EP#109: Why I'm Closing Girls Twiddling Knobs: Isobel spills the tea with special guest Rosie Bans

In this deeply honest and reflective conversation, Isobel Anderson is joined by musician, educator and Radical Songwriting founder Rosie Bans to talk openly about the full journey of Girls Twiddling Knobs, from its beginnings as The Female DIY Musician to the decision to close the project after five years.

This episode exists because this story was too complex, emotional and important to unpack alone. Rosie has been part of Girls Twiddling Knobs as a student, collaborator, team member and peer support, making her uniquely placed to hold this conversation with care, insight and challenge.

Together, they explore:

• Why Girls Twiddling Knobs was started in the first place
• Chronic illness, disability, precarity and survival as a musician
• Building a business with no capital, no safety net and no investors
• Gender inequality, anger, activism and the limits of individual change
• Burnout, parasocial relationships and emotional labour
• Why ethical online education is so hard to sustain
• The pressure to scale, promise outcomes and commodify creativity
• Why Isobel chose to step away rather than compromise her values
• What she would do differently if she started again
• Reconnecting with artistic practice after years away
• What comes next, and what success now means

This is not a takedown or a farewell filled with regret. It is a clear-eyed reflection on care, sustainability, integrity and choosing yourself.

If you’ve ever run a creative business, worked in the music industry, supported women in marginalised spaces, or wondered why so many meaningful projects struggle to survive, this episode will resonate deeply.

📣 📆 Mark Jan 5-12 in your diary because that's when you can grab our "life changing" online programmes for the very last time and with a whopping 60% OFF (or more) in the Girls Twiddling Knobs CLOSING DOWN SALE 🤩 🎉

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Girls Twiddling Knobs is hosted by Isobel Anderson and produced by Isobel Anderson and Jade Bailey.

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Transcript

00:00:00.00
Isobel Anderson
hi Rosie, welcome to Girls Twiddling Knobs for the first time.

00:00:04.00
Rosie
Hello, Isabel. It's lovely to be here.

00:00:05.81
Isobel Anderson
hi

00:00:06.84
Rosie
Thank you so much.

00:00:07.18
Isobel Anderson
it's so nice to have you. Yeah, it's so nice to have you here and What people what a lot of people may not know is that you intimately know Girls Twiddling Knobs. Not only that, you are an amazing musician. You have run your own online music education business, Radical Songwriting.

00:00:28.23
Isobel Anderson
do you want to tell people how you know so much about girls doing jobs? Can you tell people what your relationship is to...

00:00:37.00
Rosie
Well, I first met you, Isabel, when Girls Twiddling Naws was the female DIY musician, which I'm sure many of your listeners will remember its first like iteration, its first identity.

00:00:51.11
Rosie
and it was back before COVID, I'm going to say. Could have been round the cusp of it, it's kind of blurry.

00:00:56.65
Isobel Anderson
It was well before Covid.

00:00:58.59
Rosie
Yeah.

00:00:59.21
Isobel Anderson
It would have been about 2018 that first met. Yeah.

00:01:03.15
Isobel Anderson
it would have been about two thousand and eighteen

00:01:07.47
Rosie
Yeah, I think so, 2018.

00:01:07.59
Isobel Anderson
yeah it was two thousand and eighteen that we first met

00:01:12.39
Rosie
And you were running a programme called Music Goals. And it was all on Facebook, was a Facebook group.

00:01:17.29
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:01:20.55
Rosie
Facebook group female DIY musician and then I was in there and that was my very first time even discovering that there were people doing what you were doing which was supporting women identifying music creators west with like support that was more kind of career focused, personal development focused, artist development focused and not just like learn how play the piano you know and

00:01:49.58
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:01:51.21
Rosie
I was at a time where I was needing bit outside help after... a decade of making music and doing the whole hamster wheel of all, writing, recording, releasing, touring, what's going on? And 2018 was starting to question a lot of things. And then you came into my life and with your amazing, like the way your brain helps us organize our thoughts and helps us reflect.

00:02:21.00
Rosie
So that's how I got to know, Female DIY musician initially as a client, as a customer, very happy one.

00:02:28.24
Isobel Anderson
I always forget that. I always forget that. And I think like even just that, even just that chunk of time, there's so much to unpack there because like you were saying, this is the first time you'd come across people offering this like beyond just like music instrument lessons, like actual one-to-one or group support for musicians and all aspects of what it is to be an artist. And, but in, in reality, like that, that was the first time for me as well. I'd never had any of that. I had no idea what I was doing

00:03:02.00
Isobel Anderson
and that music goals program that I put together wildly under, underpriced, you know, I think it was like 60 quid for multiple one-to-one sessions, which on on one level you're like, okay, fine. I was very much getting started and you're you're having to build up that experience. But on the other hand,

00:03:21.68
Isobel Anderson
at that time as well, like it was very clear to me, I was like, I i don't know what I'm doing on and there's no way this can be sustainable. You know, this is bonkers really. And I don't know how I shift it beyond this pocket money kind of set up.

00:03:37.23
Isobel Anderson
But at that time, I also just like, that is so vague that title music goals, so vague you know So now like this is what, seven years on?

00:03:48.53
Isobel Anderson
i look back, it's so interesting. like I completely forget those really, really, really, really early years of when I started trying to offer women alternatives, you know women in music alternatives to what was out there in terms of traditional music tech music education in general and the industry kind of mythology.

00:04:09.54
Rosie
Yeah.

00:04:13.37
Isobel Anderson
So it's so interesting, like going back there. And I really remember how you really stuck out to me, Rosie, because you were just so reflective and so emotionally mature and ready to do stuff and take action. And so working together was just a complete joy. And it's so but even at that point, like we finished my little music goals package and then we didn't have a lot of contact for quite a while, did we?

00:04:39.45
Rosie
Yeah.

00:04:40.00
Isobel Anderson
like i'm I'm sure we kind of every now and then would have like had a Facebook message or something like that, but it wasn't until years after that that we were back in touch.

00:04:50.87
Rosie
Absolutely. But that said, so from the parasocial customer point of view, which for anyone listening who like parasocial is when you have a relationship with a creator on the internet and you kind of feel like you know them, but you don't really know them.

00:05:06.39
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:05:07.38
Rosie
So I was having a parasocial relationship with you because before music goes, so even though you were saying that name maybe is quite vague, which now knowing what we know,

00:05:18.61
Rosie
But something to remember is you were making content every week in that Facebook group and it was all very specific.

00:05:23.94
Isobel Anderson
I was.

00:05:27.90
Rosie
Every week was about a very specific different topic around what we were all experiencing. And I think for me, that was a really great example of I was in the right place at the right time and I was ready at that point.

00:05:41.88
Rosie
So in terms of your pricing structure and everything else, who knows? how that would so you know if the price was different who knows but what i do remember is saying to myself like this is a no-brainer I have to work with this person because I had been in that Facebook group watching your videos on the train i I very distinctly remember seeing your name pop up when I was on the train from Edinburgh back to Glasgow and i was like, oh, yes, you know another one, another video.

00:06:12.09
Isobel Anderson
Wow.

00:06:14.10
Rosie
So, yeah, we hadn't really been in contact one to one. And I think it's interesting because we'd established a relationship that was very much service provider client. And I think that does set a sort of dynamic. But the next time i got in touch with Isabel...

00:06:29.91
Rosie
And this kind of comes to a question I wanted to ask you too.

00:06:32.57
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:06:34.07
Rosie
The next time I got in touch with you was when I was starting Radical Songwriting, which was my, as you mentioned, my music education platform. And I was creating an online course called Radical Songwriting Academy.

00:06:45.46
Rosie
And I had taken a course to learn how to make a course, because that's how it goes in the online world.

00:06:51.22
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:06:52.95
Rosie
And I saw on the successful students page, your beautiful face sitting there and your know your story about how you how you'd create the course for women to record themselves from home. And I wanted to ask you, where were you in your life? So when i came in touch with you, i knew what I was in my life. I was needing a little bit help.

