 When I asked my mom, I said, Mom, I need a piano for a pretty shoot. And she said, I need a shot outside. And she was like, OK, that's fine. And I said that you won't get the piano back. And she's like, what do you mean? And I said, well, we're doing a creative thing. Like, I don't want to basically create art out of this. I'm sitting on it. But as you look through the booklet, we smash it up. We bury it. The piano. That's a tough sell. Yeah. But I didn't tell her this because she would always say no. This is Started the Storefront, the podcast where we talk to business owners and entrepreneurs about the untold challenges of scaling a business. Today's guest is Vanen Nguyen, a world famous pianist, composer, producer, and wine connoisseur. Throughout this episode, you'll hear some of her music, including our theme song, which she and her double-touch partner, Mark Olson, composed and recorded for us. Listen in as we cover everything from how she used crowdfunding to finance her first album, what most musicians get wrong, and how she envisions her next big career move to involve something straight out of a sci-fi movie. Now, back to the episode. We're here with Vanen, amazing concert pianist and good friend of the podcast. Typically, we're talking to startups launching their retail or manufacturing. But in talking to VA and some of our other friends in music, they have to literally get a venue. And then, once they have the venue, the question is, what do they do from there? And so VA has played at almost, tell them a little bit about where you've played all over the world. I mean, I've played in big-scale venues, like the Sydney Opera House, for instance. No big deal. Yeah, just brush it off your shoulder. It's my backyard, so. And then, through to the Forbidden City Concert Hall in China, through to the small chamber music halls in Vienna, the Schubert Hall, for instance, where there's so much history and incredible natural acoustics, to very, very small venues, like a jazz club or recently a warehouse in downtown LA, where literally it is the bare bones. And you need to bring everything in. That's one of the things that I wanted to bring up today. And I'm glad you brought it up, because take us through the process of that. Because you guys did everything for that. I mean, it was about as hands-on as you could make it. And you pulled it off. And so what was the process behind that? So Ronnie, the singer that I was working with, she found the venue. I think she'd already been there once before. And for us, when we're doing a concert, the first thing that is the most costly, one is venue, but two is the piano. Moving a piano in and out and hiring the piano is so insanely costly. So when you find a venue that will already house a piano that has it there already, it's like a big win. So we've cut that cost already. The venue itself was not that expensive, so we're like, OK, perfect. But then we start the promotions. We bring our own sound guy in. We had a bar, so we had to set up that bar. We had to go and buy the alcohol. We had to design the flyer. How do you decide how many people? So for me, if I'm doing quick math and I know nothing about music or venues, I'm thinking, I have seats. I have to sell the seats. So I would imagine your first step is, OK, based on this market and the people I might know in it and my reach, I need to get an X amount of seats, right? Is that kind of the logic? Exactly. So you want to find a venue that that particular venue was a capacity of 100. And we were comfortable with that number, with the reach between myself and Ronnie, and doing something that's a little different to what those people would normally be used to. And quick, right? It was like a month out, or not even. Yeah, I would say, yeah, I would say four weeks, four or five weeks from the go ahead with the venue to putting out the word, selling tickets on an event. And you have to prepay. So you find your venue, do you pay them first? You pay them 50%. 50% of the total. And then the other 50% is based on sales or something. There is a guarantee fee. That venue was $400. Yeah, so you pay them $200 upfront. So you pay them $200 upfront. But eventually you're going to have to pay the $400 anyways. That's regardless. But that's just to secure your spot. Then you pay the other bit later on. Then you make $400 for yourself. Once you hit their $400, you get your $400. That's $800. Anything beyond that, we do an 80-20 split. Oh, OK. Let's rewind the tape. Hold on. So you're saying the venue costs $400 in this example. Let's just make it $1,000. Make it simple. All right, so I pay $1,000. That's how much the venue costs. I give them $500 upfront. Then what happens next? So then I got to sell tickets. Yeah, basically you need to sell tickets. Let's just say the whole venue costs $1,000. Doesn't matter whether you pay up front or not, it's just going to be $1,000. Then you make $1,000. Well, you try to make $1,000. But you haven't made any money yet because you haven't sold anything. So at this point, basically you're trying to make $2,000, one to cover their costs, and one to cover yours. And then after that, that's when they'll cut into the ticket sales. But is that industry standard or is that something unique to this venue? I would say it's industry standard for any sort of buyout over space. So if you're seeing another jazz club that's planning around here in Los Angeles, they will do 70, 30 splits, 80, 20 splits. Sometimes it's just a split and not a venue higher at all. So when you're looking at venues and whatnot, you really do have to do some math to figure out price of the venue and is it worth it. Can we seat enough people in this venue to compensate for the cost and the split that is inevitable? Correct. And then also, you would consider, is the venue, like are you trying to reach other people, like patrons that would normally go to that venue. Is that