1/2 Quit my job
13/2 Leave my job
Right now is just: Exhaustion. Overwhelm. Relief. A lot of feelings right about now.
$20k in the bank. Cut all expenses as quickly as possible. Do a budget. Circle a date on the calendar as your âtrouble if no money earnedâ zone.
Go.
16/2 Start looking for consulting work. Some positive nibbles early on.
25/2 Started my first attempt at the SydneyMusic âThe Next Chapterâ business case
At this point the strategy is:
Find consulting work to sustain myself and my family
Develop a business case for SydneyMusic and look for funding
Continue my 20 hours a week for my part in running the SydneyMusic project
Hope this works
ContinuingâŚ
8/3 SydneyMusic.net launches the Venue Directory
12/3 Started the genre label experiment on SM's socials
18/3 Launch Blind Date With A Band
I kind of canât believe all this happened in just over a week. At this point, interest in SydneyMusic went bananas. The Venue Directory was the biggest breakthrough, and our numbers started really going for it - we quickly blew through 4,000, then 5,000 Instagram followers and traffic rose dramatically from 3.4k uniques per week to around 5k. Email submissions rose substantially, and suddenly we started having people returning our calls.
So⌠I kind of felt like momentum was with SydneyMusic, so I ran with it. We got a lot of meetings lined up, there was a positive vibe.
2/4 Published a big chat with Darren Cross
2/4 Meet with MusicNSW. Much love. Not really able to provide funding to projects like ours.
At this point I realise that the time that SydneyMusic needs has blown out to such an extent that I need someone to prospect consulting work for me, because I simply donât have time to peddle that right now. I engage a recruiter to function as a sort-of agent, who despite his best efforts is unable to secure this kind of work. I realise now itâs probably not the best economy to try this in.
10/4 Meet with Music Australia. Much love. We're not looking to go national, which limits the opportunities for partnership or grants.
11/4 Meet with Sound NSW. Much love. Also not a likely source of funding âat this stageâ - they don't have funding categories for what we do.
By this point Iâve lost count of hours spent working on SydneyMusic. Itâs basically every waking minute.
15/4 Iâve exhausted my government leads and there are no clear next steps.
This week is a hard week.
22/4 Published a big chat with Bayang (the Bushranger) which Iâm super proud of
24/4 Pre-announced our fundraiser (hadnât actually planned anything yet)
7/5 First ever SydneyMusic Social at Lazy Thinking. Dan gives an overview of his audio plugins.
This week is the aforementioned "trouble if no money earned" zone
14/5 Paris Neilson sends me an email saying that her familyâs foundation would like to donate $25k to SydneyMusic
14/5 Second SydneyMusic Social with Nerdie. He facilitates a 70 minute conversation with a full room that everyone leaves pumped. Really special night.
16/5 $25k hits SydneyMusicâs bank account.
16/5 Through some absolute miracle, in the midst of hitting absolute rock bottom of (personal) poverty, my kids are able to stay with us for 2 nights. Itâs wonderful. I miss them so much.
Being apart from my kids is the hardest part of this whole experience. We got through Covid. We can do it one last time.
21/5 SydneyMusic Social Mixtape Night. 10 people brought mixtapes. Two of them were performed live. A young bedroom trance producer played his music out for the first time in his life. The whole experience was unbelievable.
21/5 I get engaged to book a concert for Kylea Tink - scope and date of event at this stage yet to be determined.
23/5 Begin a weekly gig guide segment on 2SER Breakfast
28/5 SydneyMusic Social on âSafety in Musicâ. A panel discussion by Lily from CLEWS, Carmen from Society of Cutting Up Men and Mowgli May.
I donât know why for the love of god I decided to start a fundraiser and an event series at precisely the same time. This might be the stupidest thing Iâve done so far. Burnout is real. Donât take the piss.
(I'm very grateful to Lily, Carmen and Mowgli for a challenging, reflective, poignant and hopeful conversation that I still think about often)
30/5 Launch Cupholder Industries with Caitlin
Newsflash: I never learn
4/6 Announce that weâre hiring Gig Researcher roles. If SydneyMusic is taking 20 hours a week from me just to manage the guide, surely we can use some of the $25k to pay amazing people in Sydney to do this instead. Hopefully frees me up enough to do fundraising.
5/6 Play my first live show in 15 years
10/6 Caitlin goes back to full-time work
11/6 Applications close. 145 people have applied.
19-21/6 Interview 16 people in 3 days
Hardest hiring decision Iâve ever had to make, and thatâs not an exaggeration. I have never been more blown away by a candidate pool.
* * *
This is just scratching the surface. I canât get over how much has happened - this is before we get to the wonderful offers of assistance from many wonderful people, some incredible music, some wonderful home-cooked food, around 20 hours of DJing (please hire us to DJ, weâre really good), and so much more.
OK so where from here?
So now the strategy is:
1. Invest SydneyMusicâs seed funding in:
Content, to show how advocacy can positively benefit our community
Gig Researchers, because I canât keep putting this number of hours into the Gig Guide - itâs so much work
Publicity, to hopefully increase our fundraising opportunities
Further revenue raising (a merch drop)
2. Run Cupholder Industries to help people connect with Sydneyâs underground (for a fee)
3. Earn enough money to see my kids as soon as possible, as frequently as possible
To be continued at some point âŚ