00:07:16.44
Rosie
where were you in your life when you started that Facebook group way back before 2018 what prompted you to say do you know what I'm going to start this business I'm going to offer this to these specific people like if you don't mind me asking what was going on

00:07:22.56
Isobel Anderson
Mm-hmm.

00:07:34.97
Isobel Anderson
No, don't mind you asking at all. no And I feel like I haven't even said yet on this podcast episode, like the whole point of this podcast episode is to kind of talk about the journey of Girls Swiddling Knobs, the evolution of it, the sustaining of it, and then also the closing of it.

00:07:51.83
Isobel Anderson
And I found that really hard to know how to do that just on my own on the podcast. And so I knew that I needed to have somebody come and help me do it. And there was no one better than you because...

00:08:03.38
Isobel Anderson
and I always forget that you've been there pretty much right from the beginning, actually, but you've very much been a huge part of the of Girls Twiddling Knobs over the last two to three years as well.

00:08:15.09
Isobel Anderson
So we'll get into that. But so so this is why i kind of I want I want you to ask those questions.

00:08:21.13
Rosie
name

00:08:21.41
Isobel Anderson
Obviously, you know, it's helpful because I would have completely like brushed over this.

00:08:26.72
Isobel Anderson
so where was I so I was there were two main things going on for me that led me to kind of start doing this work that was originally the female DIY musician and the first thing was that I had been very ill for a long time and it had got to a point where I had had to when I launched when i released my fourth album Chalk Flint I had had to cancel all of the live dates that I had booked in and basically cancel any kind of like release apart from the digital album going out because of of health problems. I'd had chronic pain that had kind of evolved and morphed and continued for by that point nearly little probably about eight years or something like that and that had also been brought on I think brought on through tinnitus which I got in a long time ago now so I'd been kind of battling with health problems for a long time and trying to find ways to continue to make

00:09:34.41
Isobel Anderson
excuse me, make music and make music my, the centre of my life, you know, which is what most artists or most musicians want to do.

00:09:35.27
Rosie
Bless you.

00:09:43.13
Isobel Anderson
so I'd kind't be constantly kind of juggling, trying to do that with really difficult health problems, knowing that being a professional musician, as in that being your income, but actually not that I think that defines a professional musician, it doesn't, but,

00:10:03.81
Isobel Anderson
Actually, even if music isn't your income, even if you're just taking it seriously, it's not conducive to good health. And there's really good, you know, really good research on this now. I know that's a bit of a flippant thing to say, and I don't have the stats on me to back it up. But...

00:10:21.05
Isobel Anderson
Look it up. it's It's not conducive to good health.

00:10:22.33
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

00:10:24.51
Isobel Anderson
And so I knew that at the time i was like, I know that the pressure that I feel around all this and the, but also trying to navigate this as a woman is really bad for my health.

00:10:35.20
Isobel Anderson
Like it's fucking stressful. And when I go into a studio or when I get into a gig or if I interface with a fan, it just means all these different things beyond just me being a regular musician. It means, sex, it means mother chuck children roles, it means not get it getting above my station. There's so many different things that as a woman, it starts becoming.

00:11:00.99
Isobel Anderson
So I knew that with all of that was like contributing to me not being very well as well. Also, this pressure that once you get past 25 as a woman in music, particularly a woman who centres her voice, you're done. Like that's just the, but actually like, I think 25 is maybe the upper end of it. A lot of the time people feel like once you get past 21, you're done. So i I had that going on as well. So there was a lot of like compounding factors that meant,

00:11:28.81
Isobel Anderson
I just, up well, also that I should say for most artists in general, you know, you financially precarious, you're in my 20s, every single year I moved house and I was always in shared houses. So there just wasn't that stability or that kind of foundation of like being able to really like breathe out, relax, care for myself.

00:11:52.69
Isobel Anderson
everything felt a bit kind of like scrambling and surviving whilst also there being like amazing ups and highs and also some fucking awful crashing lows. And I think I know that a lot of people in their twenties go through that. I'm not saying that was unique to me or that was, you that's unique to musicians necessarily, but hopefully that gets some context. So I got the other side of my first album. I mean, my fourth album where I had to pull all the good live shows. I released the music, but apart from that, everything got pulled and I strained my voice. But I already had a chronic wrist pain, chronic shoulder pain. Before that, I'd had chronic pelvic pain for over two years where I couldn't sit down for like two years, basically.

00:12:38.29
Isobel Anderson
So by the time that fourth album came out, I couldn't speak. I couldn't type, I couldn't text, I couldn't handwrite. I was pretty much locked in. And i was living off, this sounds crazy, but i was living off my Spotify royalties, which at the time were about, I was earning to be completely upfront. I was earning about 20 grand a year.

00:13:03.64
Isobel Anderson
So that that was the most I'd ever earned in my life, even when I was working full-time jobs, you know? But that was like a fleeting moment in time. That was literally like one or two years that happened.

00:13:15.96
Isobel Anderson
And then it kind of gradually tailed off. And as that gradually tailed off, I then had to sign on to benefits, PIP, personal independence payments.

00:13:30.11
Rosie
Thank

00:13:38.74
Isobel Anderson
So even though I was in a really, really not not in a state to work at all, I was kind of being forced to think, right, what what the fuck could I do? Because I i can't, like as I said, can't type. I still couldn't type. I couldn't have done an office job.

00:13:55.61
Isobel Anderson
I couldn't have stacked shelves. You know i would have done anything genuinely. I couldn't do that stuff because of my wrists predominantly and my voice as well. And so I started... thinking, right, I've got all of this experience now as a DIY self-releasing musician, released four albums now, and they've amassed all these millions of Spotify streams.

00:14:18.17
Isobel Anderson
Not that I ever thought I knew why that happened. Like, I never, I knew i i never had a strategy for that. I was lucky. I was lucky and I was talented, to be fair. i don't want to minimise that, but doesn't really matter if you're talented.

00:14:31.97
Isobel Anderson
I think we all know that.

00:14:32.86
Rosie
Thank you.

00:14:33.13
Isobel Anderson
I was fucking lucky and I was consistent. I kept making work and I kept putting it out. I always think that those are like the three things. You need to be good, you need to keep doing stuff and you need to be lucky.

00:14:44.79
Isobel Anderson
And for various reasons, those things may not be there. And so the consistency dropped off when I became so ill that I just could not do it anymore. So anyway, feel like I'm kind of going into far too much detail, but hopefully it's interesting to people.

00:14:58.04
Isobel Anderson
So there was that, I was like, right, what what do I do? i've got I have got all these, this very niche kind of experience of being a DIY artist at this crazy time in music where things have become much more accessible to artists. Like self-releasing is becoming a thing. When I first started self-releasing, it was a bit kind of looked down on, you know, it showed that you you weren't good enough to be signed.

00:15:20.45
Isobel Anderson
By the time I'd released my fourth album, everyone was doing it. And it was how the industry was working. So, so that was one thing I was kind of looking at what can I do with this experience I've amassed.

00:15:33.68
Isobel Anderson
It's quite niche, but I know a lot of artists would be, would really benefit from having that space to kind of pick my brains or help me look at stuff for them. But then also the other part of it was, and and I knew that if i I could maybe do one or two hours a day or maybe one hour a day or even half an hour a day, and it was a way of just building in, building something and starting some kind of income stream before that pip got taken away, that was kind of a big part of that.

00:16:06.63
Isobel Anderson
And so to be to be clear, like by the time, I started doing that, I was living off about six grand a year, you know, so I was really, and I was living in Belfast, which is a very cheap city, but even then, that it was absolute, like, if I spent five quid on a meal in a cafe, that was my treat for the week, you know.

00:16:35.23
Rosie
Yeah.

00:16:40.17
Isobel Anderson
But so there was that part of it of why I started offering that. But the other part of it was I was so deeply angry about about the lack of representation of women, the lack of recognition of the high quality music that women were putting out, myself included, let let me be clear, i was fucked off about that.

00:17:05.69
Isobel Anderson
You know, when I looked at my own career, like it was it was completely bonkers to me because I had male peers and they had had a very different journey. And so it wasn't until like my music amassed 10 million in Spotify streams that anyone ever approached me to manage me.

