We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Maya Dottin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Maya below.
Maya, so good to have you with us today. We’ve got so much planned, so let’s jump right into it. We live in such a diverse world, and in many ways the world is getting better and more understanding but it’s far from perfect. There are so many times where folks find themselves in rooms or situations where they are the only ones that look like them – that might mean being the only woman of color in the room or the only person who grew up in a certain environment etc. Can you talk to us about how you’ve managed to thrive even in situations where you were the only one in the room?
When I decided I wanted a career in the music industry, there were a few factors about my specific career path that I immediately knew I would have to work harder at to succeed in this business as well as some factors I didn’t think were relevant until I started touring.
Firstly, still being in university when trying to make connections and tour was a challenge I had to balance because (1) I felt that more experienced professionals wouldn’t take me seriously enough to mentor me and (2) I was not in the music space before this, so I felt that I didn’t have a way in. Just my first few days on LinkedIn and Facebook made me realize that my age may be an issue when I saw posts about getting a full-time job straight out of university or people making content about the music industry being older than me. Although it was intimidating, I realized that this was something I had to overcome so I did by finding music groups with people my age trying to break in and looked for the type of professionals that catered more towards college students (eg. TM101 panels) which helped me find the right mentors and not worry about my age.
Secondly, being a woman the music industry, especially a black woman, has always been a stigma and I knew that coming in. I personally felt comfort and confidence in knowing this was going to be a challenge when starting my career because I knew that I would be ready for it. Since many gigs come from word-of-mouth and my network, I worked very hard in the foundation of my career to surround myself with people who were inclusive, encouraging and genuinely wanted the best for others. I really attached to people who either looked like me or people who took my determination and work ethic seriously to help uplift me in the community. I have met so many amazing people through this and I know that the people I talk to, they talk to and those who eventually hire me for work are people who won’t make my skin colour or gender a factor in whether I can do my job or not.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
As a Tour Manager, I handle all the logistics and finances of an artist/band going on tour. My role begins months in advance when the dates and venues are confirmed to which I can start looking at the routing of all the cities we will be going to, staffing the crew, the transportation (eg. Are we travelling by sprinter van, bandwagon, tour bus or plane?), the accommodation, the type of production we will be bringing (eg. Are we bringing instruments, lights, props?), and how everything fits well into the budget of the tour.
Once we get closer to start of the tour, I begin reaching out to the venues where we exchange information; them, based on what the venue has and, me, based on what my artist/band needs. By this time, the majority of the tour is planned and ready for us to begin!
To be honest, the prep work before a tour starts does stress me out, but as soon as I touch down in the starting city, meet everyone, and begin the tour – it’s really exhilarating and makes me feel confident that I belong there. Every show is pretty much the same (we hope!), there are just minor differences depending on the venue and city. Whenever I get my artists ready about to go on stage, it feels like everything we went through that day and all the planning months prior was worth it – I get to relive it every night of tour.
Once the tour is over, it’s mainly accounting and finishing up some loose ties such as making sure wire transfers made it to the account properly and making sure all the receipts are organized. Once that’s done, it has been a successful tour!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Three skills that helped me most in my career journey was learning how to be calm in crisis, organization and showing your personality.
One of the first things I learned about touring managing (thanks to TM101!) was that as a leader, your emotions can affect everyone else on the touring camp. Especially talking about smaller tours (van/bandwagon/1-bus tour) where everyone is in close quarters to you as the TM, if you seem frantic and stressed, the crew and artist may feel that too because they look to you to know how things are running. This was something hard to learn starting out because I was of course stressed with doing my first shows, being with my crew and guiding them, and overcoming inevitable problems I didn’t know about when I started TMing. I overcame it by realizing that things won’t always go as planned. I try to not dwell on the problems, start thinking of solutions to get past the problem as fast as possible and learn from it after.
Organization is crucial as a Tour Manager. I started my organizational skills from my mentors when they would show me what their day in the life looked like and changed accordingly when I started TMing myself and had my own system. A lot of it is email organization so making sure important emails don’t get lost in the inbox as well as labelling them to be able to find them quickly later.
Since Tour Managing is basically going to concerts every night, it’s hard to decipher how much fun you should be having on the job. Coming from a regular customer service job for a large corporate chain, I never thought that a job could have an allowed balance of work and play. It is; however, necessary to be good at your job as well as a fun person to be around considering that you will be around your touring camp 24/7. They want to hire someone they know will still be uplifting and a nice person at the end of the day.
What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
The biggest area of growth I am most proud of is my confidence in my work. I am still very new to Tour Managing and it is scary to think of when I could be making a mistake I don’t realize I’m making or I’m hoping that everything I planned for turns out right. What I did realize though is my imposter syndrome shrinking with every gig that I get. Every new gig shows me that (1) people like my work enough to lead their artists and crew on a tour which is a HUGE responsibility and (2) me getting more work is objectively showing that I am growing as a Tour Manager. I feel less stressed the more show days I do because I am confident in how the day should go and what I expect from the venue and my team. Even doing emails used to scare me because I didn’t feel professional enough or that I was doing something wrong, but the more I did it the more I felt confident in speeding through an email. It’s the little things you should congratulate yourself on improving and feeling better about to really see a change.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maya_j_main/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayajdottin/
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