When we last left off in my epic saga of what's happened with my little baby company over the summer, I had two main focuses (focii?): connecting with a daycare facility for adults with severe disabilities, and putting together a social skills group.
Contacting the facility ended up taking a few weeks of telephone tag before I was finally able to set an appointment to come in person.
I was very anxious about said appointment-- aside from my typical issues with social anxiety (it's bad, guys, I have to psych myself up to call my insurance company to ask for a policy change. I don't do well with feeling like I'm inconveniencing someone), I'd never done anything like this before. And even ignoring financial reasons for wanting a new contract-- I just wanted to work here. One of my favorite classes to work with during my internship was the teenagers with severe disabilities, comparable to the clientele served at this facility. (In fact, it turned out that I ran into a girl I worked with at Hartvigsen while I was there). I really wanted to work with this group just because I knew it was something I would do well at, something I would love and people I would love, a chance to make a difference and have a ball doing it-- a lot of the things that make me want to be a music therapist. So I prepared the best I knew how: I read up on the research literature, I put together a fact sheet, I tried to come up with the answers I would give to any question I could imagine them asking. I was terrified of screwing things up, but I was encouraged by the interactions I had with the owner and general manager. They seemed friendly and open to hearing me out.
When I arrived, however, neither the owner or the general manager were actually on the site. There were two people in the front office, a man and a woman, neither of which bothered to give me their names. As I stepped in, the man told me that I needed to reschedule because he had forgotten to bring a keyboard. (Since this was a consultation, I hadn't intended to play any music at all, and I typically bring my own instruments, so this threw me for a bit of a loop) The woman took me on a whirlwind tour of the facility. In the first room, as I mentioned, I ran into a student I worked with at Hartvigsen-- I was delighted to see her, though it's hard to say if she recognized me. The woman told her, "Well, that's nice, that she was your music therapist before and she's going to work with you again." And I thought-- 'oh, I like that use of future tense.'
In the second room, however, the woman introduced me to some staff members as, "the music therapist who's going to volunteer some hours for us." And I thought-- 'I don't like that word volunteer nearly as much'.
So we sat back down in the little front office, and, well-- I panicked. Nothing had gone the way it had in my head, and all I could think of was that they needed to understand that I was here as a business owner, not as a volunteer.
What followed was an uncomfortable conversation, where I tried to share what I could do and what I expected, and where she found ways to cut that down-- her idea was for me to run two fifteen minute groups a month. (Fifteen minutes? What on earth can you get done in only fifteen minutes of therapy? Especially in a group of eight people with slow response times! That's barely time to say 'hello' and 'goodbye'! She claimed the clients couldn't focus for longer than that but I know better, having worked with the same population for 45 minutes at a time during my internship) I... didn't really do very well at convincing her to let me come up with a few different pricing plans for them to look at instead of just going with the least effective possible solution. Whatever I managed to say or not say in my panicked fumbling, less than five minutes later I found myself ushered out the door. I did insist on going back long enough to give her the fact sheets I'd prepared, but that was the only chance I got to really share what I had to say. I was just told that "they'd get back to me" after they looked over their budget.
I've left a few telephone messages, but I haven't heard back since. I probably never will.
There's not really much to say except that I tanked it. I'm still trying to figure out exactly where things went so badly wrong.
It was a few weeks later that I received my next piece of bad news-- my one client, the sweetest old gentleman in the world who'd been sick with a bad cold for the past two weeks, had just been moved to hospice. He passed away the following week.
I can't exactly call it a 'tragedy'; he was 97 and it was his time. With my belief in God's Plan of Salvation, I have no doubts that he's in a good place now, with the loved ones he had lost. But it still hurts to lose someone you care about.
And, more selfishly, it hurts to lose the only client your business has. But there really wasn't much I could do except get back to work on preparing my social skills group.
I figured the first thing I needed was a solid plan-- a location, dates and times, a basic plan of what the group would cover, age groups and such. So I did my best to put things together. I passed around a survey trying to find out more information about what people in the community might need-- but the survey only got three responses so I more or less put it all together blindly.
Location was rough. I considered just having it here in my parent's house, but there were a few good reasons not to-- the junk in the basement, two yappy dogs, concerns about what the kinds of kids who need a social skills group might do to the property (at Hartvigsen I became well acquainted with the fact that perfectly sweet but impulsive kids can be as destructive as tiny hurricanes), the challenge of maintaining a healthy work-life balance when you are working and living in the same space-- it just seemed like a bad idea.
Finding a location proved to be a challenge, however. Many of the places I tried wouldn't rent to a business unless it was a nonprofit (*technically* it's a nonprofit, since I sure haven't made a dime), or were only renting huge rooms for well out of my tiny budget. One place that seemed perfect wouldn't be available until October (and it had been a "summer" social skills group that I'd been promising, dangit). Finally I ended up settling on a Community Center in Daybreak.
The cost made me feel a little faint when I found out that I needed to pay the entire cost of rent (+ a deposit) in advance. But I could cover it. I've been putting a few dollars away into a savings account for two years now (not easy to do when you're unemployed) and if I emptied that savings account out, I'd have just enough to cover the cost of renting the room.
That was a risk. A scary risk. But if I could just find three clients (which seemed so very doable, especially with how many people had claimed they'd be interested when I talked about it at the Summerfest), I could almost break even. If I managed to fill out every slot, I could actually make a pretty significant profit. It seemed like a reasonable gamble to make, so with only a small impusle to hyperventilate I paid the fee.
Then, with everything ready, I opened up registration a month in advance. I put up ads on facebook and posted to parent support groups, I sent out newsletters, I put up fliers all over my community. And then I waited.