00:17:22.07
Isobel Anderson
Before that time, I'd played main stages like at Glastonbury, different festivals around the country, Secret Garden Party, etc. I'd been played on BBC Radio 2, Radio 6, Radio 3, Radio 4. Like I had and I'd been gigging a lot and I'd been releasing a lot.

00:17:41.30
Isobel Anderson
It wasn't until i'd I'd done this almost impossible thing. of reaching 10 million Spotify streams with no help, no label, no PR, nothing, that anyone approached me to manage me.

00:17:53.02
Rosie
Oh.

00:17:54.10
Isobel Anderson
Can you imagine if someone had actually approached me in the early days and had helped from that point? And I would see my male but peers, my male counterparts, and that would be happening way earlier.

00:18:06.77
Isobel Anderson
and So that's just one example. There were also like award ceremonies that I would go to. There's one in particular that I won't necessarily mention, but I would look at the the lineup and be like, what the fuck?

00:18:19.49
Isobel Anderson
Like, where are the women? I know women, including me, but not just me.

00:18:23.16
Rosie
Mm-hmm. no

00:18:23.81
Isobel Anderson
I know women who have made these incredible albums and they're not here. They're not here. And there's just another bunch of 18 year old guys playing indie guitar music.

00:18:36.53
Isobel Anderson
you know just So really pissed me off. as So there were these two things of like me being in a position where having to figure out how am I going to but literally you know buy food, pay my rent. I have this really niche but really valuable experience now.

00:18:53.33
Isobel Anderson
that especially at that time, not many people have. And I'm really angry about the way that women are overlooked, sidelined and, you know, at worst abused and mistreated in music. So all of that eventually kind of came together where at first I was just offering like mentoring to anyone who wanted to do mentoring. And then it kind of niched down into women and it niched down into women who wanted to sort of take control of their career. And that's why,

00:19:22.41
Isobel Anderson
Originally it was called The Female DIY Musician because it was just kind of generally about how do you be a DIY musician as a woman?

00:19:29.06
Rosie
Yeah.

00:19:30.85
Isobel Anderson
and and And, you know, even with that, I kind of kept that name for a while. And I think part of it was it just felt like, OK, it's simple. It does what it says in the tin. But I never really kind of like felt that attached to it.

00:19:43.92
Isobel Anderson
It's just what what it

00:19:45.11
Rosie
so something that I've heard a lot of people say about you is inspiring. And hearing that story, when you lay out where you were at and the challenges that you facing, very real, very personal, physical, emotional you know experiences, not to mention the challenges of there's not enough support.

00:20:10.81
Rosie
And always when you look at it from the welfare system all the way up to and the music industry, the fact that you have kind of alchemized all of that into something that was a thriving business that has helped hundreds and hundreds of women, I think is such an incredible thing. And I think it's the so the inspiration part comes from I think most people would just have given up.

00:20:40.38
Rosie
And there's something about you, Isabel, and like, I i don't know what it is, nature versus nurture versus or just natural way that we live in this world. There's something about you where there's a real pragmatism, you know, and that you bring it to a place where we can be part of it, where we can actually learn from your experiences.

00:21:05.73
Rosie
And not only that, like I know from the inside, because I worked with you for about six months, right?

00:21:10.94
Isobel Anderson
yeah.

00:21:12.51
Rosie
Inside Girls Twiddling Knobs. you are deeply invested in creating things that specifically help. You're not the kind of person who sits back and goes, okay, what's going to sell?

00:21:26.55
Isobel Anderson
No.

00:21:26.55
Rosie
you know Or or or you know what can we do next? no it's It's all based on what are people needing? What am I hearing? How can I serve these people?

00:21:37.21
Rosie
Sometimes, and I'll just be honest, at your own detriment a little bit,

00:21:41.40
Isobel Anderson
yeah yeah no

00:21:43.23
Rosie
You get any of that love at two.

00:21:43.74
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:21:45.40
Rosie
But that is, I think, hopefully for your listeners, think a lot of people won't know half of that story. And I hope it really gives them a little space to think what is possible.

00:21:52.22
Isobel Anderson
no

00:21:59.61
Rosie
Because it kind of fucks me off, you know, the fact that there was a time where Spotify could pay your rent. But like many of these companies, we've got to remember, they are music tech companies. They're not music education companies. They're not music artist companies. They don't really care about the well-being of the human beings that they're ultimately exploiting.

00:22:23.52
Isobel Anderson
No.

00:22:24.31
Rosie
They are there to make profit for the shareholders. End of story. There was a time, because there always has to be a time before the inshittification of things, where it genuinely was a was a platform that that genuinely helped and could have been a lifeline, was a lifeline for you.

00:22:42.71
Isobel Anderson
It was a lifeline for me. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, I feel like there's a whole episode in, feel like i've I've now more than ever got a lot to say about Spotify, but And it's the thing that most people will ask me about.

00:22:55.74
Isobel Anderson
It's the thing, especially when I first started doing the female DIY musician, it was the thing that people wanted to ask me. And they say, how did you get your Spotify plays? And I'd always have to just be honest and say, I don't know.

00:23:06.27
Isobel Anderson
don't know because the reality is, is I was releasing music at at a time where, Spotify had just started and you could be just picked up by the algorithm and if your music was a particular kind of music and it was a good version of that music it would fly and I think there were like a couple of tiny things like maybe some radio play that got it on a playlist as radar and you know etc etc but

00:23:06.78
Rosie
Yeah.

00:23:31.51
Isobel Anderson
Apart from that, it's luck. And I'm very clear now, if I released exactly the same album now, it would not have that luck because I've been completely taken over by

00:23:41.70
Rosie
Yeah.

00:23:44.54
Rosie
yeah

00:23:44.74
Isobel Anderson
algorithms and AI algorithms et cetera, et cetera. And so while they may pay the same pitiful amount as they paid back then, i was lucky, but I say I was lucky as in, this is why these companies exist and work is that musicians are so poorly treated anyway, that for me to be earning 20 grand for a year or two on Spotify was life-changing while the CEO, Daniel Ek, that would be a drop in the ocean.

00:24:11.69
Rosie
Oh yeah.

00:24:11.71
Isobel Anderson
It was because, you know, before that, and partly compounded by my gender, there had been almost not no income to speak of apart from amazing fans who would buy a physical CD at a gig or something.

00:24:25.55
Rosie
Yeah, exactly.

00:24:26.35
Isobel Anderson
You know?

00:24:26.99
Rosie
And I think it comes back to what you teach so much. The goalposts in the industry industry will forever be changing. And in my opinion, maybe I'm a pessimist, they will never be in our favour as women in the industry.

00:24:39.83
Isobel Anderson
a

00:24:42.42
Rosie
So you have to equip yourself with skills. You have to equip yourself and... and equip yourself with as much power as you can and what you help people do was find that power through recording themselves from home through having control of that part of the journey because what happens next we don't we don't all have control of and many of us are not

00:24:58.80
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:25:07.28
Rosie
able to access the people that do have control because there are and I think that that has been a big message that I saw you put out and unfortunately a message that I don't think everybody always gets first time around you know the shiny shiny thing is there and I think it's it's great that we've now got data that we didn't have like I was working with a Scottish charity for women in music

00:25:10.08
Isobel Anderson
Hmm.

00:25:20.56
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Yeah. yeah

00:25:35.99
Rosie
when Vic Bain just released her PhD research findings on women in the music industry, which was an in-depth study of all the publishers and music labels in the UK and exactly what how how many women were on them. you know and And it was really eye-opening.

00:25:56.82
Rosie
I think that's where this kind of 2% figure came from. And to hear people still to this day believe, I'm maybe going on a bit rant, you could cut this one out, but believe that it's a choice.

00:26:09.59
Rosie
Women just simply don't want to be producers. They simply you don't don't, they want to have children instead, you know.

00:26:12.15
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:26:15.75
Rosie
Like to to then go and see those research findings is really interesting.

