The pandemic brought an opportunity to produce the webinar series Concert Business Basics to bring my lectures to a wider audience online. You can find them all right here. This led to a collaboration with Jim Digby on the organization Show Makers, in which we brought education content for live event professionals to spaces such as NAMM and Grammy Museum.

Since 2013, I have taught Producing and Touring Live Entertainment at Columbia College Chicago as Adjunct Faculty.  It’s a 15 week, 3 credit hour course that focuses on all aspects of putting together a tour.  In addition to teaching the basics of different people’s roles, venues, routing, and marketing, I put a large emphasis on what really makes or breaks a tour - the finances.  Students learn to budget for a tour and how to settle shows.  We dive into revenue sources like merchandise and VIP packages.  They might not love learning the math of the “Promoter Profit” or “Versus” deal, but they are getting deep inside knowledge that can be hard to come by out in the real world.

Teaching at Columbia got me comfortable speaking in front of an audience, and led me to speak at a number of conferences.  It was an honor to speak at highly respected national events like Pollstar Live and SXSW and smaller regional conferences such as Yellowphone, Driven, and LAUNCH Music Conference and Showcase Festival.

I found the educational component of conferences to be so valuable to the attendees, I wanted to have a bigger impact.  From 2015-2018 I was a partner and the conference director for the LAUNCH Music Conference and Showcase Festival.  I strived to create more opportunities for connection between attendees and panelists, invigorated the sessions with new formats, and created space for in-depth learning on a wide variety of topics.  I’m most proud of lining up a diverse group of speakers, and addressing topics such as mental health awareness and suicide prevention which might be outside of the “music industry” but affect everyone’s lives

Through my company The Entertainment Institute (TEI) I was able to bring this same kind of information to a wider audience.  I created the 6 hour course The New Music Biz for CreativeLive and presented it alongside Kevin Lyman, TEI co-founder and Warped Tour Producer.  We had over 5000 live viewers in addition to those who downloaded it after it aired.  I also held many online workshops for those looking to break into the concert industry focused on the basics and career advice.  While on the Warped Tour, I hosted a number of workshops in the evenings for the crew on the tour to expand their skills and learn the nuances of settling, routing, and more.