This blog post on Your Jazz Career is part four of a series called ‘The Antidote’ which aims to strengthen your music career against sudden crises. In this article, I merge two interesting career concepts, the “Ikigai” and “Portfolio Career” methods, into an idea-baby: an Ikigai Portfolio. It sheds new light on how to achieve a sustainable and fulfilling music career by being more of you.
Something unexpected will always happen. It prompts the question: how do you minimize the impact of these disruptive changes? We all need an antidote for uncertain times.
The Five Antidotes Are
The five antidotes that are proposed in this blog series are:
- Diversify your live-music projects
- Your four roles as a recording artist
- Six ways to maximize your income
- Find your Ikigai Portfolio
- Become indispensable and remarkable.
Let’s dive right into the fourth music career strategy starting with the Ikigai method. Were the Japanese on to something that can elevate your jazz career?
Finding Your Ikigai
There is a Japanese concept for developing a meaningful and sustainable career that I love, called ‘Ikigai’ (pronounced ick-ee-guy). This word started to pop-up in bookstores and on blogs a few years ago and resonated with me. It is a holistic and balanced approach to career development that often lacks in traditional Western career advice. It aims both at achieving a stable income and fulfilling work. Providing you, so to speak, with the best reason, besides a cup of damn fine coffee, of course, to get out of bed on a rainy Monday morning. That makes it worth finding your Ikigai, right?
What Does Ikigai Mean?
Ikigai literally means ‘a reason for being‘. That reason is found in a balance between internal (talents and passions) and external (needs and value). The closest thing in Western culture I can think of is a mix of the French ‘raison d’être’ and ‘joie de vivre’. As illustrated in the diagram below, it is the career sweet spot where your talents and passions align with what the people you’re trying to serve need and are willing to pay for. A powerful method to build a more sustainable and fulfilling music career.
The diagram shows four overlapping circles with your Ikigai in the middle. This career sweet spot is the overlap between four essential career dimensions that can be stated as questions:
- What do you love? (Your passion). If you weren’t concerned about money, would you still do what you’re doing?
- What are you good at? (Your vocation). Are you among the best in your community, city, work field, country, or even the world at it?
- What does the world need? (Your mission). Are people willing to part with their resources (money, time, attention) to buy what you’re selling, because it leaves them better off?
- What can you be paid for? (Your profession). Can you (eventually) make a good living doing this work?
Three Is Not A Charm
As you can see in the diagram, something is missing when you hit three or fewer of these four essentials. To explain the first example on the upper left: when your passion, vocation, and profession intersect, your mission is missing. It results in ‘a feeling of uselessness’. You are doing what you love, what you’re good at, and making money doing it, but it’s not fulfilling. Why? Because the people you are trying to serve, don’t need what you are doing. The result is that you will feel a void in your existence. This dimension is about justifying your own existence. Or to use an MMM-sentence (millennial-meets-meteorite), it is about ‘having an impact on the world’.
Sidenote: as a coach, this is where I would ask my client the question: define what you mean by ‘the world’. Whom are you trying to serve and have an impact on, exactly?
To explain one other danger of hitting three or fewer dimensions. The one on the upper right ‘Delight and fulness, but no wealth‘ is the common one for all creatives. Yes, you love making music. Yes, you practiced countless hours to hone your skills and are good at your craft. And yes, people need music in their lives for whatever personal needs it satisfies for them. However, if you can’t turn it into a profession. If you can’t get paid for it, you will have no income. This will lead to not having any wealth (savings, valuable possessions), and well, it’s tough making music whilst hunting down your grilled squirrel dinner in the forest around your cabin in the wild, isn’t it?
Using the Ikigai concept
To enjoy what you do, serve others, and to make a sustainable living out of it requires you to merge your passion, vocation, mission, and profession. When fewer than four are integrated into your working life, always one dimension will be missing: usefulness, passion, fulfillment or security.
Now, there are several ways to work with this. Either, your one career – e.g. jazz artist – hits all four boxes. Or, you need additional careers derived primarily from music, the music industry, or from other work fields.
- You utilize one specific career that hits all four boxes. Cg. you are a performing artist and that is your passion, vocation, mission, and profession. It is both sustainable and fulfilling.