00:26:15.79
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:26:20.20
Rosie
And I think I saw what you were doing, Isabel, as an act of activism, right?

00:26:25.71
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:26:26.25
Rosie
And I do think that that's perhaps why at times, maybe we can have the next question in here. It might have been a little bit frustrating from your side because you are you are pushing forward with, like saying, if this is activism, it's about changing the status quo, which is very heavily not in our favor. And so how has running this business changed you as a person? Like, are you still in that place of feeling angry, feeling like you want to change stuff?

00:26:58.82
Rosie
Now we're here. Five years later, are which actually probably is more than five years if you count all those beginning years, right?

00:27:04.17
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, yeah.

00:27:05.62
Rosie
But five years ago, it was Twins and Nobs.

00:27:05.70
Isobel Anderson
it's more know

00:27:08.55
Rosie
How has it changed you as as a person?

00:27:12.74
Isobel Anderson
It's like, it's hugely changed me as a person, but I think it's more because i have... I've approached something as a business for the first time in my life. I think that's why it's changed me. In in terms of how I feel about the industry, how I feel about women's place and all of that stuff, I actually don't think it's changed that much. We're just kind of bonkers when you think that like, you know, I've been running this whole, yeah, women in music business initiative thing for five years and then also like building it before that. But...

00:27:51.74
Isobel Anderson
hasn't changed that much as in I don't feel any any more or less optimistic. You know, like there's a some of my favorite artists still are women. and Women are making incredible music.

00:28:07.07
Isobel Anderson
I think, I know this sounds a bit shit, but I do think a lot the time it blows their male counterparts work out of the water. Maybe I'm biased.

00:28:15.61
Rosie
yeah oh all my favorite artists are women and it's not because I don't like men I love men and I love music but yeah yeah

00:28:21.88
Isobel Anderson
No, no. Yeah. But I just think today, today,

00:28:29.71
Isobel Anderson
it's it's incredible. Like you hear the the work of women, on non-binary artists. It's like, wow, this is so rich. I think, I think now that women are, you know, more and more gaining those skills in production and recording all those things, it's like,

00:28:44.89
Isobel Anderson
it's matching their incredible creativity and sensitivity and empathy. And it's, it's been incredible. So I don't feel any, any more or less optimistic about women and music. But I think that I have changed so much through building a business because it's such an, and it's been so different to anything I've ever done before.

00:29:11.73
Isobel Anderson
And like one case in point, for example, You know, you mentioned about how now the female DIY musician became Girls Twiddling Nobs and over that time ended up focusing on teaching, predominantly teaching women how to record their music from home.

00:29:30.58
Isobel Anderson
But it didn't start off as that. And it started off where I thought, right, with all these Spotify streams that I've amassed and that everyone keeps talking about, I should probably make a course about how you self-release an album.

00:29:42.77
Isobel Anderson
But because I was taking this course on how to make courses, I di diligently followed the instructions which were to talk to but prospective students and actually...

00:29:57.02
Isobel Anderson
you know, get a sense of what they were struggling with. And what kept coming up again and again is I'd love to release my music, Isabel, and I'd love you to teach me how to do it, but I don't have any music to release.

00:30:08.06
Isobel Anderson
Why don't you have a music to release? I haven't recorded it. Or I've gone into a studio and I ran out of money. Or I did it for free with a friend and he's kept all of the master files. So that became the glaringly obvious, oh, okay, i even though I've planned out this whole thing, and even though like the last two years have been gearing towards me making a course about self-releasing your album, I've now got to ditch that and I've got to listen to what people are telling me and what actually is needed for women is a course on how to record your music.

00:30:37.38
Isobel Anderson
That is the big difference.

00:30:37.56
Rosie
Yes.

00:30:39.54
Isobel Anderson
And so the the difference between that and what I've been doing before was when you're an artist, you basically, unless unless you are coming at it from a very kind of dry, cynical lens,

00:30:52.15
Isobel Anderson
You're making what you want to make. And even, you know, before I started, before I was doing my PhD and I had funding to do that, et cetera, et cetera.

00:31:03.42
Isobel Anderson
But yeah again, you're you're kind of, you're following a hunch and interest.

00:31:06.100
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

00:31:08.06
Isobel Anderson
It's not the same thing. So this is the first time that I really kind of was building something based off of a customer base and And building something that would pay me predictably and regularly and might even pay other people predictably and regularly.

00:31:25.67
Isobel Anderson
and And also becoming a brand. I think that that was a big, that's been a big journey in all of this is being the face of something and people having parasocial relationships with me through that.

00:31:39.05
Isobel Anderson
has been has been the thing i've one of the things I've liked the least about it, I have to say. so I don't know if that answers your question.

00:31:47.87
Isobel Anderson
I can't remember the question was.

00:31:49.52
Rosie
Yeah, it was just how has it changed you?

00:31:49.54
Isobel Anderson
Oh, yeah. Hmm.

00:31:51.02
Rosie
And I think from my perspective, which is obviously very subjective and biased, but I mean, you just gave a little business 101 right there to people listening about getting out there.

00:31:51.52
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:32:01.55
Isobel Anderson
no

00:32:05.52
Rosie
But many people have ideas, right? We're talking to base, your listeners, who are all hyper, hugely creative, highly sensitive people. who no doubt every other day are like, that'd be a great idea for a business.

00:32:19.65
Rosie
That would be a great idea for a course or an album or a song.

00:32:21.16
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:32:22.99
Rosie
And you're right, there's a stark difference between when we have inspiration to go and create art, go and do it and don't give a shit what people think of it. It's best way to start.

00:32:35.98
Rosie
But when it's a business, a course, you're going to have an idea, but you have to go and completely validate it. And a lot of people don't want to do that stuff and don't want to skip it. And you, from my point of view, as someone who also has an online business, you're really, really, really good at that. You're really good at business. You're really good at marketing and you're really good at understanding your customers, which I think also comes back to you being a really empathetic person to start with.

00:33:05.13
Rosie
And when you mix those two things together, you create a pretty turbo business owner, in my opinion. And it's always been really awesome watching you think about business.

00:33:15.90
Rosie
And I know it wasn't always like that, you know.

00:33:18.51
Isobel Anderson
No, no, definitely not.

00:33:18.62
Rosie
So so that's that's a really beautiful way to have change because those are skills, ultimately, that that you're going to hopefully take with you into what's next because...

00:33:23.91
Isobel Anderson
Oh yeah.

00:33:29.75
Rosie
We've not even mentioned this really, maybe a little bit at the start, but you are closing down Girls Twiddle and Nob. So the big question is why?

00:33:38.19
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:33:38.63
Rosie
whats What has brought you? So we know kind of where you've come from, who what's brought you here? why are you closing? What brought you to this decision? And was it an easy decision to make?

00:33:48.94
Isobel Anderson
No, it was a really hard decision to make and you were with me in the business when I made that decision. and so i know you So I know you know all the reasons, which is why I wanted to have you on. So, so like, I think there was...

00:34:11.50
Isobel Anderson
it It felt like... I guess the the thing I can say is it felt like on almost all counts, the business was not giving back enough to justify what I was putting in.

00:34:25.02
Isobel Anderson
And that's financial... that is prestige, you know, like we all need a little but stroke on the back from time to time. That was also sort of lifestyle or, you know, and and and I think also eventually in terms of creativity or, you know, i i think I was feeling like i it was that realisation of,

00:34:55.59
Isobel Anderson
oh, just have to keep doing this again and again and again and again and again. That's what I have to do now, you know? And I think it, and I'm happy to kind of go into all the things I just mentioned, but I think that one of the things that really struck me was the sense of like, it was kind of three years into me doing it full time. So this 2023.

00:35:17.45
Isobel Anderson
By that point, I'd done that numerous course launches, which, I think it could be quite good to go into that in this podcast of what actually the fuck is a course launch because wow, it's, it's can be brutal. So I'd gone through multiple of those and I got to the point in 2023 where a bunch of stuff had happened 2023 was crazy actually.

