We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kari Lynch a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Kari thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
I think when you choose to pursue a career in the entertainment/creative arts industry, you also choose to take on risks throughout your career. You’re choosing a career path in which there is no guarantee that you’ll be successful, no promise that things are going to work the way you want them to and your ability to reach milestones in your career depends on many different factors that you have zero control over. You have to bank on yourself and believe in the art you are creating. You have to sincerely enjoy what you’re doing and you have to find a way to be ok with making mistakes, failing, being disappointed and then trying again.
In the very beginning of my career it was all about taking risks, trying and then trying again, throwing darts in the dark and hoping something sticks. As an independent artist, you’re in charge of every facet of your career. For me, waiting for someone else to come along and do it or “make it happen” for me wasn’t an option, so I had to learn my way through it, try something and if it didn’t work, try something else. Because of this process, I picked up a ton of useful skills that continue to benefit me now in all aspects of my career. I may not have set out to be a booking agent, a PR rep, a social media manager, an agent, a band manager, a production manager…etc., but I didn’t have that team of people to do it for me. I had to learn those skills and take care of those duties on my own if I wanted to maintain my career, continue to improve my art and build my base in an upward motion. Making the decision early on to just go after it with everything I had and if I needed something done, to learn how to do it the best I could and just do it, benefited me greatly and continues to benefit me.
When I was first beginning to make a name for myself as an artist/songwriter/musician, I was also finishing school and had bartending and serving jobs. At one point I knew if I truly wanted to be able to give my music career all of the time and energy required to make a living from it, I was going to have to do just that. I quit my other jobs and made playing shows and pursuing a career in the entertainment industry my full-time job. It was incredibly difficult and painstaking in the beginning; I’m not going to sugar coat it. I was truly so broke and tired ALL the time from working 12-14 hour days. I played a ton of shows (5-7 nights a week) for several years and spent all of the my free time outside of playing live shows, writing songs, booking shows, recording, fine-tuning my “product” and just practicing as much as I could. After the first few years of being a full-time musician at this speed, I was able to feel some ground beneath me. I was able to save enough money so I didn’t feel like I was constantly scraping the bottom of the barrel. I was playing better and better shows and venues all of the time and the freedom of not having another job tying me to one place, allowed me to travel and take my show on the road. This allowed me to start building my fanbase outside of my home city.
I can successfully say that I have been a full-time musician, songwriter and I’ve worked for myself for the last 12 years. Because of the additional skills I taught myself and learned along the way, I also now work with a production company and get to experience more growth on the business/logistics end of the entertainment industry. I work in this industry full-time on multiple sides of it and I genuinely enjoy the ever-changing work flow. I’m able to write often and work on other creative projects as well. I’m still pursuing many goals and have yet to reach some of them, but the thing about this industry and being a creative person is that you never really reach an end point. You never really feel content with the level you’ve reached because there’s always something new to discover and learn, another goal to reach on the horizon. While that feeling can be difficult to grapple with and it gets exhausting at times, I am the type of personality that, for the most part, thrives on that kind of pacing and enjoys setting new goals for myself and improving along the way, so it works for me.
I’m not saying this is the only way to reach your goals as a full-time musician/songwriter/artist…it’s what worked for me. The best advice I could give anyone though is no matter what, stay true to yourself and your art along the way, always. Honesty and real, raw talent always cuts through, even if it takes a little longer... (click below to read more at Canvas Rebel online)