Update: I am officially a PhD candidate! I can’t believe I’m already halfway through my PhD.
Today, I want to talk about how having a lot of different skills and a lot of different interests can really be leveraged as a benefit. Because for me, I feel like I’ve been the type of person who has never really been able to focus on just one thing.
And I used to see it as a problem because I felt like other people were always doing, like, they were really focused on one thing and they got really good at the one thing. Whereas, I was really interested in music, web design, science, entrepreneurship, bunch of different things. But I think over the years, I’ve just learned to accept and just try to understand how to work within my interests and leverage all my skills for whatever it is I want to do.
Being Scared to Share Your Work
Sometimes I feel like I work on these personal side projects for a really long time and I feel like I’m self conscious about sharing it because I don’t really know what people will say or what people will think. And I feel like a lot of us do have some type of side project like this. And it reminds me of the story of Brahms, and I love Brahms. He’s one of my favorite composers. And one of my favorite pieces from him is his first symphony Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 is a dramatic piece – it tells the story from a little bit of despair to a heroic ending. I just really think everyone should take a listen to it if you get a chance. It is about 40 minutes long, but I highly recommend it. You can listen to it here.
But, anyways, Brahms spent almost 15 years writing this symphony, and it was one of the longest projects that he had. And the reason why it took him so long was because he was really so self critical of his work. He ended up destroying a lot of what he wrote for Symphony No. 1, and had to rewrite it over and over.
And the reason why he was so self critical in addition to just being a perfectionist, he also felt a lot of pressure, because before him was Beethoven. And as you all may be very familiar with Beethoven, who was already pretty famous even back then. And so to be considered the next Beethoven or, the Symphony number 1 being like Beethoven’s 10th and so he felt a lot of that pressure and so he didn’t really want to share this Symphony No. 1, for those 15 years.
We have our own ideas, projects, and creations, but a lot of times we don’t wanna share it because we think it’s not good enough yet, it’s not ready to be shared yet, or we think that other people are gonna say some things and, it’s just it’s just not at a point where we want to show it to the world.
But for me, I’m now at this point where I feel okay sharing about this project just because it’s reached a good stopping point and I’ve had time to reflect on it and to process my thoughts and feelings on it.
Introducing Music Pocket Coach, a music practice journal and my newest side project
I created a music practice journal called Music Pocket Coach for maintaining a rich musical life for lifelong musicians. And so, actually, the story of this starting goes all the way back to January 2021 when I took an entrepreneurship online course. The original idea were affirmation cards to help practicing be more mindful and joyful. I developed this product into 5 starting cards for the minimal viable product, or MVP. I did a practice pitch, and I made that sample demo. And that was pretty much it. It was just the project for the entrepreneur entrepreneurship course. And then I kinda put it to the side because right after that, I ended up joining my PhD program, and put this project to the side.
In June 2023, I participated in another entrepreneurship program, where I also heard about this competition called the Arts Business Competition. Later in November 2023, I decided to pick Music Pocket Coach back up again and enter this competition.
In the Arts Business Competition you write up a business proposal for your idea. And, and if you’re if you’re selected to advance, you can go to a Shark Tank type of event, and you pitch your idea.
Originally, I wasn’t planning on applying to this competition because I was, at the time, still working on my research proposal for my candidacy exam. But once I submitted that, I decided I’ll just apply to this just for kicks because I kind of want to write a business plan anyway, and we’ll see what I can do with it. And it really just pushed me to finish developing the product and to kind of get all my plans on paper.
Developing a Business Proposal
Before writing the proposal, I decided that I wanted to change the product from the affirmation cards into a journal. The reason why I made a practice journal was just because I really love journals and planners. I just love notebooks and just like filling them and things like that.
Within a week, I designed a journal, and I got approved through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). I got a physical proof which gave me a really good idea of what my product could look like.
I’m just testing this out right now and using this kind of as a case study. But in any case, after doing that, I was really excited because I was like, wow. I finally took my idea from however long ago, and then now it’s actually a physical product. From there, I also developed a digital version on Notion, because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to sell my product using Amazon in the future. Plus a digital version can be more easily sold internationally. You can check it out on the website here.
Then it was time to write the proposal. There were examples of previous winners’ proposals on the website. And so I followed those examples to create a project plan, timeline, financial budget, marketing, audience analysis, and some other things. If you’re curious to see it, let me know and I can share it with you.