00:35:45.61
Isobel Anderson
and And I was just like, I don't want to do another three years of this, but I'm looking at the future and it is going to be another three years of this. It's going to be another five years of this. Like, I don't, I just don't want to do it, you know? And the reasons for that were feeling burnt out, not paying myself enough,

00:36:07.81
Isobel Anderson
feeling like

00:36:09.35
Isobel Anderson
Like, I'll just be honest, like feeling a bit like the the work and the impact that the project was making was being overlooked. And feeling like, and I will be honest as well, feeling like I was hitting a bit of a wall with the artists that I was serving, where I felt like it was only going so far.

00:36:30.46
Isobel Anderson
And then there was this ceiling that I hit, which was people's people's willingness or a capacity or ability to meet me halfway in doing the work.

00:36:42.80
Isobel Anderson
I know that sounds a bit crazy. No, maybe it doesn't sound, i'm I'm worried about people being offended by that, but it's true. It's true. you know i just found that I didn't want to be And that's where that parasocial relationship can come in as well. I didn't want to be that kind of beacon where people felt like as long as they read my email or looked at a social media post, that was, that was it. It's it's not like you need to take the course that I'm offering you. Like there's a reason I've made a whole course on this and you have to implement it and do the work.

00:37:24.08
Isobel Anderson
And, and I am meeting you halfway by putting this whole framework out and distilling all of these ideas into easy usable resources and giving you my time and support in return.

00:37:34.86
Rosie
Thank

00:37:37.14
Isobel Anderson
And there there was that as well. So there was this sense of like, a frustration, a burnout of, oh, I've really laid all this groundwork and some people are, you know, flying with it and that's amazing.

00:37:51.15
Isobel Anderson
But this this exhaustion of feeling like I can't lift anymore. And that that that was a that was a big thing, I think. And at that time in 2023, I had this real clear vision that I really felt, which was me lying on the grass, being pecked to pieces by crows.

00:38:11.30
Rosie
Wow.

00:38:11.99
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, I really felt that.

00:38:12.56
Rosie
Powerful. Yeah.

00:38:15.03
Isobel Anderson
And I and i don't i know for on the outside it might sound a bit dramatic, but at that time, you know, I was working six days a week, often like 10-hour days minimum.

00:38:31.99
Isobel Anderson
I had a team as well, which hadn't alleviated the workload at all.

00:38:38.04
Rosie
Yeah. Well, I can say I was on your team and I remember you being very strict about like, don't work more than your hours.

00:38:41.36
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, you were my team.

00:38:48.63
Rosie
And you would send me a mate that message or an email or whatever, and it would be like half past midnight or something.

00:38:54.78
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:38:55.24
Rosie
And I was like, you too.

00:38:56.95
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:38:58.20
Rosie
And so like, yeah, I think talking about that feeling of burnout, i think anyone who's experienced burnout, that being pecked by crows analogy, the crows can be every all these different things.

00:39:11.59
Rosie
And yeah.

00:39:11.71
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, it can even be yourself. Like, I'm not saying that as some kind of martyr. I'm saying that as someone who just felt so done, so exhausted.

00:39:18.91
Rosie
Done. Mm.

00:39:20.98
Isobel Anderson
and but But knowing that I was the creator of that, you know?

00:39:25.80
Rosie
Mm. To an extent, yeah. I think inside this, there's perhaps another angle where coming back to the beginning of this conversation, you were really angry at like a systemic issue.

00:39:28.28
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:39:39.22
Isobel Anderson
Hmm.

00:39:39.58
Rosie
And this business was your way of trying to address that in some manner. And being up against the the iron wall of, sorry, I think that's an analogy for a completely different thing, but, you know, iron curtain.

00:39:54.20
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Yeah.

00:39:55.02
Rosie
Oh, we're talking about the Soviets. No, like, that you know, there's just, like, immovable objects, basically, which is the systems we have in our society.

00:39:56.76
Isobel Anderson
it

00:40:00.70
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:40:04.90
Rosie
Like, there's going to, I think it's inevitable inevitable at some point, there's going to be complete exhaustion from that effort. Adding on to the side of that, like, serving...

00:40:16.39
Rosie
a particular audience, women in music, who also feel quite unsupported and then you're here and all of a sudden there's this light, light you know, oh, maybe i could maybe I could do what I want to do. Maybe I could achieve my dreams, but not necessarily always having the support in their own lives or even just having the the reality check perhaps in their own life sometimes to be like, no, this is a shit ton of work that you've got to actually get up and do.

00:40:43.64
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:40:43.72
Rosie
Versus like you're saying, kind of we sometimes kid ourselves on about I'll buy the course and that'll be me. Or I said, do the course and then show up to the calls and continue and go back. And you're not going to understand everything the first time around. And that's natural and human.

00:40:59.20
Rosie
So I can really understand that from those two sides. And I always said when I was working with you, i was like, I really feel like this should be a charity.

00:41:09.71
Rosie
This should or at least a non-profit where, and by that, I don't mean anything about you should pay yourself and let's not let's not get that wrong.

00:41:10.05
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:41:18.39
Rosie
We should be paid very well for our work, but this should be subsidized by our society. This should be something that is that's made easier. to do by our institutions, because everyone deserves to be able to fulfil their artistic desires, their human beings, it's a human right to be able to express yourself, however that that kind of shows up.

00:41:43.74
Rosie
So now that you have made that choice to close things down, and you've kind of said some reasons about what the root well what the reasons are that you're closing it down, my question maybe is kind of similar but slightly different. When you're looking to what's coming next, what are you definitely not going to miss about Running Girls Twizzling Knobs and what do you think you might miss?

00:42:10.79
Rosie
And also, it's one minute past ten, do you have to go, oh no, it's for me it's ten, okay, sorry.

00:42:15.84
Isobel Anderson
yeah yeah no no I've got an hour yeah I've got an hour no it's all good

00:42:17.70
Rosie
So I was like, oh

00:42:22.36
Isobel Anderson
well just to go back just quickly to what you said about the charity thing I i feel so mixed about this because On the one hand, yeah, i i think I think creativity is a human right. I think education is a human right.

00:42:39.87
Isobel Anderson
So I think for anyone, these skills should be... available. and i And I also really strongly believe, especially as someone who's had real lived experience of chronic health problems, retraining should be built in.

00:42:55.54
Isobel Anderson
You shouldn't have to pay £10,000 to retrain if you get sick and have to change career, or if you just, you know, whatever reason, a different time in your life need to change career.

00:43:02.50
Rosie
Oh.

00:43:04.46
Isobel Anderson
So I think education, creativity is a human right. We don't live in that world. There are so many online, rep like replicas or not replicas, but like equivalents of what Girls Swimming Knobs became.

00:43:23.80
Isobel Anderson
An online platform that has a podcast, that has a bunch of courses, that does workshops, that has a membership. There are a lot of them that charge a lot more than what Girls Swimming Knobs charge people.

00:43:38.28
Isobel Anderson
There isn't the sense that they should be a charity because they're not specifically targeted to women. I think that there's very few services that are not charities for women.

00:43:54.92
Isobel Anderson
I feel really mixed about that because on the one hand, yes, women are marginalised. They're not the minority, but they are marginalised in music. But on the other hand, I think part of what is keeping women being marginalised is almost a kind of learnt helplessness or being told that we are charity cases, that wish that we operate in the fringes.

00:44:17.83
Isobel Anderson
And that is something that I saw as someone who kind of, accidentally started a business in a way. i definitely, when I started offering these kinds of services, I was not in a position to be making a decision about, is this a charity? Is is this a CIC? Is it a not-for-profit? Is it a business? There was no way I had the capacity to be thinking about that. It kind of naturally became that, became a limited company.

00:44:46.16
Isobel Anderson
But but i feel really mixed about whether it should be a charity or not. I think my pragmatic mind is like, yeah, if I was to start it again, would a hundred percent make it a charity because the bottom line is women don't expect to have to pay for these things.