something that you want to counter in, or is it just you're purely doing it for your people, people that you know will come and support you? So that's also another thing to consider. Like for instance, we have another show coming up, and that venue is renowned for having incredible people come through. So people who come through LA will be like, we want to go and look at music. Let's see what this venue has. And they'll look at the calendar on their website. And so that's another approach of it. How are you deciding ticket price? Is it more of like, OK, so I can imagine it like some of it's marketing, right? So every venue, you're getting people to come. So maybe you're saying, I don't want to make too much money here because maybe it's a city you've never been to. And so then you just want to grow your brand. How do you then decide, if you have 100, in this case, 100 tickets, what makes you decide the price of it? I would say for a general concert entry for a jazz venue, your normal entry would be $20, a $20 cover charge. Like you're going to a club, it's $20. That's your base rate. Like anywhere in LA, you just want to see live music, $20. Got it, OK. I think comedy is in a similar space as well. But unless you've got a name, right, so you're standing in front of him, he's not going to charge $20. Right. Right, so then that's a completely different story. But I would say 20 is your base rate. The way we did it with that particular show is we wanted people to enter with a glass of wine. So we would charge an extra five dollars in the total ticket price. OK, but the creative thing here is that you didn't necessarily hire a bartender. You guys did it yourselves, which is great. You saved some money. We saved some money, yeah. Then you get to pick a wine, which is probably better than the wine any other bar might bring in any wine. And then you'd find the deals. It was fun finding the wines. The unfortunate thing about that is your wine release came afterwards. In a perfect world, you could have had that being served right outside. Exactly. Ideally, that is the dream, that is the goal. Serving your own wine. Upcoming concerts, down the line. Down the line, exactly. If you don't mind, take us back to when you were just starting out. How did you navigate this whole process? What was your method for learning about all of this fee scheduling and marketing? To be honest, it was trial and error from the beginning. My mom would always say, you shouldn't wait for people to offer you a show. Because when I grew up, I grew up very classical. The classical mold is that you grow and you compete in competitions. You compete so that in the first prize, second prize or third prize offerings, they offer you maybe two years of concert engagements in certain festivals around the world. They offer you an album release, maybe with a very small label. It would never be with a big time, a certain universe or anything like that, but smaller. So you're trained to think that way. Like if you don't win, there's no other way. And you're trained to think that you should be winning these things around the age of 21 to 25, if not a little younger. So the norm is you're winning your way into engagements, not actually setting up the function. So there's really, there's a lot of musicians that probably don't even know what that's like. Yeah, and then they think they're a failure if they don't. Right, because they've never been a part of it because they've never won. Yeah. That's fascinating. It's an awful, depressing feeling. Like you are there preparing two and a half to three hours of music for five rounds, your two preliminary rounds, your quarter finals of 40 minutes, your semifinals with the chamber music, your finals of concerto of 45 minutes long and you get cut at quarters. I kind of love that in a weird way. I feel like more of life should be kind of like that. It's very cutthroat. So how did your mom, like what was the nugget of information she learned at some point where she said to your point, you got to do it yourself? Well, I had an opportunity to play a concert. I think I was 18. I had an opportunity to play a concert in Vietnam with an orchestra. She's like, well, just set up the microphones there. Let's just do a live recording and you can release it as an album, as a live concert recording. People, yeah, why not? And so just from there, it became a, almost like routine to go, oh, well, next year I'm going to do a concert and there's more recorded and I'm preparing for the concert. So I'm playing at a level where I can just go in and record. Like it shouldn't be any different. Of course, it's expensive to the whole recording process. Hiring, recording studios, producers, all of that sort of stuff. So I did a Kickstarter at one point. I... Let's talk about that. You know, what was your goal? How much did you raise and what were you able to put that towards? So this particular album right here, the Tonalata album, this was done in 2012. You know, my first album was a purely classical album and I was fine with that. But in 2012, I was dabbling with the crossover genre and it was also me trying to work up who I was. Sure. Personality wise. I would never consider myself, I don't know, I always felt a little different to the stereotypical classical musician who is in their practice room six to eight hours a day every day. Like, I just can't. I don't, I go crazy. I'll do four hours a day, very happily so. And I think it's more about the hyper focus of practice rather than, you know, sitting there going over and over. Anyways, that's besides the point. So then we get to Tonalata 2012 process. I got, basically got as many friends as I could to help me out. First of all, the photographer, the designer of the dress, the piano that I'm sitting on is the very first grand piano my parents bought for me in 1990. And when I asked my mom, I said, mom, I need the piano for a photo shoot