain Relevant, and Multiply Money–Without Losing the Art.
Notes
We discuss:
- Who this book is for: This book is not JUST for classical music performers and venues. It is for:
- ALL arts disciplines, including their performers, venues, and organizations.
- Cultural organizations more broadly (museums; theaters; zoos, libraries, aquariums, botanical gardens, science centers —even sports teams)
- University arts departments
- Music businesses: Even though these are businesses and not non-profits, they’re often run by musicians who have backgrounds in performance and/or education, not business.
- Why this book is needed and what role the pandemic played in that need.
- The economics of art production.
- The good news: The art itself is not the problem. We discuss packaging vs. product.
- Topics and strategies covered in the book.
- Additional resources, both paid and free.
Connect/Other Resources
- Aubrey’s website offers tons of resources, including free articles and a short quiz that will filter results and give a customized list of articles and podcast episodes tailored the individual and their role.
- The book on Amazon: Run It Like a Business: Strategies for Arts Organizations to Increase Audiences, Remain Relevant, and Multiply Money–Without Losing the Art
- More on the book: www.aubreyberguaer.com/book
- Aubrey’s podcast “The Offstage Mic”
- I mentioned Holly Mulcahy as another resource, including her Neo Classical blog
Other episodes we mentioned or that you may enjoy:
- My interview with Holly Mulcahy on another aspect of her work: bringing music’s healing and hope to prisoners
- View all episodes related to Business
In-Episode Promo
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SONIX: This is a quick break to tell you about Sonix, the service that I use to transcribe these episodes. Sonix is an artificial intelligence transcription service that automatically converts audio and video files to text – and can translate to over 40 languages. I transcribe these episodes to make them more accessible. I tried multiple services, and chose to stick with Sonix because of their accuracy, affordability, and because their site is just so easy to use; that’s a big plus for me, to not need to spend a bunch of time figuring out one more platform! While I love podcasts, I do tend to be a very visual learner. I figure other people probably are, too; and having that written form of your work just makes it more versatile. Sonix transcripts make the most of your hard work and can increase traffic to your site. Sonix is spelled s-o-n-i-x. You can check them out with a free trial PLUS an extra 100 minutes of free transcription by using the link sonix.ai/invite/enhancelife100. There’s a link in the show notes. Again, it’s sonix.ai/invite/enhancelife100 for a free trial AND an extra 100 minutes of free transcription.
Coda
Aubrey shares early musical memories influenced by her father and involving multiple genres.
Closing Words
Thank you so much to Aubrey for joining us today and for sharing her expertise in her book and in the many resources available on her website. I’m so excited about how she is sharing these cross-disciplinary strategies to the non-profit sector, and hope you find this content inspiring, helpful, and encouraging.
You’ll find all the links from today’s conversation in this episode’s show notes, as well as a transcript of this episode and links to all episodes in the Business category.
You may already know that all Enhance Life with Music episodes can be found listed by category so you can quickly find topics most related to your interests. In addition to Business, the other 3 categories are :
Just go to the Archives page of my website and use the menu, or go directly to https://mpetersonmusic.com/podcast/archives.
If you know of someone who would enjoy this episode – perhaps a non-profit you would love to see succeed – please share it with them!
You can always connect with me on email (mindy@mpetersonmusic.com), Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
Thank you so much for joining me today. Until next time, may your life be enhanced with music.
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