Today, we’re diving into what losing roles in community theater taught me about running a creative business.

From navigating fierce competition and embracing typecasts to stepping outside my comfort zone and preparing for new opportunities, I share three key areas how the lessons from the stage have shaped my approach as a business owner.

This week's Podcast Tip of the Week addresses how a podcast's job can change, and what that means for your show strategy.

Resources in this episode:

Somatic therapy: Tami Schweber's The Knowing Well

Robidoux Resident Theatre

Mic Check Call

Welcome to the Kindly Confident Marketing Podcast. I'm Casey Brown, and I help creative small business owners cut through the noise with my podcast-centered approach. Here we focus on how you can do fewer things in your marketing, but create deeper relationships. As a business owner, you've already got plenty on your to-do list, so let's use your voice to earn real trust. I'm so glad you're here. Hello, my friends. Welcome back. Thank you again for tuning in to the Kindly Confident Marketing Podcast.

I am your host, Casey Brown, and today we're talking about a topic that is very near and dear to my heart, and that is musical theater. So today we're gonna talk about how losing roles in community theater has helped my business. Now, I love musical theater. I have for a very, very long time. And I got really lucky that when I moved to St. Joseph almost 15 years ago, I landed in a spot that has a killer community theater. Our community theater is called Rubidoux Resident Theater. You're gonna hear me call it RRT a lot.

The production value of all of our shows is sky high. We have won national awards. The talent pool— of people in this area is so, so high. We get people who come in from Kansas City. We've had people who have been professionals before. We have had people from this area go become professionals. The talent pool is insane. It is wonderful that I have such now talented friends, but competing against your friends stinks.

That's the worst part about community theater. Oh, and production value. Like when I got to be Mary Poppins, we actually flew. These shows are so, so cool. Again, it also means that roles are incredibly competitive. So I have been very fortunate to get some amazing roles. I've done maybe by now probably 30 shows. I kind of stopped counting a while ago, but I've done 1 to 2 shows on average for the last 14 and a half years.

So It just is easy math that say, yeah, sure, I've done 30. It took me about 4 years once I joined RRT to get any type of role, like with any speaking. And then it took me another year after that to get a lead. And I've gotten to be some really amazing roles. So Mary Poppins, Marian Paroo in The Music Man, Rosalie Mullins in School of Rock. Oh, man, I think she doesn't top Mary Poppins, but she is one of my absolute favorites. Grace Farrell in Annie. Got to play the bad girl as Vivian Kensington in Legally Blonde.

It's just, it's really, really fun. And so over the years, I've kind of developed this typecast, which is generally a kind, often uptight, motherly, nanny-esque, classic soprano. role. It's not a bad thing. I love those roles. I'm pretty good at those roles. But lately, I've been feeling that typecast kind of chafing against me. And I've been doing that in my business too.

Like, I've kind of been working on dropping that safe, professional, polished mask in more attempts at true authenticity. And I want to embrace all of the parts of me, both in my business, in the fact that you can be competent and fun. And in theater, I want to embrace my lower range again. I used to sing as an alto 2, which is the lowest voice part in choir back in college. I do have a really, really strong lower range that I just don't really use anymore. And I will admit a lot of that was voluntary. The, the high soprano notes are impressive, and I wanted to be the person who could hit those. And so I worked for a long time and I can, and I mean, it obviously works within the musculature of— I can hit those and I have the technique to do that healthfully.

But I also have a really strong chest voice, lower range that I just haven't been using nearly as much. So this year I really, really wanted to prep for Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was the mainstage summer show for our season. And I was just really drawn to this character because of her fire and her confidence and her power, which are all things that I have been working on trying to embody myself, just personally, professionally, all of the above. So I was like, this is just a beautiful marriage of all of the things. So I realized that if you want something you've never had, then you have to do things that you have never done. So for me, for prepping for Esmeralda, this meant I needed to engage my chest voice. I needed to work on a different style of singing.

She belts a lot more than I really ever have. So I needed to work on mixing and belting. And I honestly avoided both of those styles for a very long time because— I'm not a belter. It had always been ingrained in me from a pretty young-ish age, at least in high school, that doing those was not safe. And I understand why. If you don't have the correct foundational technique, then yes, you can injure yourself. And so most teachers want you to learn the classic foundational technique. And then they can add that style on.

