From Scales to Sales: The Surprising Link Between Music & Running Your Own Business

This month’s blog might feel like a slight detour from my usual musings, but stick with me (and no, I haven’t dipped too generously into the Christmas sherry).

I’ve played instruments since the age of eight, beginning with the noble recorder and then the violin (really not for me), clarinet and eventually piano which is my most loved instrument. Now unless you’re a musical prodigy, which I most definitely am not, playing an instrument is hard. It demands practice, patience, discipline and resilience… which also happen to be the very same muscles you need to run a business.

Starting to see where I’m going with this?

Playing an instrument doesn’t just hand you a bundle of soft skills; it teaches you processes, repeatable, reliable habits that translate beautifully into the world of business.

Take learning a new piece of music. You don’t fling yourself in and hope for the best. You break it down. Left hand. Right hand. Slow, steady, painfully plodding at first, then gradually bringing it together with the peddling and increased speed. That process, drilled into me for years, has a name in the business world: task chunking.

When I work with clients, we inevitably hit tasks that look far too big to swallow in one bite. Redesigning a filing system. Setting up a whole new email marketing platform. On the surface they look monstrous. But break them down into smaller steps with clear deadlines, and suddenly the impossible becomes completely manageable. Skip the chunking, and everything becomes overwhelming, stressful and at risk of being done badly or never done at all.

Reflection

Here’s another shared skill: reflection. With music, it’s easy to lose heart when you stop seeing big leaps of progress. You feel like you’re stuck on a plateau. But then you look back, really look and realise how far you’ve come.

Business works the same way. We’re often charging ahead, planning new services, refining our offers, looking for what’s next. But as our businesses grow, we make brilliant decisions… and we also make the kind we’d politely prefer not to repeat.

Reflection isn’t just about growth in the forward direction. It’s about reviewing what worked, what didn’t, and what simply doesn’t fit anymore. Just like certain genres of music will never be for me, there will always be clients, niches or services that don’t fit either. Looking back helps you figure out where you work best, who you enjoy working with, and what drains your energy instead of fuelling it.

Goal Setting

And then there are goals. Essential in music. Essential in business.

A goal gives you something to lean toward, momentum, purpose, direction. Anyone can declare a big, grand dream that never actually happens. I can fantasise about playing like Rachmaninoff, but realistically? Not likely. What I can do is take grade after grade, bit by bit, with structure and clarity.

In business, it’s the same. Setting meaningful, achievable goals (hello SMART framework) makes success far more likely than vague wishes ever will.

So yes, playing an instrument and running a business are unexpectedly alike. The skills we learn in our personal lives, discipline, breaking things down, reflecting honestly, setting goals, spill into our work, our relationships, our confidence, our whole sense of who we are. When we connect the dots, we realise how much we already have in our toolkit.

Sherry Christmas!