and it's gonna be shot outside. And she's like, oh, okay, that's fine. And I said, but you won't get the piano back. And she's like, what do you mean? And I said, well, we're doing a creative thing. Like I just want to basically create art out of this. I'm sitting on it, but as you look through the booklet, we smash it up, we bury it. The piano. That's a tough sell. Yeah, but I don't tell her this because she would always say no. So I was just like, and you just won't get it back, but I'll buy you another one. I'll replace it. Oh. And she's like, oh, okay. And then she was really unhappy with it in the end. But then I said, look, mom, I'm preserving the piano. It was like getting too old anyways though. You know, you're preserving it in art. So that was the album artwork process. The recording process itself, as I'm writing all of this music and I go, okay, I need a string quartet, I need horns, I need this and this and this, all of that adds up. And how do you record 10 tracks in three days because every day costs at least $1,000 in the recording studio for a mate's rights, small studio of infinity. And so I did the Kickstarter and at the time, I feel like Kickstarter's were kind of new. Yeah, what year? What year was this? 2012. Yeah, I would say they're pretty new to that. It was very fresh. And it was just a sat in the dark. I didn't really know where it would go and the power of the craft. They have a team, so I know now Kickstarter and WeFund are, they have a lot of people that help people like you raise money. Did they have a team at the time or was it pretty bare bones? No, it was literally like two guys. Yeah. And I didn't use Kickstarter as the brand, I used another platform called Potsible. Here is at IBLE. So we just kind of put it together and posted it up and I posted up on Facebook and sent out email blasts. So within the first day, I think my goal was to raise like 10,000 because I figured the album will probably cost around there. This was a figure that you had just kind of had floating around in your mind but you hadn't necessarily done all the math. I know, I did not do the math. I mean like 10 days of studio time at $1,000. I was like three days of studio time, 3,000. Plus hiring all the musicians and the photographer. Yeah, and like honestly, so many musicians there gave their time for free to record because they believed in the project. And same thing, photographer, I think I housed him at my house but it was just like, yeah, we'll shoot. We'll do a creative collaboration. Everyone was keen to throw their two cents worth in. I was like, this is cool. I did the dress. That designer, he made that dress on me in the fields and stitched it into me. And then we shot. And then I was like, how do I get out of this? And he just cut it and it's, that's it. There's no more dress. That's the only evidence of that dress ever existing. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it was crazy. We were, we had no plan, we had a vague idea but we had no plan. And I feel like my life is like that sometimes with the music and where it leads is that I have an idea but I'm just kind of, you're not trained to think logically so much sometimes. So did you meet, so you sent out the emails, did you end up meeting the goal? Yes, yes, yes, we hit the goal. How long did it take you to hit it? I can't believe I remember. Because today I feel like the typical, like it's like three to six months, a lot of these campaigns that these people run, usually it's like millions or not millions but it could be like $200,000. Right, right. And so it's like three to six months, usually is the year. I think it was 30 days. I gave it 30 days. Just a month, yeah. Yeah, I gave it 30 days and then we hit it maybe three weeks in because it was like a hike in the first week, a lull in the second and then we kind of pushed it again and then it was fine. So we went over it and it reached it. The greatest thing about it was at the time, again I didn't realize but it reached particularly the Vietnamese community all around the world. I'm talking Vietnamese community, obviously Australia and the United States, Canada I didn't realize it got there. Obviously back in Vietnam, in Italy it reached over there and then I subsequently ended up doing a concert for them as an exchange for their donations. I didn't realize the power of it at the time. I just thought I'm just gonna raise the money and then it was a perfect marketing tool for it to come out soon after. Part of the package was that we, basically people donated money they would be able to come to the album release which was at the Opera House. That's a nice little privilege that they got. Yeah and it was like for them a new brainer. I think it was like $150. The one thing that I'm coming back on is it sounds like these venues are actually pretty vacant. Like they're available. I don't know that I would have guessed that out of the gate. Like if I'm thinking like I'm gonna wanna play at the Opera House, it's like me today and I decide. And I call them. In my head it's kind of like a wedding venue where they tell you yeah they're booked for two years straight. Especially somewhere like the Opera House. It is, I did a launch on a Sunday. So that's generally like an off day. Got it, okay. But at the same time it's double it's expensive to move pianos on that day. Yeah, right. So things like that I didn't realize. And so when they said oh yeah the bill for moving the piano and tuning it is like $2,000. Those added costs, like that whole album launch ended up costing like $30,000. Wow. So I was well and truly, yeah I just didn't calculate it. So once you've got the album recorded you've got the cover shot. And you've got the album launched at the Opera House. What comes next? I mean you put it out on every streaming service I'm imagining you're selling CDs. Was it like received well right away being like was it an instant