In the first week, one parent signed up her child.
And then nothing.
My posts and ads on facebook were picking up tons of likes and shares-- but no one was doing anything about them.
As the days hurried onward, and it became increasingly obvious that I had invested in a sinking ship, I did my best to keep things moving. My parents and others told me that it's normal for people to sign up last minute for things like this, that getting close to the deadline would help give a sense of urgency. So I paid for a new round of ads that emphasized the urgency-- one week left to register! As many capital letters as my over-considerate nature would allow.
And... nothing. Well, not entirely nothing, there was a message from that solitary parent who signed up, expressing concerns about whether or not the group was actually going to happen. And a couple of college students who wanted someone to job shadow (and obviously picked the wrong therapist to ask). But no one registered. It reached the point where every time I checked my phone I felt like throwing up.
I tried to stay positive, but it reached a point where I couldn't pretend otherwise anymore-- I was going to lose everything. All my savings, all the money I'd put into advertising and getting supplies and printing fliers-- just wasted. Because I made a stupid mistake of thinking "interest" was equal to "commitment", and putting everything on the line for people who didn't even open the newsletters they signed up for.
In the last week, as I tried so desperately to salvage the mess I'd made, I asked for feedback on a Facebook group for music therapy business owners. The answers made it very clear where I'd gone wrong. I paid money for a program that no one had committed to yet. I didn't have the resources other therapists had when they pulled off something like this. One post got to me in a way that was hard to explain. After listing off amazing resources I don't know if I'll ever be able to access here, and strategies that never would have occurred to me in time to use them, as if they were the simplest things in the world-- she then followed up with, "But, you know, Failures for the Win! 😀 (But it's hard, some days I just want to hide in bed.)"
It was too much. That glimpse into what I'd been trying for, in the hands of someone who could actually pull it off-- and my "for the win failure" was my financial ruin. I didn't know if it would be possible to ever recover my business from this loss. I still don't know that-- in fact, if nothing changes then I will have to close my business by December, because I can't afford to renew all the things that need renewing when the year ends.
After reading that post, I collapsed on the couch and I didn't just cry--I howled. I cried harder than I've let myself cry in years, cried like every stress and hurt and heartache in a year of bitter disappointment and terrible doubt and fear was hitting me all at once, the dam of foolish optimism broken, the flood knocking me down and crystalizing into one terrible truth-- I was a failure. Not good enough to get a job as a music therapist. Not good enough to know how to run a business. Not good enough to do anything more worthwhile than hanging shirts at a thrift store for minimum wage while I dreamed stupid dreams of being something eternally out of reach, of changing a world that was better off without me screwing things up.
I don't know how long I sat there and cried. It feels like hours, but it was probably more like twenty minutes.
On this blog, I talk a lot about that elusive concept of "adulting", of that mysterious transition from dependent to independent, from child to grown up. It's hard not to feel like I've completely failed at that-- I've never worked a full time job, I'm single and living in my parent's basement and I'm generally a walking disaster.
But I'm starting to think that truly being an adult has less to do with where you live and where you work, with whether you can bake a pie or fix a car engine, and more to do with what you decide when there is no one who can make things OK, who can pick you up and tell you it's going to be fine and they'll take care of everything. In the end, other people can support you, but you have to be the one who stands back up and makes things right.
And if I have one virtue in all this world, it's that I don't give up.
So I got back up, and I started putting the pieces back together.
I'm flat broke-- but it could be worse. Yes, I used up all my savings, but at least it was all my own money. I didn't go into debt. This mistake won't make me lose anything else.
I am a good music therapist. It's hard to feel that way now, but I've seen lives change. I've seen the data. There are things I am better at and things I am worse at, but I am capable of doing something amazing if I can just find the chance.
I haven't been finding the chance. So I need to learn how to make the chance instead.
Right now my focus is on saving up whatever money I can. I'm going to get some job coaching, to try to learn how to market myself better, especially to facilities. It's not going to be easy, but I'm not going down without a fight. Not now. Not ever.
Two good things came out of this mess, at least. The first-- that parent who did sign up? After we talked about it, I offered to let her pay the same rate as she would have for the group to do individual music therapy with her son for those ten weeks. She agreed. So I do have one client, a little boy who needs help with attention span and social skills. Those are things I've treated with music therapy before. That is someone that I can help, who I mightn't have had the chance to work with otherwise. Helping this little boy is well worth making some mistakes for.
The other good thing is a little more indirect. While putting up fliers for the ill-fated social skills group, I found another flier. Riverton Music is recruiting music teachers for after school programs at Granite School District elementary schools.
The job interview was probably the easiest one in my life.
So, starting in October, I'll be working a second part time job teaching elementary school Orchestra. Only four hours a week, but it'll make a huge improvement to my financial situation, and I think it will be a lot of fun. I have fond memories of being in elementary orchestra myself, squeaking out nails-on-a-chalkboard impressions of "Hot Cross Buns" and learning to love Mozart and hate the key of Ab.
I'm still a long way from where I want to be, and I still have plenty of wrestling to do with my own issues. Running a business is so much harder than I ever would have imagined-- and I went in imagining it would be pretty hard. I seem to be learning almost everything the hard way, and that's kind of a painful way to learn. It's hard not to compare myself to other music therapists, the ones I went to school with who all seem to be having amazing successful careers-- but probably they're having their own problems that just don't show up on Facebook.
Probably.
But, anyway, challenge aside-- I'm not finished yet.
I don't know, maybe my optimism is naive-- there are certainly times I think so-- but there are also times I can believe that as I dig around in the dirt trying to get this thing off the ground, I'm on my way to building something beautiful. Maybe. We'll see.
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