Sarah Martin McConnell, Music for Seniors

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast powered by Hiscox. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. Throughout my career, I've had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses. But first and foremost, I'm a serial technology entrepreneur. In the Creator Space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can sleep when you're dead.

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These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context, and camaraderie.

Today's guest is Sarah Martin. Sarah is a singer and songwriter, a creative aging champion advocate, performer and musician. Sarah is also the founder of Music for Seniors, a non-profit based in Nashville, Tennessee. Music for seniors has served over 30,000 older adults yearly and launched its first chapter affiliate in Knoxville.

Sarah, welcome to the show. So I'm excited to have you on here because I think the area that you're working in, and have worked in, is so interesting because all of us hopefully are going to get older over time. but also that you've started this as a nonprofit, which for our show here is a little bit unusual. So we'll dig into all of that in a minute. But first, I'd love for you to give us a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are today.

[00:01:47] Sarah Martin: Well, I've been a professional musician, my whole adult life, really. And when I moved to Nashville in 1988, 89, I spent many years writing and performing.

I had some cuts. From my writing co-writes and then everything changed when Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast and my mom, Marge, was blown to Nashville by the hurricane. She had just been diagnosed with mid stage Alzheimer's. And I started taking live music to share with Mom and her group at her day services program.

And one day after a wonderful, just transformative session with a group of older adults, a light bulb went off. This needs to be a community wide effort to connect musicians and older adults through live music. And that was how the idea was born.

[00:02:58] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. I love that. Let me ask you some questions though.

First, you're a singer songwriter. What kind of music, have you written and is there a song that we might know?

[00:03:09] Sarah Martin: Well, I wrote a lot with a beloved artist here in Nashville who is now no longer with us, walter Hyatt. We did a lot of co-writes just this past Christmas. I released a Christmas single called every heart goes home for Christmas.

And that is out there and probably, by the time this podcast is aired, my collection of songs, love songs to the universe will be released. And that's an eclectic blend, but I write country, jazz, folk. I love all those genres and, you might've heard some of my cuts on some of Walter Hyatt's albums.

[00:04:00] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. Awesome. Yeah. I love that. We'll have to go check those, check those songs out. okay, so let's dig into music for seniors. So the light bulb went off. You, had that aha moment, and decided to pursue this thing. Why did you decide to start it as a nonprofit instead of a for profit?

Because I think you could have easily done it that way too. So why the choice that way?

[00:04:26] Sarah Martin: That is really an interesting question. And someone asked me that early on, but as an older adult, I actually went back to graduate school and got my master's in social work. And when I perceived the idea, conceived the idea, I knew that it had to be for social profit, not for my own profit. That would change everything. It would change the whole, feeling of the work. And I wanted it to be for the good of everyone. I was not interested in making a lot of money doing the work.

[00:05:17] Sanjay Parekh: Is this the first time you've done anything like this that's entrepreneurial?

As a, being a singer songwriter, obviously, is an entrepreneurial venture. But, as an organization, is this the first time you've done something like this?

[00:05:29] Sarah Martin: I had a Christmas caroling company, the Caroling Troubadours, for probably 30 years. And that was a for profit company. I started it in Dallas when I lived there.

I had auditioned at a club, and it was sometime late October, early November. And it was in the middle of the day. And I don't know if you've ever been in a bar during the day, but you don't want to go there, when the lights go down and, everything's the stages lit up, it's a whole different place, but I walked out of there going, oh my gosh, I don't even want to perform here.

I did a single and I looked around and thought, where would I really love to be performing right now? Okay. I was in Dallas, Neiman Marcus. The store is beautiful and decorated.

[00:06:22] Sanjay Parekh: That's true.

[00:06:22] Sarah Martin: I'll go in and tell him, let me stroll through the store in black knickers and a white shirt and a big red bow and sing Christmas carols.

So I went and talked to the marketing director and she was like, yes, Sarah, this is a great idea, but do it as a trio. and so that first year, My clients were Lord and Taylor, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, all the high end stores in Dallas, which is a huge fashion and, private parties. And Carolyn Troubadours just took off from there and it was a wonderful, fun, for profit business.

[00:07:07] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So how did you find, the other, you said it was a trio, how did you find the other two people? And, were they the same the whole time?

[00:07:16] Sarah Martin: Like the oh no. well, the Dallas Corps was, but one year I had troops in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles. and Nashville. So I branched out and I had friends, musician friends in all of those cities who did the work.

