Six Things About Business I Learned from Being a Church Musician

Being a church musician can be a lucrative but challenging to master side hustle. Having grown up playing music in church for fifteen years (much of that time for free), I’ve learned that many of the principles that make a good church musician, also, make a good executive, a good small business owner—a good professional really. In all honesty, anyone who does not have these life skills mastered is not a professional regardless of what their title or job description may imply. 

As a freshman in high school, I didn’t want to play in church. My parents force me to play in church. But in retrospect, being forced to develop these traits for four years before being thrust into the world had an enormous impact on who I am today. These skills aren’t difficult to learn. Believe me, if a 14 year old boy can learn these skills and apply them, anyone can. However, they are transformational and will help you to take your business or career to the next level. Okay enough build up though. 

 1. Show up 

This should be a given, but you would not believe how many church musicians skip services because they don’t feel well or don’t feel like attending. Many more show up late or hung over. Maybe Sunday came too early or Saturday ran too late. At any rate, it impacts job performance and it demonstrates a lack of professionalism. However, a quick search online shows that this isn’t just a trait common in flakey floppy haired musicians. Have you heard the phrase “half the battle is just showing up”? Chances are your boss and your clients agree. More promotions are lost and more deals remain unsigned because someone lacked the professionalism to show up when they said they would. Show up! 

2. Be flexible 

  If someone’s going to be late, we’ve already established that it won’t be you. If your client comes in late, roll with it. Put them at ease. Often as a church musician you get put in awkward situations. “Oh, it’s five minutes before the service but can we change out three of the songs?” “It’s their anniversary can you play their song (name’s random song) before the service starts?” It doesn’t matter what the request is.    

My philosophy is that if I can do it, I will and if I can’t I will find someone who can make it happen. Your role as a musician, as a lawyer, as a business owner, as a professional is to make your church, your practice, your company—your product look the best it can. Whether it’s just the every day interaction that requires you be flexible or it’s that hard to please customer looking for a reason to not do business with you, be willing to bend. That’s not to say that you should compromise your ethics or let someone completely walk all over you, but be humble enough to check your ego at the door and you’ll see more doors open than ever before.   

3. Humility: It’s not about you  

 If you haven’t already done it, it’s time to check your ego at the door. Forget those images in your mind of some overrated "prima donna" with everyone applauding your every flourish. Your being paid to be invisible. The goal of any church musician (and any salesperson really) is that clients remember your product, not you. You can be charismatic or funny (depending on your work setting and environment) but at the end of the day it’s about showcasing the product and alleviating your customer’s pain. At the end of the day, did they forget about their problems for a little while? Was their day a little better because of what you helped accomplish?  

  Are you selling a car? Solar panels? Makeup? It really doesn’t matter what you are selling it’s all the same. The mistake that most people make in sales is talking over the needs of the customer. The best sales people don’t talk up their products. They listen. They ask their prospects what they are looking for in a product and they listen. They ask questions and they listen and they let the prospect sell themselves on the idea of doing business with them. You want to be great at what you do? Do less. Don’t try to impress people on how smart or capable you are. If you have to impress something on them, impress upon them the idea that you care.   

At the end of the day it’s not about sale. It’s about providing value and easing a pain point. If you decide to become a church musician, you’ll see people at the happiest and saddest moments of their lives (weddings and funerals). Your ability to be flexible and listen is key to helping them when they need it.   

 Remember: if at any point you find out it’s about you, then you’re doing it wrong. Be the first one to compliment others and the last one to compliment yourself.   

 4. Celebrate other’s successes  

 As a church musician, in addition to lending a sympathetic ear, you’ll do a lot of weddings and birthdays. You’ll, also, have the random church goers who come up to you and tell you that they want to sing a special in church or that they’ve learned how to play their favorite hymn on the keyboard at home. Celebrate that with them! They are telling you this because they respect you.   

 Whether it’s celebrating a team victory in your network marketing group or celebrating a client’s major accomplishment, winners celebrate others. Only losers feel the need to constantly celebrate their own wins. If you want to attract winners to your team and to your business celebrate others.    The best car salesmen send out birthday, Christmas and anniversary cards to their clients. Why? Because they care about their client’s success. They care about their client’s success because they care about their own success.    

My grandfather once told me “women don’t fall in love with you when they are around you; they fall in love with you when you aren’t around so make a good impression and then make yourself scarce.” While this may be a little out of context, celebrating other people’s successes will put you in a favorable light and they’ll be more likely to reciprocate the way that you made them feel.   

 5. Under-promise but over-deliver  

 Whether in the church music hustle, consulting, or your nine to five, you will have people come to you with high expectations. With all customers be very clear with what you are offering them. Are they planning a wedding this weekend and they are just now getting you the music? Yes, you can still accommodate them. You can play the walk on music, the walk off music, but you may not be able to do twelve variations of that song that the bride heard seven years ago but only knows three measures of and can’t remember the name (yes, this happened). 

   The point is be realistic. If I’m charging $150 for a wedding because I’m doing a friend a favor, they are going to get a completely different level of access to me and additional musicians that I may bring on than they would at let’s say the $1000+ level. That’s usually not a problem for most people (most people are reasonable) but especially in weddings make sure that you spell everything out crystal clear to avoid a run-in with bridezilla. 

   Regardless of what you are charging, do your best. I don’t agree to do something at a price at which I feel is too low to do my best. Why? Because when you cut the price down that significantly, you, also, remove a significant portion of the satisfaction. Humans are funny like that. Charge someone $100 for a $500 job and they nit-pick at every little thing. Charge them $2000 for a $2000 job and they praise you up and down the street. Don’t undersell yourself. You’ve paid your dues. You’re worth your price.  

  That said though, if I promise a client five of their favorite songs I usually try to over deliver by 25-50% even if it means phoning their mother and gathering some "intel." You want to provide value so that they know that you were thinking about them. It’s that extra five percent effort that separate the top one percent of sales people from the rest.   

 6. Network!  

 Church services and functions are a great place for musicians to network with other musicians. The same is true of business conventions, lunches, community events and charity functions. While LinkedIn has replaced a lot of the traditional networking done at these sort of events, it’s often more helpful to network first and link up later.   

 If you’re a musician trying to carve out a successful career whether as a performer or as a musician for hire, the ability to network with others is invaluable. Do you know how many mothers of the bride come up to me and ask “Do you know where we can hire a cellist?” or “Can you recommend a harpist? We’d like to walk in to Canon in D played on the harp.” Not only, does having access to these musicians thereby increase your value and the likelihood that you will get hired for the gig, if you know what the other musician charges, you can sell the prospect on a package deal and collect a nice override commission on your networked connection.   

 I have a friend that has a music business that only does big weddings. He spends money on marketing and he books these weddings with LARGE music budgets (five figures and up). He has all different musicians that he can offer you including a full orchestra and choir and he is able to collect a healthy commission off of the top because early on he understood the value of building his network.    

After graduating from college, I moved near my parents and began working with the music program at their church. Since taking over the church’s music program a few years back, we’ve changed our philosophy and have adopted this network mentality. The previous music director only allowed certain people to play or sing in church. We have flipped that on its head. We tell anyone interested in making music: “If you play any musical instrument show up and play. If you like to sing, show up and sing. We’ll take you.” What we’ve found is that the greater the number the better they sound. Even if they make a mistake the number of musicians doing it right overpowers that one mistake, and makes everyone sound better.    

Whether you are in music, network marketing or any other profession, remember this advice: “If you are playing a solo game you will always lose out to a team.” At the end of the day, it isn’t your ability to outperform everyone else but to find a way to multiply yourself.