hit? Or did you really have to like still push your name out there? That particular album I just, we kind of just did the launch and I just wanted product to take to gigs to sell. Like merchandise. And I think that's the best way the instant impact. People watch the show and they're like hyped and they're excited. So then they want to take something home. And that clearly for me was it was the getting your music onto online platforms was not even on the radar for me at that point in time. That came maybe like two years, three years later where I was like okay we need to chart, we need to, how can we get that traction going? But again, it was like baby steps to get there. I didn't think about that until Crossfire. Crossfire was the piano and cello album where we did a couple covers of top 40 songs and they ended up getting into the charts, the classical charts. And I was like wait, this is great. How did we do that? Again, there's no manual. That's gonna say also 50 copies and you're gonna get number 80. So when I released this album with Universal and Decker they have a roster of what's coming out. And so they then slot you in a time where they think would be beneficial for you and beneficial for them too. We don't have that information when we're releasing by ourselves. The day- Do you agree with them the whole time? Or is it a big, I don't want, is it like I can imagine it being this is what you want, this is what they want and then you have to compromise or enlighten them? It's been great so far in terms of content, like what I want to play and what I want released. Definitely it's been great. In terms of the timing of releases that's still a work in progress I think for both sides because we released this in January which I thought would have been great. There's not much going on after Christmas but at the same time most people are away they're on vacation in Australia that is. When did you finish the album? This album was finished back in April last year before I signed it was about to, this is why I have this one because I thought it was gonna independently release it. And that's pop alchemy. That's pop alchemy, the OG. So there's nine months that goes before the launch. Well, the nine months was due to their release. But they do singles in between, right? Is that what happened? Okay, so the singles idea is really, really interesting that you bring it up because in the classical world we don't release singles but it's not a thing, you release albums. And so when they said, oh look, we can't release you until January and I'm like, that's crazy. I won't have any content for nine months. That's not possible. Which is actually everything you do, right? Your Instagram, you can't tell people, you can't release anything. Right. And when everything is there, the 10 songs are there. And so I then proposed the dropping singles every couple of months, every two months was what we did. So we dropped the first single in August, the second in October and the third just before the December. I'm shocked that they had never considered that before. And seeing this with videos, music videos for classical, it's like. Don't exist. Almost don't exist. Like usually there'd be a live recording of a concert or something, but not an actual music video. That is a very, very new concept for the classical world. It actually makes a lot of sense. Well, I would imagine that YouTube has helped bring it to the masses. Like you can do that now because now you have a platform with which to view it. Cause like, think about it, back in the day when MTV was playing music videos, they would have laughed at you and be like, oh, can you put this classical video on? Yeah, yeah. Like no, that wouldn't have been their MO at all. But now there's clearly a market for it. Because you've got some massive acts putting stuff out on YouTube. And they're getting millions and sometimes tens or hundreds of millions of views. So did they, on the video, they didn't help you with the video, did they? No, so the video was. So you do it yourself? Yes. They would distribute it. They got me a Vivo channel, which I'm really in the gym now. Yeah, that's cool. And a Vivo artist. So Universal helps you, you guys do the single thing, or you release your singles, album launches. In terms of, so you're done in April, this happens nine months later. When do you go back to making new music? And all of this doesn't seem like a distraction because it all seems like scheduled. It's all scheduled. So you know when it's coming. Yeah. Do you go right away into music or do you take some time off? How do you navigate what's next? So I think for any recording artist, it is then the balance of doing live shows. To spread the word about the album and the music that you just made. Yeah. Right, okay. And to make money. Yeah. And exercise your craft. For me, there's nothing better in this world than performing, being on stage. Like I love recording, but to be honest, I hate the recording process. I don't like being in that room. Everything inside just tightens up and goes, okay, I need to play perfect. How do you do that? You can't. No, you can't. I thrive on like the adrenaline of live performances. And... Because you can feel the people, their reaction, the energy. Yeah, you feel the people and you're like excited. Recording, I just, I freeze. I start to freeze up. And then as you make a mistake and you're like, oh shoot, I need to do that again. And you tense up even more and it just gets worse and worse. How many people are on the other side of the glass watching you? Probably two. Okay. So that's not really the issue. No, no, it's not them. It's an internal thing, it's just me. And some people, I know other pianists who are so on it for recording and hate the live aspect. They can't deal with the nerves of playing live. But in today's world, that's gotta be your bread and butter. So that's a very occupational hazard. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. But some famous, famous pianists they just can't deal with it. But I think the live aspect for me coming back to performing with Ronnie in that warehouse, for instance, there is an energy you can never recreate again because of the people who are in it, the lighting or all those variables can create the perfect moment even if they are imperfections. And I mean, the space was a DIY space. We had 80 people in there. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't Carnegie Hall but would that have been better? I'm not sure for that moment in time the energy of how people reacted was the coolest thing. Well, I'd like to shift gears into the wine because I'm curious about like I wanna hear how do you go from making music to making wine? Well, I have one, I've always loved wine. My dad introduced me to wine when I was 12 years old. What's the drinking age in Australia? Wow. I think you just sold your dad out. What's the statute of limitations on that? So drinking age is 18 but what would happen would be mom would be teaching at home and she'd teach three families and they would basically take the whole afternoon and evening up. Each family had two or three kids so we would just take the entire Friday afternoon through the evening. The three dads would then each bring a bottle of red wine and just do tasteings. And so I'd kind of teach a little bit and then come over and dad's like, here, taste this. And you know, I think for red wine, it's very quiet. It's not, when you start drinking it's not something that you're like, oh, I love this. So that is why I say dad introduced me to wine and then I grew to love it. I then also felt I've always had this fascination with music, with light, with trying to make it a sensory experience. So I didn't want it just to be an audience member comes and listens to you play. That should not be it. It should be how you look on stage. What you wear is very important in how it would translate to the audience like of who you are, your personality. That should matter as well. But in the classical world, traditionally, you would just be in blacks. You'd be in tails for the guys. You'd be in like a nice gown or something like that. So no real personality showing through because it's a standard uniform of sorts? Yeah, I guess. Like, I mean, the personality would be like, oh, she's wearing a red dress but it wasn't anything like flamboyant or I don't know, I just feel like people didn't make statements out of it and I wanted to do that. But then the wine came in because I started to do wine pairing concerts. I had this crazy idea of wanting to pair music to how wine tasted. So dependent on the body and the flavors, the tannins, I would then choose a piece which I thought reflected that, but in sound. And what we eventually did, Ian from Smith Devereux, he was the first crazy person to kind of understood, he understood the idea. He also is a musician, but he makes wine and he said, yeah, let's do this. So we did it in Sonoma five years ago. He brought his wines. We did five different types. We started with bubbles I paired like a light Chopin waltz to go with it because it's light as a dance. And then we went on to whites, on to pinot noirs, on to bold reds. And that's basically, if you think about a concert you kind of build it that way too. You start with something kind of exciting and then it has more depth and so on. So for me, it makes sense. And so from there, your partnership kind of morphed into, well, why don't we create a wine specifically, like instead of using someone else's label or type of wine, let's create our own. And so how does that partnership look? You're not stomping grapes yourself, but you're obviously, I mean, you probably put in a lot of input to this wine. So how do you go about that? Yeah, so essentially this first one was for me quite hands off approach because of the timing of me being in different places around the world and timing not working out very well. But I said, you know, I would love my first wine to be a big bold red as like a homage to dad introducing me to wine. So we said, yeah, we'll do, if the grapes are coming from Napa we'll do a Cabernet Savignon. And so that's what they did. They would send tasters to me and I would taste them and then they'd say, yes, no, yes, no. It was a fun process. I would imagine so. Yeah, and then I was here for the bottling process. So we used a facility out of one of their friends' vineyards and they hand bottled. We only did a small amount of 10 cases. We hand bottled them, which was super cool to be a part of as well. And then label-wise, I had a lot of stay with that. So I had a friend back in Australia, we sat down and we designed the label and it's kind of similar in the respect of designing a album cover. Of course, you probably don't want your face on it, but I wanted it to have some sort of piano connection to it and then sort of fireworks, that's sort of how I, I want to think of myself and my playing and how you have a good time at wine. So that's how the label came about. We could be doing more wines with the same group. Is this just the beginning? What do you have? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It was so fun. I mean, I learned a lot as well. Just little things like labels, like how that goes about, like the teams that they work with, the corks that they use, where the bottles come from, all those other things. It's just like so similar to creating an album, the process, just different nuances. But yeah, for sure. Eventually I would love to have an array of wines where I can then pair with food. What's interesting about this whole thing to me is that you are now like, this is another arm of revenue for you. Yeah. You know, you are a musician by trade, like I'd say that seems like your primary focus, but this could shape out to be just as lucrative as music, right? I haven't quite thought that far. Yeah. Again, I haven't thought that far. I just thought it'd be, it was the right timing to come out with a wine of your own considering I've been pairing wines for five years now. Just a natural progression towards that. And it wasn't forced. Literally I had this conversation with Ian and he said, yeah, come up to Napa. We have this great tasting room. You should do a gig here. We haven't done a gig in a while. And so I went up there and did some tastings and he does an artist series with a couple of other singers and songwriters. And I just kind of toyed with the idea and said, what's the possibility of getting a Van Ann wine? He was like, let's do it. Okay. Seems like I know a brainer. Yeah, the launch was so much fun to have, again, an intimate amount of people there, but knowing that they're there to support the music and... The artist. Why, what do you think most musicians get wrong about either growing their brand? So frankly, it sounds like... Brand? There's no brand. They don't think brand. No. Your whole construct is you have to win to play, so that's interesting. So you have a lot of probably defeated musicians out there by nothing other than losing or not having won these venues. And so it sounds like you've escaped all this in some interesting way, which I find fascinating. Let me backtrack. I say compositions. This is from a piano perspective. From stage string players. They also, a lot of them will follow that as well, but of course, a lot of them have goals to join orchestras. And prestigious orchestras around the world. So again, it's an audition process, but how often is an orchestra going to offer a spot? And then everybody in the world goes for that spot. Is that lucrative, playing in an orchestra? It's stable, dependent on the orchestra and where you are in the orchestra, where first desk, second desk, so on. Your principal player, you lead the section, but it's stable. It's a full-time job. You have a question. You're touring, I imagine. Sometimes you may tour, but you have locked-in dates with your home concert hall. So some musicians cannot deal with being locked in. They don't like that idea. And for them, joining an orchestra is the worst possible thing ever. But for other musicians, that is the dream. It's a dream, yeah. So again, it's a personality thing. If you like stability, if you like, I don't know. And because you're locked in, when you can have vacation time, you can teach on the side, you can... So the orchestra is like the... Nine-to-five. Essential, but like the high-placed nine-to-five, corporate America. Yeah. Stave, stable, you're good. But your talent, there's a certain talent level there. Absolutely. And you would put yourself as the renegade entrepreneur in the music world, figuring it out. Figuring it out, definitely trying to figure it out. Do you have to do a certain amount of albums with the Universal Deal? Like, how does that work? Are they... I signed a three-album deal. Okay, and this is one, right? Okay. So now you're working on the second one? Yes. When are you expecting that to come out? Shared here first, tell everybody. Yeah. It'll be 2020 for sure. Okay. Have you written all the songs? We've got the concepts. So I've got two album concepts, and it's just narrowing it down to working out which one we're gonna go with. And then I need to sit down and write an album concept. What does that even mean? So the album concept, like, for instance, pop alchemy, what is pop alchemy? It is an album entailing of mashups, of classical and pop songs. Yeah. As well as a couple of top 40 covers done on the piano. So album concept could be a home covers album of... Okay. The Beatles. Is that what it is? No, it's not. They're gonna be pretty cool there. Can you tell us? You can't tell us. Yeah, it's gonna be so much. Is it like a cab or is it like a champagne? How would we describe the next one? Yeah, parrot, parrot. Yeah, parrot. Parrot? Like, Pino. I'm gonna go Sly Pino. Yeah. Is that what it is? Well, you had a full-bodied red for this one, so... Yeah. Well, I mean, it's funny because, to be honest, this wine is a lot more body and guts than... The album. The album, because the album is quite fun. Not that red wine can't be fun, but this is a serious drinking wine. Right. So, yeah, I think along the same nature, it would be a fun album that just a little... So like a franzia, a bagged wine. I can't disclose too much, because it may not end up going that way, and you'll be like, what? We'd like to thank franzia responsibly for this segment. The finest in boxed wine. Some people slap it, it's a thing. What advice would you give to up-and-coming musicians or, let's say I'm a musician, I'm super talented, right? I don't know if I have it yet. I'm probably afraid, frankly, to do my own venue, do my own thing. Failure's tough, but I'm like that talent level. What would I tell them to do? I would tell them to record as much as you can. And use all the platforms that are available to you and just put everything out there. Like, everything. Spotify, all the social media. It's so easy now, exactly. Spotify, iTunes, there are aggregates. Like, before I was signed, I used CD, baby. They are so good, and they look after the royalty, the back end of it. You don't even need to... People are like, oh, no, but what about... I'm doing a cover, how do I get the royalties to the right? No, you look up the information, you write down the publishers, you write down the songwriters, they look after the rest of it. It's so easy these days. So you would focus on the product, focus on your content, your music, and then sharing it. Is this sort of the easy part? Yeah, I mean, that's the immediate part where it's not high risk. The risky part is then putting yourself out there and putting the show on. Sure. For me, what I'm seeing now is because all of this came most of it before the Instagram world started. All