I would call and get the, performances lined up and we moved to doing malls and, all kinds of venues. And this was before anybody else was doing it. Now it's it's not unusual to see a caroling group.

Right out when I did it. I don't know that anyone else was so it was really fun.

[00:08:05] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, so without naming any names I gotta ask you what's the weirdest experience that you had while you were doing this while you were singing like?

Something just like that. You still remember to this day.

[00:08:17] Sarah Martin: Oh my gosh, so many We were at the cosmetic counter at Neiman's.

And I play the dulcimer and you have to sit to play the dulcimer, right?

So my soprano went and got my a little stool for me from the cosmetic counter and the whole thing about music for seniors was to get the children and the parents and all of us singing together, right?

Small little performances or shared music throughout the store and actually that is the whole crux of what Music for Seniors does is these intimate, shared sing alongs.

I had finished doing Little Drummer Boy and somebody asked me about the dulcimer and I held it up and said, here it is. And I said, would you like to hear another? And they said, yeah. So I backed up and sat down where the stool had been. And in the meantime, she had moved the stool back to where it belonged, which was very courteous.

We were not, and I went, lap down. Oh my goodness. A little bit more, just bam! Oh my goodness. I was like, woohoo! Oh lord. I also once went tumbling down a staircase at a private party with our first, we always started with deck the halls and I would bring the tambourine and I went deck and I went boom, and landed on the, in the grandfather clock on the landing, my shoe.

[00:10:02] Sanjay Parekh: Well, into the party, you got to tell me what was the reaction where people was their gasps was their last was their clapping.

[00:10:10] Sarah Martin: Oh, my gosh. Oh, all of that. First of all, when everybody realized I wasn't hurt and I made some kind of a joke. I don't know. Well, that was starting with the bank. And of course, everybody was looking up like, what is going on?

[00:10:27] Sanjay Parekh: I was wondering, did they think it was actually part of the show or was it an accident? What was the reaction? So that's interesting. Okay, you provided a good segue there into music for seniors, having these small intimate things. So when you came up with this idea of the aha moment, and you decided to do this.

So what's the thinking here is to, is it to play music for seniors? To have the seniors play music, teach them music. What's the approach?

[00:10:56] Sarah Martin: But it started, with the idea that I would enlist single musicians or maybe duos to take live music out into the community, wherever seniors congregate and, that would be nursing homes or assisted living or community groups like my mom's day group.

She went during the day and then came home, as the organization grew. And as I saw the need for different kinds of programming, I added a concert series. So once a month, we do a free daytime concert for older adults. During the day at venues all across the city, so that if you live on the west side, everything's not always over here downtown where you have to drive, but every month, the venue changes and they're beautiful venues and whole variety of so that's a concert series, but it's free and it's one hour and it's during the day. And then we also teach. We do live performance learning labs, ukulele, harmonica. We've done songwriting. The newest was, bringing a group in to learn how to do to make music digitally. But it's all about the older adults being actively engaged in the music.

It's not about performing your own material and having everybody go, oh, that's what, no, it's including and drum. We did interactive drumming. The reason the research has really shown there is great value on so many levels. For including older adults or anybody sharing music and being engaged in it.

Cognitive gain, socialization, joy, tapping memory. There's a whole constellation of benefits and it's just fun.

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[00:13:38] Sanjay Parekh: When you started this, were you worried at all? It's a great idea, obviously, but were you worried about being able to get other people on board to help you do this? Because this is not something you could just necessarily, you could do it by yourself, but the scale and impact that you could do is probably very limited.

So you really needed help. So were you worried about that? Was there anything else that you were worried about in starting this up?

[00:14:06] Sarah Martin: Well, I wasn't worried, but I knew I needed a lot of help. And the one thing that I did, in the design was I did not ask the musicians to do it. as voluntary. I built in a stipend from the get go because it was such important community service and because creatives are so often asked to do things for nothing.

And especially in Nashville, you earn a living outside of Nashville as a musician and this was years ago now, because I started this in 2007. But, when you move to Nashville, you quickly find that it's hard to find paying gigs, unless you're that small studio, elite group that's doing recordings all the time.

So I built in a stipend for the musicians. So the musicians, and they were very excited to participate, because it's during the day when they're not doing other things. It's a one hour commitment and the stipends were generous. They've gotten more generous over the years as we've been able to enlist other partners like the Nashville Musicians Association.

That has been so helpful.