00:45:02.67
Isobel Anderson
They either don't feel that they're entitled to invest in themselves, but they also don't expect to have to pay for help because they've been told you are a charity case and you are marginalized and you are less than, and you are struggling And on the one hand, it's true. On the other hand, I think it keeps women in their place. And I think that if more women had the, felt the entitlement to invest in themselves, then Girls s Twiddling Knobs may not have closed, potentially. That is true. it may wasn't the only reason. It may not have closed, but it wasn't the only reason.

00:45:41.04
Isobel Anderson
But I also think that things would change. It's not to say it's the only problem and I'm not kind of turning this problem back on women at all, but I do think we have to, we're at a point now in the conversation around gender inequality in music. We have to own the parts that are within our power.

00:45:59.99
Isobel Anderson
And I remember having conversations with people in my audience who would tell me they couldn't afford certain things that I was offering that they desperately, desperately wanted to do.

00:46:12.34
Isobel Anderson
And it became clear to me that they were earning more than I was. And I would think, wow, okay. I mean, I respect, you don't have to pay for what I do. Like that's completely fine. But you're telling me that you desperately, desperately want to do it.

00:46:27.73
Isobel Anderson
You can't afford it, but you actually are on like double the salary of me. And you're presuming that I'm paying myself a lot more as well, which is a whole other conversation. but

00:46:42.20
Isobel Anderson
but it was, it was that, that was really complicated. So that's something I won't miss by the way, as I'll just answer your question. I won't miss that at all. I won't miss being in this really sticky, funky, difficult position of deeply, deeply caring about making basically social change, you know, in music and the music industry, deeply caring about the people I serve on a really, really personal level. Like I am that person. I have been that person, but on the other hand, running a business,

00:47:13.27
Isobel Anderson
needing to pay my bills and operating in this capitalist hellscape that means we all have to do that, but kind of not feeling like I can do it slash feeling like I have to do it.

00:47:26.55
Isobel Anderson
I'm not going to miss that at all. And so like, I'm, I'm not, I don't want to work in the women in music area. partly because of that, but partly because it feels too close to my identity as well.

00:47:41.19
Isobel Anderson
So even if I got like a well-paid salaried position in a music charity that was around gender, I'm not saying that I completely rule it out, but I would have, I would have kind of, I would feel very conflicted because I would feel like it was too close to my identity as an artist.

00:47:41.63
Rosie
Hmm.

00:47:59.64
Isobel Anderson
And and the whole of my lifetime I've worked in music either either you know teaching being paid by somebody else working in arts admin or now running my own business or through my own music you know earning money through that and I just find that it kind of gets a bit identity wise it can get a bit messy and you can have really difficult conflicts of interest basically is what I'm talking about so so I won't miss that it's one of the hardest things and this question over like

00:48:21.79
Rosie
Yeah.

00:48:31.36
Isobel Anderson
I think in reality, Girls Twilling Lob should have been a charity, but I don't think that's necessarily right, if that makes sense. Other than i believe all education should be available freely.

00:48:44.93
Isobel Anderson
that's That's the only reason I would say it should be a charity. But if we are operating in this capitalist hellscape as we are, no, I don't think it should be a charity any more than the account that the equivalents that, you know, some of them,

00:49:00.22
Isobel Anderson
it's they make so much money. We're guilt-free and often not really necessarily thinking about what do people actually need or what in order to make, you know, change or whatever. I feel like that's a bit of a ramble, but...

00:49:13.34
Rosie
But that's why we've got podcasts.

00:49:15.17
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:49:15.63
Rosie
We're here, Rambo.

00:49:15.66
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:49:17.63
Rosie
I completely hear you.

00:49:17.92
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:49:18.63
Rosie
And also, like and you've you you brought up something really important, is that the very people your business serves is also kind of you.

00:49:32.61
Rosie
you know like You're you know where you were.

00:49:33.06
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, massively me. Yeah.

00:49:35.85
Rosie
And that's I really empathise with that. It was one of the reasons I closed down Radical Songwriting too. Also mixed with, and I don't know if you ever had this experience or this feeling mixed with, well, I was in, Radical Songwriters about the songwriting part and all the recording and things would come after, which is why we sometimes kind of had the same students in our courses.

00:50:00.13
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:50:01.51
Rosie
And I remember feeling guilty sometimes to encourage people to write their music and get out there and go and gig and perform, knowing that I'd had some really dangerous experiences as a woman in the music industry, knowing that I have been put in some really very scary situations, knowing that I have been judged completely on my looks and on my age.

00:50:28.61
Rosie
And this isn't just a hunch. This is literally having a music manager tell me at 23 years old I'm a bit too old for what they're looking for. Disgusting when you think about a 50-year-old man saying, Naya, 23-year-old, get out.

00:50:36.74
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Yeah.

00:50:40.52
Rosie
Sorry, what are you looking for? you know just and and and And even just being around people taking substances. people felt like It's a dangerous industry. It's one of the most dangerous industries, completely unregulated.

00:50:54.43
Rosie
And people people's health, people's lives sometimes disappear in that industry.

00:50:59.13
Isobel Anderson
Mm-hmm.

00:51:00.50
Rosie
And so I had kind of, I had my own experiences, my own feelings, but i'm i'll I'm a musician, right? and And making music is a part of who we are.

00:51:11.88
Rosie
so I sometimes would feel guilty about sort of promoting going down that path, even though I know it's not the same for everybody. And it's definitely, I'd say you're probably less likely to encounter and maybe some of the more kind of physical dangerous situations if you're a man however you're still very open and susceptible to all the mental health issues that the music industry can bring on and and a part of me thought I don't think I want to participate in that anymore and I felt felt in a very strange place because I'm just helping people learn how to write songs right I mean surely it's not that crazy but then when you think about the path that most people come into or coerced as with

00:51:33.54
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:51:43.75
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:51:54.08
Rosie
They want to go and have a career. They want to try X, Y, z They want to, you know, they want to do something else. So I completely empathize with that experience. And when it affects our mental health, when it affects how we show up for ourselves, I think that we have to be really precious about that and take it seriously. And I remember seeing from the outside like I'm not a doctor, I'm just going to put that out there in case anyone was wondering, I'm not a doctor, but I did see like burnout coming on, you know, with with you, with the the last launch the the last launch that we didn't launch and also the the opening of Ryzen release as well.

00:52:21.89
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:52:26.02
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:52:34.72
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:52:38.13
Rosie
oh And I don't know if you want to go into that, you mentioned before about maybe we could touch on live launches. Yeah.

00:52:43.17
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, let's do it let's do it. And I just say, rise and release is the membership which is in Girls s Twiddling Knobs and it's for people that have taken Home Recording Academy to continue because in it And this goes to talk, speaks to what you're just saying, Rosie, like inevitably when people would have taken home recording Academy, they say, great, I've recorded a single or an album or something.

00:52:44.74
Rosie
Yeah.

00:52:47.43
Rosie
Yes.

00:53:03.100
Isobel Anderson
How do I release it? How do I make sure that when I release it, people listen, et cetera. And then that's really a really tough conversation to have, especially now.

00:53:14.61
Isobel Anderson
It's exactly what you're saying. Then a lot of that started, you know, as Girls Twiddling Nobs kind of progressed and it was around for long enough that people, had albums that they were going to release as a result of taking my courses, then you've got to have quite difficult conversations around, yeah, how are you going to release it?

00:53:32.43
Isobel Anderson
And people give a fuck because fuck, I don't know. Like, like being,

00:53:37.73
Rosie
Are you up for like 20 TikToks a day?

00:53:40.51
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:53:40.57
Rosie
because

00:53:41.59
Isobel Anderson
You know, like when I think about, you know, when I did first start self-releasing, it was completely different landscape. you And when I think about that, so I mentioned how before, like I'd gotten, you know, played on Radio 2, that was me posting a CD into Radio 2.

00:54:01.11
Isobel Anderson
Jamie Cullum's producer picked it up, played it to him and he loved it. And he played, this is my second album, Dark Path, and he played it. When I got played on BBC Six Music, I sent it in to, like, 10 different radio DJs on, you know, and one of them was Lauren Laverne, and she picked it up, listened to it, and loved it and played it.