of your albums. Most of them, I feel old. So for me, it's interesting to sit here and look at it and try and build my Instagram following at the same time and try and navigate that. Is it your content that's the most important of people watching you because of your personality, particularly for musicians? Because obviously there are just personalities out there. What do you think it is? For myself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think people follow you because of you or you because of your piano skills? I'm sorry. But yeah, great. Yeah, I'm sure the real classical people follow you, too. They must in the music group, right? But the real classical people, I don't know if they're on Instagram. Oh, burn. Oh, sorry, guys. I don't remember. You're probably not listening anyway, so. No, age-wise, I guess. Again, like, now, should we say, oh, real classical, I instantly, that's so scary that I'm like, no, instantly they're older people. That's so bad of me. That is bad. That's really awful. That's why I have Facebook, right? For the old people. Right, for the old people. Oh, shoot. Do you always open the hall there? No, but that's why you have to use all your platforms. That's hilarious. You have to use all your platforms. That's why I'm on the newspaper for the old people. Yeah, I was on the newspaper. And I actually cherish newspapers. Like, I think newspapers are like... It's some of the best content because nobody expects it. And so if you can hand-writing a letter to somebody's way further today, yeah, it's special, exactly. Yeah, print is special. Yes. So you got advices, use all your social media. Use all your social medias and then truly just take that risk what terrible thing could happen to you. Like, start small and then put a small show on and collaborate. Oh, yeah, collaborate. Find people that... With other musicians. Yes. Yeah, so that way you're sharing the risk. Exactly. You're all sort of sharing the courage required. And don't be afraid of the word no. Just ask. Who would say no? Lots of people. Like, I would ask for references. I'd ask for clothing sponsorship. Yeah. Like, hey, I need a dress. And what's the worst thing that could happen? They'd say no. I'm gonna move to the next designer. And yeah, branding. What you said about branding, I think musicians are just not wired that way. And I wish they were because it doesn't matter how good you are, no one knows you if you're not out there. And that's a big problem. Sitting in your bedroom. It's interesting though. You know, YouTube, they have that convention, VidCon. Yep. So I went to that a couple of years ago and it was fascinating. See, they had a live stage for their music influences. People who have their channels, right? Huge followings. But they are kids, if I can say kids, like in their teens, they're in their bedroom just with a camera, playing guitar, covers to the camera and everyone at home is watching. They went up on that stage and they could not hold an audience because there is that much more space now that you need to fill as a performer. So for me, the lesson I learned from that is you need to perform. You need to be out there and performing and doing your craft out there. You can't just sit behind a screen because it's anything that's performing at all. It's so interesting because it is vastly different. Right. You know, there's a comfort there of being in your room. It's just your camera. If you make a mistake, you can just re-record or whatever. But if you're trying to hold someone's attention, not just one person's, but an audience of a hundred or a thousand, you have to be much of a larger persona than you would be in just your bedroom. The other way that comes to mind is consistency. In terms of discipline or in terms of practice? Practice is obvious. That should be a given, but consistency of what you're putting out there. For me, I get antsy that an album comes out once a year. I think that's not enough. But it is enough for me at this point in time because I need to tour it and I need to do my gigs. Then I need to find time to write it and then restart that process again. Like I think for an album to come together, it takes six to nine months at least. I look at it like a momentum. It takes time to build it, but then once you have it, you have to keep it going and stay in that space. And if you don't, it's generally so much harder to start again. It's like you've been going to the gym every day, now you've taken three months off and that first week is not ideal for anybody. And that's why I feel like I am afraid of taking holidays. It probably is a great thing for me in terms of inspiring me again to write. I love new spaces and I love meeting different types of people and smelling different things and hearing different languages. Those things always contribute to creating for me. But being away from the piano for three weeks, that's scary. So what's next for VA? Well, hey, I'm going to put it out there, right? I should do it. Let's just put it out there. Let's talk about it. All right, so the idea is we do a virtual tour. Now, a virtual tour being that I stumbled across is Spirio-modeled Steinway piano, which plays back. So you hit record on your iPad, you play whatever you want, and then press stop, press play, and it will play back the keys moving. That play back technology has been around for a while, but this plays back all your nuances. To the staccato, to the crescendo, everything is there. So it's incredible. So if you push the key down halfway, it knows exactly where you left off and knows how fast you came on. This is the next generation of player piano. Exactly. It is incredible. And then you can go back into the app and adjust what you want as well. All within the app. Yes. So if you suddenly held your pedal down for too long, sure enough, it's like putting music production together with the live instrument now. It's