[00:15:28] Sanjay Parekh: So talk about that. Like, how did you think through, how to fund this thing? Because obviously you're not going to ask the, your target market, the older seniors. to pay, but you mentioned a free concert and everything, so there's no money there. So how did you figure out the ways to fund this?

[00:15:47] Sarah Martin: Well, I had a small, I think it was like 8,000 bucks that, first of all, I was working as a freelance paralegal at the time. And I went to my boss, a very prominent attorney here, Mr. Aubrey Harwell of Neil and Harwell here in Nashville. And I told him my idea. I said, I just knocked on his door one day.

Would you listen, tell me what you think about this? And he thought it was a fantastic idea. And he encouraged me to put together my business plan and take it to an established very well respected senior services agency that already existed and pitch it as an affiliate, a music affiliate to add to their services.

So that's how we started. And in 2014, after developing all the programming and getting the ball rolling, we moved into it being a standalone 501c3 nonprofit arts organization, but we started as an affiliate. So I had a, system to work within to begin, but nonprofit funding, you write grants.

And I wrote a lot, but that's just storytelling. That's just telling the stories of the benefit, but we were, we have been so blessed with wonderful funders, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, lots of support when, and it, there was nothing like it.

Yeah. In the community, which was a great way to get people to go, oh, yeah.

[00:17:42] Sanjay Parekh: Was there anything else that, as you were starting this, that made you nervous and made you question doing the whole thing? What, what was that?

[00:17:51] Sarah Martin: Well, I never really questioned it because I was passionate about it.

And one of my favorite philosophers, Joseph Campbell says, follow your bliss. And when you do that, when you follow what just fires your soul and makes you excited. The universe lifts you up and doors open that you just don't expect and that happened all along the way, but I'll tell you what was people would say.

Oh, Sarah at the beginning. How are you going to do this or this? And what if this and maybe you should take this to schools. That's a wonderful idea for children too. So two things I knew I had to be laser focused on our mission, which was to provide interactive live music opportunities for older adults.

And I couldn't veer from that. Eventually we included an intergenerational component where we included children, but it was with the older adults doing collaborative things. And then somebody said, how are you going to get all this and this accomplished? And I said, if I tried to figure everything out right at the beginning, I would never have taken the first step.

I would have been paralyzed. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take it one step at a time and not pay attention to those who throw the monumental task ahead of me in my face all at once because right you.

[00:19:45] Sanjay Parekh: It's too much. Yeah. It's funny. By the way, you mentioned follow your bliss and a philosopher that said that, I thought that was the B52s that said that, but, we'll, go with yours.

But what you mentioned there, of that monumental task, right? It's this idea of, and a lot of non-entrepreneurs and a lot of entrepreneurs, get paralyzed because of this because you think about, how do you boil the ocean? Well, that's not your task today to boil the ocean. Your task is to get a thimble full of water and just boil that much.

And I think that's a great approach that you took that you said look, I'm just going to, I'm going to take today and figure out what I do today and then figure out, leave tomorrow to be tomorrow's problem. Which is a great thing. So thinking about it, okay, you've got already a career doing music and you're busy and now you're starting a nonprofit, which is not necessarily going to make you money, right?

Because that's not the goal. And you're juggling all these things. How did you manage the stress of all of this and trying to get this new thing up off the ground while still having, life's requirements of paying the bills and family and friends and all of those kinds of things?

How did you juggle all of that for yourself?

[00:21:02] Sarah Martin: Well, first of all, I was so blessed and still am. If it had not been for my husband, my sweet husband, Mickey McConnell encouraging me the whole way, and helping me take care of my mom who was living with us then. And then the community really embraced the idea and landing in an already well established viable organization and the executive director really believed in the work we were doing and embraced us and she used all of her, power to introduce me to the community and say this is great. And so it takes a village, it really does, and it would have never happened had not I had such wonderful community and personal support.

Everybody seemed to really gravitate toward the value of the work. And it's Music City! Musicians are one of our city's most amazing creative resources, and this was just a way to do it. To tap into that for a whole new kind of programming as civic involvement as really giving back to our community and older adults are so often isolated and they don't have the opportunity to tap into activities that the rest of the community is participating in I saw that because my mother was living with me and I had to figure out and she had alzheimer's. And, music is fantastic for individuals who are struggling with dementia.

It's so good.

[00:23:11] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, with all kinds of memory and brain challenges, right? Memory issues, brain challenges. Music is one of those things that we've all of us have listened to since we were young.