But I never got to the point of adding that style on because it was just like the safe way to sing was classically. And turns out it was pretty good at classical style, but it was just, no, you're not supposed to. That's, that's not safe. You don't— if you sing like that, that's how you get nodes. That's how you injure yourself. So I just didn't. And so it always sounded cool. I always admire people who are natural belters, and I just never was.

So I just kind of resigned myself of, oh, I'm not a belter. I just don't go for those roles. And finally I decided, why not? Quit saying you can't. Start working on it. So I did. So I got, I got some voice lessons. I work on my mixing and my belting techniques now. They're just different styles of singing and they take different techniques.

And so I will never sing like that if I never try singing like that, if I don't learn those techniques and push out of my comfort zone. So that was a giant step. Step 2 was I had to train my nervous system to be able to handle more visibility. And so I hired a somatic therapist. And I knew going into this that I, I had met her in a group coaching program. She is a delightful human. And I knew going into this that yes, it's for to get ready for this type of role. But it's also super applicable to many, many areas of my life.

And I can gush over Tammy for a long, long time. And I will. And I will also link to her business in the show notes. Her name is Tammy Schweber. Wonderful, wonderful human and very, very good at what she does. She helped me get so much more comfortable being in my body, noticing signals that it's been trying to tell me, tapping into groundedness. She gave me a somatic toolkit for when I'm dysregulated, which every person who has ever auditioned for anything gets dysregulated. So there was just so much that she helped me work through.

And I notice now, like, when my body is trying to send me signals, and it's, it's so helpful, and I feel so much better. And I needed to do something different to feel something different, and I do. I feel grounded and confident and strong and really capable in my body now. And I wouldn't have been able to do that without Tammy. So thank you so much, Tammy. So number 3 is prepare for and act as if the role is yours. So my business coach has said this before of like, think about the version of your business that you're working for it to be. If you want your calendar to be spacious, if you want high-paying clients, if you want to be able to relax, how would you act when you are those things? Because so many times we get to be like, I will feel better when this happens.

I will be able to relax once I get Through this month, I will be able to relax once yada yada yada. Once this week slows down or whatever, that never happens because you never actually make it happen or let it happen. So, like if I want to be able to relax, I build some of that in now. It's not a reward; it is part of my day. If I want to be able to take care of my body. I make that happen. So usually for me, this means after I drop the kids off, I go exercise because I feel really strong in the late morning, as opposed to if I tried to get up at 6 to do it before we had to leave for school, which I have done before when I had a full-time job. And it worked, but I kind of always hated it.

And so now I build that into my day. I have also learned that my most productive time And best, like, working hours are generally from the late morning through the afternoon. And so earlier morning, if I try to make myself do stuff, generally, yes, I can. But it takes longer because I'm not really firing on all cylinders yet. I kind of putter around. If I'm, if I'm doing work stuff, like generally that's when I would read newsletters or getting ready for the thinking work is what a friend of mine put it. And so now, okay, that's the time when I go exercise. That's the time when I read a book for a little bit.

So it's kind of like reading those newsletters, but getting ready for the thinking time. And then when I'm ready to dial in, bam, I can get a lot of stuff done very quickly. Honestly. But because I've built that, what I actually wanted into this, that's been really helpful. So instead of, oh, well, I'll be, I'll, I'll be relaxed once I hit this, this goal. No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna work in that now. And so that's really, really helpful. And so for musical theater, preparing for the role as if it is already yours means that you actually make choices.

I used to, think that I needed to show how versatile I was. So that way, if a director would cast me, it would be like they knew I could do it this way or this way or this way. And I thought that was, that was what they're looking for. And really what I have learned through 14 and a half years is that they want to know your take on the character. They want to know that you have thought through the motivations. They want to know that you've thought through some characterization choices, what why they're making these choices, and they want to see that. So prepare for it as if it's yours. And yes, of course, be open to direction.

