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 “trouble if no money earned” zone.

Go.

  • 16/2 Start looking for consulting work. Some positive nibbles early on.

  • 25/2 Started my first attempt at the SydneyMusic “The Next Chapter” 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

Continuing…

I kind of can’t 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 don’t 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 it’s 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 “at this stage” - they don't have funding categories for what we do.

By this point I’ve lost count of hours spent working on SydneyMusic. It’s basically every waking minute.

  • 15/4 I’ve exhausted my government leads and there are no clear next steps.

This week is a hard week.

This week is the aforementioned "trouble if no money earned" zone

  • 14/5 Paris Neilson sends me an email saying that her family’s 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 SydneyMusic’s 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. It’s 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 “Safety in Music”. A panel discussion by Lily from CLEWS, Carmen from Society of Cutting Up Men and Mowgli May.

I don’t 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 I’ve done so far. Burnout is real. Don’t 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)

Newsflash: I never learn

  • 4/6 Announce that we’re 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 I’ve ever had to make, and that’s not an exaggeration. I have never been more blown away by a candidate pool.

* * *

This is just scratching the surface. I can’t 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, we’re really good), and so much more.

OK so where from here?

So now the strategy is:

1. Invest SydneyMusic’s seed funding in:

  • Content, to show how advocacy can positively benefit our community

  • Gig Researchers, because I can’t keep putting this number of hours into the Gig Guide - it’s 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 Sydney’s 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 …