00:54:23.23
Isobel Anderson
That doesn't happen now, you know? So what by the time I got to Chalk Flint, my fourth album, i in order to get played on Lauren Laverne's show, you're now interfacing through a radio plugger and her producer.

00:54:36.01
Isobel Anderson
There is no direct, like, I post a CD and Lauren Laverne picks it up. So even just that's like one example of how much the industry has changed because self-releasing has become so much more so much more possible. And it's just flooded with music now, whereas it just wasn't quite the same. Also, social media worked so differently. When I first started releasing music, that would be 2010.

00:55:01.96
Isobel Anderson
Instagram barely existed, I think. There was Facebook. You could post something and pretty much all your followers would see it. That is not the case now. you know So when now I was kind of in this position where people were saying, how do I now you know release this and it actually does something and people care and people listen and people buy it and And then you've got this really difficult conversation of like, i don't know. Like I can tell you some things that are gonna help you put yourself in a better position.

00:55:32.75
Isobel Anderson
The truth is I never knew, you know, because a lot the stuff that I was doing was just like me genuinely enjoying the process of like making a really nice hand crafted like thing that I could put in the post. because i would Because it's like you're saying about that empathy or that kind of I'd always be thinking if I was Lauren Laverne.

00:55:53.48
Isobel Anderson
receiving these CDs in the post, what's going to make me actually pick this one up and play it? you know and to me, that's an obvious question, but I know that for a lot of people, they don't necessarily think that, whereas I would kind of really enjoy being like, right, well then I'll, because it's called In My Garden, this is the third album I did In My Garden, I'm going to create a little seed card that can be planted and seeds can grow. And just little things that like make it feel more of an experience to open it up.

00:56:22.92
Isobel Anderson
So I didn't know what I was doing back then, but I was kind of playing with it and just a lot of it just came from the sense of, oh, fuck it. Like no one signed me. Nobody seems to give a fuck. No one seems to know what to do with me as an independent female artist. Fuck it. I'm just going to put stuff out there, play with it. Nothing's going to happen.

00:56:41.24
Isobel Anderson
That's what it was. So when I was kind of faced with these, like a lot of people then coming to me saying, right, I've recorded the music. What do I do with it? How do i make it not flop? that felt really, really difficult and it still does.

00:56:54.15
Isobel Anderson
And that's another thing I'm not going to miss. and But Rise and Release was started as a way of trying to kind of have that conversation basically, like,

00:56:57.05
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

00:57:05.64
Isobel Anderson
some of the workshops are about monetizing your music, but it's hopefully coming at it from a much more grip down to earth practical point of view of like, these are ways that musicians are monetizing their music.

00:57:15.80
Isobel Anderson
This is the work that's involved, you know? So like if it's Patreon, this is the work you have to do to make that happen. So yeah, that, anyway, that, there's all of that.

00:57:27.72
Rosie
Yeah.

00:57:29.89
Isobel Anderson
but

00:57:31.06
Rosie
I mean, ultimately, when it comes to releasing music, the thing that comes up all the time is, oh, I hate all the work I've got to do. It's marketing.

00:57:43.47
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:57:43.57
Rosie
And that was always quite quite difficult because I think sometimes musicians, music makers can be guilty of believing that, well, I've made it so someday and it deserves to be listened to.

00:58:02.13
Rosie
And I always think, you well, you deserve to be able to make your music 100%, but no one owes anyone attention off the bat.

00:58:09.78
Isobel Anderson
No.

00:58:10.47
Rosie
And now, like he says, the industry is so different. You're right. Like when I went to uni to learn how to be a music artist and learn how to promote myself oh and learn all that stuff, we were still going around with a four Manila envelopes with with a bio picture and, and you know, like literally printed out.

00:58:29.35
Rosie
And by the time I graduated uni and had moved down to London, all of that was gone. MP3s were the thing and and social media as well.

00:58:34.95
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:58:38.55
Rosie
That was 2010. twenty ten Social media was now, okay, that's what we're doing. And now i doubt a radio plugger or Lauren Laverne's producer will even touch it if you don't have X amount of thousand followers first as well.

00:58:51.49
Rosie
Like it's it's it's a completely different space.

00:58:53.47
Isobel Anderson
it's completely different yeah

00:58:54.59
Rosie
And it's all marketing. It's probably the best thing that anyone can do for the music careers, learn the fundamentals, at least, all of it. And I think you went into the space not necessarily to wanting to teach people how to market their music, because, as you've mentioned a few times, it's a jungle and it's not the same for everybody.

00:59:14.01
Rosie
And you cannot ever guarantee a result. But you can guarantee that if you equip yourself with the skills to record yourself from home, you're going to have an excellent sounding record, you know, that you could then go and mark it.

00:59:25.06
Isobel Anderson
yeah yeah yeah and you can You can take, you know, someone can ask you to do your session, online session job, or so you could maybe start offering, you know, to produce artists or whatever it might be like, or you can make the music for a theatre production or like all of those, all of those options open up.

00:59:27.30
Rosie
And, you know, there can be a disconnect there.

00:59:45.22
Isobel Anderson
So that's always been my message is like, because there are a lot of other, you know, online education platforms where they have to promise people the moon on a stick, like basically six figure incomes as a producer or something, because it's the only way people put their hands in their pockets to do stuff.

01:00:02.47
Rosie
Yeah.

01:00:02.85
Rosie
Ethical.

01:00:03.63
Isobel Anderson
But I've never done that because i I, you know, I want to be completely as as ethical as possible in what I'm kind of offering. What I'm offering is, yeah, it's a skillset that opens up a myriad of opportunities and I can't predict how, what or when that will materialise for you. But if you don't have those skillsets, all of those options close down, which is where a lot of women still are.

01:00:29.22
Rosie
Yeah, it comes back to that same thing about dealing with what's in your control and stuff that's not in your control, i.e.

01:00:34.88
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:00:38.20
Rosie
outcomes, getting famous, completely not in our control at all, right?

01:00:41.76
Isobel Anderson
yeah.

01:00:42.93
Rosie
To the point where it becomes, it gets in the way of you doing the work to to be able to lay a really strong foundation. And I'm not saying that that's your students, And they're all like, oh, want to be famous.

01:00:56.22
Rosie
You know I'm sure some people do, but just kind of as as an extreme example of that and what you've done

01:00:56.74
Isobel Anderson
No, no.

01:01:03.03
Rosie
has always stayed true. And you mentioned the word ethical. I think that's something more and more in the online business industry. So we are kind of in this cross section between music industry, artistic practitioners, musicians, music artists, and also having online businesses.

01:01:21.12
Rosie
And so we kind of see it from both sides and having like ridiculous promises, i.e., you know, make six figures as a music producer just with this course.

01:01:31.33
Rosie
Yeah, I have an issue with that too. And I think it really speaks to your integrity that you've never gone down that path. In fact, you've you've kind of actively steered clear of it.

01:01:40.80
Isobel Anderson
yeah, and you asked me, like, why why are you closing Girls Twitting Nobs? One of the reasons was, and again, you will remember this from the time where I really made that decision, which was two years ago now, to close it One of the reasons was I knew that if I was going to make this actually financially viable, like as in I could pay myself the kind of salary that I could comfortably live on and that I genuinely deserved for the very niche, very skilled, very you know high responsibility position I was in as the founder and director of this company.

01:02:18.50
Isobel Anderson
If I was going to get to that point and where I could pay a team a decent wage and that I could hire people permanently, not just on contracts and all of that stuff, and I could actually step back and have a bit more time to myself. And if I was going to do that, I was going to have to go down that route.

01:02:35.65
Isobel Anderson
And I was, that was it. I was going to have to start playing that game of promising outcomes that are not actually real I was going have to start promising people millions of Spotify streams and hundreds of thousands of pounds of earnings and etc etc because people don't put their hand in their pocket unless that is what they're being promised and as in which is not to devalue the people that have invested in Girls Twilling Nobs I'm incredibly inspired and grateful to everyone who has simply because of my promise of creative agency, basically, you know, it matters.