incredible. So you're not, you've got to save a lot of time in the editing suite. Sure. If you needed to edit, right? That's great. It is amazing. For the recording, I would imagine too. Exactly. Yeah. So if you want to transpose the entire thing down to three tones, you can do that. I'm sure some musicians hate it. They're like, you're cheating. Oh yeah. Right? But this is what I mean. It's saving your time now if, for instance, you know, what I was seeing about recording, like, oh shoot, I pressed a wrong note. You are cheating and going back in to go, click. Right. But it does save you time, right? Right. So that's only one aspect of what this piano is about. For me, the coolest thing is that because it is linked via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, if there is another Spirio piano, in, for instance, I played it in LA and there's a Spirio same model in Tokyo, you connect it and I'm playing in Tokyo as well. Wow. At the same time. And this is when we add the hologram. This is when we add the hologram. So that VA can appear in 10 different cities at the same time. So if you're listening or watching, you know anything about holograms or you work for Steinway? Yeah. 2021 is the tour launch day. 10 cities in one day. DA is my tour manager, clearly. Yeah. Because he hasn't told me this, but. No, I think it's really straightforward. It's pretty simple. And I think Steinway should and will be more than happy to sponsor it. The other concept is, then you have one live person there, right? Exactly. So we bring in a live person per venue. Violinist, singer. To accompany you on the piano. The hologram. Yeah. Yeah. So there is a live element to it. Right. Well, apart from me playing live, but there's a human there. Yeah. A human element to it. No, well, I mean, we were talking about this idea the other day that if we were to start smaller in terms of staying within the state of California, I could then move down or up and be like, let's do San Diego. Let's do LA or like two hours later. Let's do Santa Barbara, two hours later. I'm excited about the idea, but know nothing about holograms. Got technology. If you think about pianos, nobody ever thinks about piano innovation. Those two things don't exist. It's almost like an oxymoron saying it. And so if I'm Steinway, to me, this is a no brainer. It's like, whoa, now the hologram just increases my marketability. But also what I'm selling is this new component, which is the Bluetooth piece with the app. Yes. Being able to tune it, however you described it. Yeah. Like, I don't know that they're marketing that to a mass, I mean, I don't even know how often people buy a new piano, but to me it's a no brainer. To me, that particular piano, because there is no compromise on quality either. Because- It's like a commercial. How much is the piano? How much is it? It's 152,000. And it's like a grand, you said? Like a nine footer? How much is a normal Steinway for comparison? So this superior is the size of a Steinway model B, which for me is the ideal piano size for any home because it's six foot-ish. Because you have to have a nine foot in your house and that's to put a McMansion acoustics for it and it's like a dining table. That's for concert halls. But they do make the superior in a D as well. What's how big is the D? Nine foot. Okay, so zero six or nine. So they're E's made for the concert hall too. And so how much would a regular B cost you? A regular B brand new is 112,000. So it's significantly more expensive, I mean, it's what? 40,000. $40,000 more, yeah. I would argue if you're gonna spend 112, you're right there. Just go for 152. Yeah, you're there. You're already there. Yeah. Put it on the credit card. Yeah, to then have the technology and imagine inviting someone over who you really like, who can play and you then capture that forever. You don't even invite them back anymore. Oh. You then need to ask permission? It's kind of like stealing your soul. Wow. You're like, hey, come over, I'll host a dinner party. Can you play for me? Okay, thanks, bye. Wow, and then never talk to them again. And then now to put the hologram in and she's there. Done. It was one of there. It's like, Alexa, play the piano. Oh yeah. Look at that, we just paired it now with Amazon. Now you have a three-way partnership between Steinway, Amazon, and the hologram company. This is some next level. We are some real sponsor oars. Real entrepreneurship. The thing is, this is all super possible in today's environment. That's kind of the exciting part. So after this concert, 2021, by then you'll have another album launch for sure. Probably three albums in. Yeah, maybe that could be the third Universal Album Tour. Sure. The hologram tour. You should pitch this to Universal. I think it seriously has legs and it's super exciting and possible. Yeah, we should. We have a great festival in Australia called Vivid. It happens every winter in June. And it's a music, ideas, and light festival. And it's incredible. They project stuff into the opera house. So they would do this. Oh yeah. This would be at the rally. Yeah. Yeah. Let's send some emails. Yeah, let's do it. All right, so for the people listening, where can they find you? You can find me at Vanen official, V-A-N-A-N-H official. That's websites, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Music. V-A Super Talented, thank you for being on. Thanks very much. Super good talking to you. We here at Startup the Storefront would love to hear feedback from you. Reach out and let us know what you think about the show. Make sure to give us a rating on iTunes. Anything over five stars is the only way to go. Our music is composed by Double Touch. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Startup the Storefront. For more information on the products and businesses featured on the show, check out the links in the show notes. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.