[00:23:22] Sarah Martin: So music is absolutely magical.

[00:23:26] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, you've been doing this, for a while now and we haven't even touched upon like how things change during COVID.

Because I imagine that was a tough time. Let's talk about that for a minute before I ask you my other question. what, happened during COVID because you're doing live music, with seniors, a population that's highly at risk. Obviously with COVID, did you keep doing them? What did you go virtual?

What did you end up doing?

[00:23:54] Sarah Martin: We pivoted to virtual.

[00:23:56] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah.

[00:23:57] Sarah Martin: It was all we could do. There was no way we could risk, Well, and there were quarantines, we weren't allowed to. So every week, we made out a schedule and I tapped into all the musicians that were also at home. And I said, look, every Monday we are going to roll out a new program video so that, and I want you to record it wherever you are. Pretend you're there with the older adults that you usually engage with and just do a program, talk to them, do sing alongs. And so we rolled those out and all the, companies and, the assisted living and everybody that we worked with, they would put it up on their big screen in their activity room and they would socially distance their folks and they'd watch a music for seniors program.

[00:25:03] Sanjay Parekh: Nice. Nice.

[00:25:05] Sarah Martin: It was quite a challenge. And I tell you what, then when we started going back when, in the spring of, 2021 or whenever people were starting to open up a little bit, we did outdoor concerts. We did courtyard concerts. We did, and every, we required that every participant in our organization who wanted to be a part of it, whether they were staff or participating musicians, we required vaccinations because we could not take the risk.

And we lost some folks because of that requirement. But my board was adamant.

[00:25:51] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Which makes sense. I mean that your entire, population audiences is very much at risk, especially in those early days when we didn't know so much. So let me ask you the question I was about to ask.

You've been doing this for a while or you started it a while ago, and now you've got different leadership and everything. Thinking back over the years, is there something that you could identify that you would do differently? In the history and, what is that if you could, and why?

[00:26:24] Sarah Martin: Oh my gosh.

[00:26:29] Sanjay Parekh: Just pick one. I know there's a lot. Just pick one.

[00:26:31] Sarah Martin: Okay. As the leader, as the person who's the chief cook and bottle washer and making it all happen, that stress is enormous because I was writing all of the grants. I was hiring the staff. I was. creating the programming and my staff helped me with that, but I waited too long to find an expert to coach me and help me be a better leader.

Because I needed a, person to brainstorm with. I needed somebody to help me with that big blue sky imagining that I love so much. And, I couldn't really do that with my staff, they were taking care of the programming, they were in their lane doing what they needed to do.

And so I would encourage anyone who is at the head of an organization or a company to have a trusted expert that they can meet with on a regular basis, just as a place. To unload to normalize what you're going through and to help you make better decisions with how you lead the organization.

[00:28:04] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that's great advice.

That's great advice. Last question for you what would you say to somebody that you were talking to that's thinking about taking that leap like you did and starting either a side hustle or starting a new thing like you've done, what advice would you give them?

[00:28:23] Sarah Martin: Don't be deterred by the naysayers.

Find those individuals in your life, in your community, who think your idea is really great. And listen to encouraging words and get sound advice, if you're unsure of how to find money, go to people, who have found money to do things in the lane, you're doing it. I wrote a lot of grants to, funders originally who didn't fund senior related work. And, I went after funding pools that weren't really appropriate, but you learn that as you go, because you think everybody's going to love it. But you have to target, you have to target, you have to be intentional. And I talked about that laser focus, that is a huge.

I think that's a huge component. Also, number two, keep a sense of humor about it and find people around you who you can laugh with and talk about it, but you can't take it too seriously or it'll eat you alive.

[00:29:52] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. That's great advice. Absolutely. Sarah, this has been fantastic. Where can our listeners find and connect with you online?

[00:30:01] Sarah Martin: Well, they can go to my website, sarahmartinmcconnell.com. They can hear my music on wherever they get streaming, Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, whatever. I have a Sarah Martin McConnell Music Facebook page. And they can reach out to me, through my website. I'd love to hear from them.

[00:30:29] Sanjay Parekh: Awesome. Sarah, thanks so much for being on today.

[00:30:32] Sarah Martin: Thank you. It's been a delight. I really appreciate you inviting me on.

[00:30:38] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And to hear more Side Hustle to Small Business stories, or share your own story, please visit Hiscox.com/side-hustle-to-small-business. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.