If they say, hey, could you try it like this? Think about it a little bit differently. Of course, but don't come in wishy-washy, like, oh, well, I'll show it this way and then that way and then this, and then look at whatever, look at what I can do. No, make some choices and be solid in those. And I have learned to also do that with my business. Of make some choices. You can always tweak things, but make the choice and stand by it. There's reasoning behind it. Let that show.

Let that be. So those are ways that losing roles in musical theater— oh yeah, I didn't get Esmeralda. But prepping for it, I mean, the work compounds. That work was not wasted. It was really helpful. I have grown as an actress. There will be roles in which this prep will have made me ready for it. So I'm not calling it a failure.

Yeah, I was sad. I got really attached to the character. Most of my friends who are in theater, yeah, we get really attached to the characters we prep for. Okay, so that happens. You're always putting yourself up for vulnerability when you audition. But I will say the work that went into it And a little bit the love that went into it of of prepping for that certainly was not wasted. So hopefully these things will also help you in your journey, or if not, you just learned about learned about something you don't always do. Oh, one thing that also went into this.

So I was just cast in Into the Woods, which is a Stephen Sondheim show. It combines a whole lot of fairy tale characters in a really really. Clever way, and it's so fun. It is so hard, and it's amazing. It is. We've got such a strong cast. It's going to be wonderful. I am the stepmother in this one.

So as I have mentioned earlier, I've been wanting to stretch my comfort zone, and being a jerk to my friend Sydney, who is Cinderella, that counts. That is not what I am naturally inclined to do. So We're learning new things. We're stretching. I'm calling this my hot villain era. And I am on board with that. I am learning, or I'm realizing that, yeah, sometimes I think I'm going to lean into that. That means I don't always have to be nice in everything.

I will always be kind because that is one of my foundational values. But I don't always have to say yes to things. Actually, a no is far more useful right now. So I'm going to celebrate some nos. I'm going to enjoy running lately. I've been doing that anyway, but I can tell my legs are a lot stronger. And so that just makes me laugh when I'm like, hot villain. So yeah, all of these things add up.

And so all of the things you try in your business, they add up. Like I mentioned, a lot can happen in six months, and so thanks for being on the ride with me. And we are gonna try all these new things and bust out of our comfort zones together. Let's grow your show with a podcast tip of the week. So this week's podcast tip of the week is something I talked about on a mic check call. So. Woo-hoo! I think that podcasts need to have a job or they become an expensive content hobby. However, the job that your podcast has can change.

So let's talk through that. What I mean by this is, yes, ideally, if you have a small business, it makes sense for the podcast to be serving as a marketing channel. For you. The podcast for me is hopefully sending people to my website and to book a mic check call with me so we can talk about their podcast. However, that doesn't have to be true for everyone. For this person I talked to, because she is very early in this iteration of her business right now, the podcast could be serving as building a community of like-minded people. So yes, that kind of sounds like it's becoming a content hobby, but the content will still be focused. It's still gathering people who align with the way she thinks about things and the way she does business, even if she hasn't solidified all her offers yet.

So for maybe the next 6 months or what have you, That would be her show's goal, is to create an audience of like-minded people, of aligned people. Then once her business grows a little bit, once her offers solidify, once it enters its next iteration, then the podcast job can evolve. Then it could turn into, yeah, we would like to drive people to the website. Let's see if the offers she has can help her community of listeners. So here's your permission slip of yes, the podcast should have a job, but the job can change. And there's your podcast tip of the week. I really appreciate that you tune in. If you would love to talk about your own podcast, about a podcast idea you've got, let me know.

Click the mic check button in the show notes. We'll chat for 30 minutes. Tell me about your show or your idea, and I will give you 1 to 2 practical, actionable tips that you can use right away to either set your show up for success or help your show grow. Again, thank you so much for joining me, and until next time, I'll see you later. Thanks for joining me today. If this resonated with you, I would love if you could leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Even typing just a few words is super helpful in getting this show into the ears of those who need it the most. And I really appreciate your help.

If you want help creating or sustaining your own show, I'd be happy to visit tealhatcommunications.com and let's talk. This has been the Kindly Confident Marketing Podcast. Thanks for being here. Break or to burst? Gross. What was that? That's sad.