I had to rush to make a quick website on Google Sites to show that I thought it through. My web design knowledge really helped me out. I made it look really pretty. And this was just to show the MVP of the product since I didn’t have a physical product yet. And this really was an opportunity to combine all my skills, and my interests. Making the website also really fun because then I got to think about the designing of the fonts and the color schemes I wanted to go for.
Dealing with Rejection
And so I submitted that, went home for winter break, and then I waited about a month. At the end of January, I heard back and unfortunately, I was not selected for the next round. And so I didn’t want to share this because I was just disappointed because I really did think that, you know, my idea was a good idea, to develop this product further into a better physical planner.
But I’m just really happy that I finally made something out of it because before, it literally didn’t exist.I know that I can still push this project forward myself, and so that’s kind of what I will be doing in addition to my podcast and my web design things, is also trying to, market Music Pocket Coach further and, really get it out there to more amateur musicians, and that is, like, a story for another day kind of about, like, what Music Pocket Coach means to me and whatnot.
What I really learned was that, you know, it is possible to combine a variety of skills and interests into one project. And it’s even easier when it’s something you create of your own rather than trying to find someone else’s, like, project or initiative to fit everything that you want.
Lesson 1: Accept that the vision will change over time.
The other thing I learned is that the first version of the product will be really different from the final version of the product, and that can be for a product or service, or personal brand. I have definitely seen that evolution in my personal brand and services and this product as well. It really changes depending on what the people want and what the people need.
I’m not even sure if this is what the final version of Music Pocket Coach will look like. So, right now, I’m trying to see what other people want from Music Pocket Coach, and then I’ll take their feedback and then use that to iterate on the product itself.
And this is just the same way that research works. You start off with an original idea, but as you do experiments, you find out, like, oh, maybe it’s not gonna work. But you have to pivot because that’s just, you have to make it work somehow, especially if it is related to your final dissertation or paper or whatever the final product is.
Lesson 2: Use external motivation to push progress more quickly.
The other thing I learned was that sometimes, having that external motivation, the push to make that progress quickly – you really need to have that. I don’t think I would have made the progress I did without that particular competition and without telling myself, like, I’m just gonna do it just to see what I can get.
I probably would have also let myself get away with not pushing it forward besides making this journal into its physical form. Because there’s so many things going on, if you don’t focus your energy in that specific time frame to get something done, it may never get done until the next time you have space in your schedule or mental capacity in your schedule to make that happen.
Lesson 3: Work other smaller projects to hone your skills.
Just because you work on, like, one big thing doesn’t mean that you can’t also work on other things too. Tying this back to Brahms, he did this with Symphony No. 1. So even though it took him 15 years to do that Symphony number 1, he still published a bunch of other works. So, a lot of piano trios or, like, smaller ensemble works, violin sonatas, chamber music. He still published all those things while he was still working on the bigger thing.
And so even though we have one big project that we want to push forward, we can still do other things. So, again, that’s why now I’m doing the Music Pocket Codes, doing this podcast, and continuing talking about websites and things like that. And so just having that variety kind of also helps keep me going as well.
Final Thoughts
And so that’s all I wanted to share today about how I was able to combine classical music, web design, and entrepreneurship into one project. I want to challenge you to see how you can take your skills and your interests and also kind of combine it all into something, that is your own project that you can really direct and make happen.
As a graduate student, our lab work does take up a lot of time, but there are a lot of times where you are also waiting around for experiments and things as well. And I think that grad school is a great opportunity. There’s just a lot of resources, and you do have a little bit more flexibility. So taking advantage of those opportunities to make something of your own, not just for money but just, like, for your also your own personal fulfillment, is really worthwhile.
It’s also scary for me to make the shift from just talking about websites to all these other things, because I also wonder who cares about this stuff I do? But this is what I am. I do a lot of things, and I am trying to learn to just just own it.
And so I hope that, if you see this or you’re listening to this, that you also will be able to just own all your different interests and skills, because those are the skills that, you know, make us unique.
It’s our science, and it’s also all these creative skills that we have that we can leverage in these in transfer in between our fields and other fields, and it just gives us a more unique perspective. And so it is worth it to continue to invest time, energy, effort into maintaining or growing your creative skills while you are also trying to do cool science.