- You utilize your broader music-related skills and knowledge to expand your performance career by adding other activities such as teaching, producing, recording, selling merchandise etcetera. Combined these should hit all four boxes.
- You utilize your skills and knowledge related to the music industry to hit those dimensions that are missing in your artist career. For example, you also start organizing festivals, become an artist manager, roadie, guitar tech, music publisher, or booking agent.
- You utilize your talents and strengths in non-music-related fields such as accounting, IT, hospitality, healthcare and so on.
There is no right or wrong approach. It’s all about understanding yourself, your strengths, and the needs of those you could serve. There is one vital requirement though, to identify yourself in plural instead of singular. To allow yourself to be more of you. To escape the prison of being one thing. To allow a wide definition of what it means to be an ‘artist’ today. It’s about freedom vs an identity crisis.
This way of building a career is called creating a portfolio career.
Building A Portfolio Career
Charles Handy – management guru and author – is the father of the portfolio career concept. He predicted decades ago that in the 21st Century more than 50% of jobs would be part-time, which is currently almost our reality. He describes a portfolio career as:
“A work portfolio is a way of describing how the different bits of work in our life fit together to form a balanced whole” (The Age of Unreason, 1991)
In addition, according to Handy, the portfolio career offers us a chance: “For the first time in the human experience, we have a chance to shape our work to suit the way we live instead of our lives to fit our work. We would be mad to miss the chance.”
To visualize this, for a jazz musician, your Twitter Portfolio Career bio would read something like Pianist/Composer/Music teacher/Entrepreneur. Yes, that doesn’t make it easier at parties to describe what you do 😉
It describes the reality for the majority of jazz musicians out there quite well though. Being an arranger, bandleader, film music composer, multi-instrumentalist, touring musician, and so on is how most jazz artists earn a living. Knowing that there is a term for this kind of life was reassuring for me. Maybe for you too?
Embracing Change
When change is constant, you’ll have to keep changing as well. Or to ‘Be Like Water’ to quote the famous improviser Bruce Lee. Charles Handy champions embracing change and allowing ourselves to be different in each phase of our lives. To put this concept in two simple words: mix and match. Let’s analyze the benefits of a Portfolio Career using the four Ikigai dimensions:
- Passion: as a creative, you probably have more than one interest. Starting from loving several instruments to different ways of presenting your music (performance, recorded, video), to other art forms and interests beyond art. You will lead a fuller life that will also, I’m sure, lead to interesting cross-fertilization.
- Vocation: how can you utilize all your strengths to their full potential? You will benefit from increased personal growth.
- Mission: you can bring change to different kinds of people. One way is through your music. Which other paths integrate your mission more fully into your life? This will result in deeper felt life fulfillment.
- Profession: which of your other strengths and (love-)interests could be work you can get paid for? This approach spreads risks by not putting all your eggs in one basket. Corona-proof your career!
Your Ikigai Portfolio
Applying both the Ikigai and Portfolio Career methods to your career will result in a deeply personal career path. You can mix your different skills to match what you love, the world needs and what people are willing to pay for.
This more authentic career approach has more benefits. For example, the comparison with others becomes less and less possible which decreases feelings of jealousy, anxiety, and so on. Furthermore, critique from others becomes easier to deal with, because your path is so distinct. Creating your Ikigai Portfolio is a personal and long-term approach where you take full responsibility for all its aspects. It is a path that acknowledges that both you as a human being, your circumstances, and the necessary skills to reach your goals constantly change.
I believe that you will benefit from this generalistic career approach. It’s my own experience that embracing change and seeking new challenges brings me closer to my True Path. You don’t find yourself. You create yourself. And creating your own path is demanding and doesn’t come with a clear How-To guide.
There are many roads that lead to Rome. The reverse is also true. There are many roads that lead to oneself. Why not try more of them to see who you are at the end of these paths?
Pieter Schoonderwoerd
Your Jazz Career
Find an empowering ebook on developing your artistic vision and writing a compelling artist biography here.
I’ve been coaching and educating jazz artists for years to achieve their creative and professional ambitions. If you are interested in a personal coaching session, you can read more about it here.
Be More Of You. Be Creative!