01:03:16.44
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

01:03:19.28
Isobel Anderson
And I know there's people that really know it matters and they've really kind of always got on board with that. And I know it's changed people's lives and that's incredible. But to kind of scale it to a point where it was going to actually be sustainable and the energy in versus energy out was going to balance out, I knew I was going to have to take it down a path I didn't want to. And that that was a big reason why I decided to close Girls Twilling Nobs.

01:03:43.10
Isobel Anderson
That conflict of interest just got far too, too painful, too close because my identity is too much in that customer as well.

01:03:45.82
Rosie
Hmm.

01:03:53.79
Isobel Anderson
You know, and i didn't start it just to make money. I started what I'm doing as much because i I deeply care about these people. I deeply care about women in music and I'm one of them.

01:04:06.36
Isobel Anderson
So... Yeah, that was one reason. was that was That was probably the biggest reason, I think. was And and i was that year i was kind of pushing and pulling with it.

01:04:12.52
Rosie
Yeah.

01:04:15.74
Isobel Anderson
i was I was kind of at that point where I was like, right, I either jump into that. I either just go down that path to keep the business going and to keep scaling or I don't.

01:04:27.64
Isobel Anderson
And that's that's I decided not to, basically. Yeah.

01:04:30.64
Rosie
Yeah, which I think was the best decision.

01:04:32.97
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:04:34.51
Rosie
And obviously, you'll know how has your life changed since you made the decision to close down? Because I know this decision hasn't come recently or lately. It's been something you've been kind of rolling around your your brain for a while.

01:04:50.57
Rosie
How have things changed since you decided to close? Girls to the Knob's.

01:04:55.72
Isobel Anderson
They have changed hugely, hugely. i So one of the first things I did which we have talked about a lot.

01:05:08.82
Isobel Anderson
but So we've talked a lot about the online business world, Rosie. We've talked a lot about burnout and work culture, et cetera, et cetera. So when I made that decision, so I pulled the launch that we were going to do, which was our Home Recording Academy launch in 2023, September

01:05:29.24
Isobel Anderson
And I'd hired two people in that six-month period, which took a lot of... as I'd never hired anyone before and that on that way, you know, beyond just someone said, you're good, can you do a couple of hours for me a week? Like, I i had to because... Girls s Twiddling Nobles had become what it was. I had to do it like responsibly and professionally.

01:05:53.84
Isobel Anderson
So that was like a really big process of like making job descriptions and company documents and et cetera, et cetera. I'd hired two people. We'd launched a membership. I'd also so launched a new program, Get Started with GarageBand.

01:06:08.50
Isobel Anderson
And the anna new season the podcast, like it was so big. And during that time, my dad had been in hospital for three months, nearly died twice. It was such a clusterfuck of a year.

01:06:21.66
Isobel Anderson
And so I got to that September and i was looking down the barrel of this launch in September And I just felt the sense of like, all I see is just like a hellscape barrel hole that I have to crawl through for like the next month.

01:06:39.36
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

01:06:40.70
Isobel Anderson
And I just remember feeling like this is fucking bonkers. Like I can't do this again. I don't want to do this again. I can't i can't continue like this. I do not want the next three years to be what the most what the last three years have been, which doesn't mean I'm not grateful. Because when you think about where I was, you know, living off benefits for well a small amount of time before being taken off them. But like, yeah, living living really, really, really hand to mouth.

01:07:10.02
Isobel Anderson
And then being in a position where for three years I had, you know, full time been paying myself a modest income, but still... running a business, it and i and i also want to be clear, partly out of ego and pride, but like it's not that Girls Twiddling Knobs was financially unsuccessful. I know it might sound like, I think part of it was me being scared to pay myself more.

01:07:36.64
Isobel Anderson
think part of it was me feeling guilty to pay myself more. And I think the other part of it was the reality of starting a business with no investment or funding and it just being through smarts and grit.

01:07:49.04
Isobel Anderson
And actually, now that I'm a few years down the line, I realise people don't do that unless they're predominantly women. Most men, when they start businesses, will walk into various rooms and feel entitled to ask for money. And I i knew as well that if I walked into a room, i wouldn't be taken seriously. you know, i I know that it it it gets replicated elsewhere, not just in music, but still, like, a lot of people will presume that Girls Twilling Nobs was a hobby.

01:08:18.10
Isobel Anderson
and is a hobby, is something I do on the side of my real job. If I was a guy, I don't think they'd make that presumption, you know?

01:08:23.44
Rosie
Thank

01:08:24.50
Isobel Anderson
So there's all of that as well. So it's just to say, like... Girls Twiddling Knobs, most companies would be really envious of the return on investments that my online funnels have, the conversion rates that my funnels have. But it's just that I've built it from absolutely nothing with no investment.

01:08:43.06
Isobel Anderson
And therefore, everything that I've made, I've had to reinvest with the sheer panic that i don't I don't have that safety net. I don't have that kind of, and I certainly don't have any contacts or experience in business.

01:08:58.84
Isobel Anderson
So I just want to kind of put that out there as well, partly because because of my ego, but also just to kind of, I don't know. Like, I just feel like it's important to kind of say it because I just feel like women are so underestimated a lot of the time. And I just don't want people to hear me say, oh I didn't pay myself enough. I wasn't earning enough for it to be so sustainable.

01:09:20.31
Isobel Anderson
Part of that was about me having an ethical compass, which I i do think that trips you up in... In online business. But part of it was also, yeah coming to this with no no prior experience and but building something, building a lot from nothing, you know.

01:09:39.18
Rosie
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a mixture of many different strands all kind of crossing over at the same point where

01:09:51.72
Rosie
in order to scale a business, like you have to at times really sort of drill into the pain points. And when, like we've came, we've mentioned a few times when you are also a representation of the customer base, right?

01:10:08.40
Rosie
it can just get really tough. And and then adding on to that, say, the integrity of not wanting to make promises, especially income promises, financial promises.

01:10:18.31
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:10:18.31
Rosie
and And also, in the five years that Gildswoodland has existed, we've had a global pandemic.

01:10:24.62
Isobel Anderson
Mm-hmm.

01:10:25.80
Rosie
We're moving towards a recession. The cost of living has skyrocketed. If you're in the UK, the new budget that's just came in is going to affect absolutely everybody, worse,

01:10:30.52
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:10:35.82
Rosie
worse small businesses are getting pretty hammered as well especially if you did have employees still you know like it's getting harder and so when it comes to the nature the type of business that that you had and also I suppose this is another thing maybe people don't know you don't have a team it's quite literally just you you had a team for a small amount of time and then

01:10:43.34
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:10:56.04
Isobel Anderson
Hmm.

01:11:01.68
Isobel Anderson
Well, to be fair, though, actually, it's it's never been... It's only just been me the last two years. And the first...

01:11:13.26
Isobel Anderson
the So from so September 2020, I've always had other people in it with me. There was Francesca O'Connor who worked with me for a long time. So, yeah, to be fair, like, for about...

01:11:29.46
Isobel Anderson
three years of that there was at least one other person if not two and you count jade who does the podcast as well and it was but it was like that 2023 was when that became a team where but we were daily in contact and like building new things together and that kind of thing and that's where it kind of became a lot more full-on

01:11:31.86
Rosie
Yeah.

01:11:34.68
Rosie
her

01:11:38.32
Rosie
yeah

01:11:52.66
Rosie
Yeah. And it's it's not like you've got this board directors that are, you know, everything's on you.

01:12:01.02
Isobel Anderson
no No, no, exactly. Yeah, yeah exactly. Yeah.

01:12:04.69
Rosie
And if it doesn't work also, as you mentioned as well, I think this is another thing, like every business is really different.

01:12:04.76
Isobel Anderson
no

01:12:11.52
Rosie
But there are trends in how they operate. And with a service-based business, course-based business, usually most people start it with their own capital.

01:12:23.18
Rosie
They start it from scratch.

01:12:23.54
Isobel Anderson
yeah

01:12:24.78
Rosie
A few hundred quid in the bank, okay, let's take a risk. And that risk doesn't go away because as you build the business, well, if the business goes away, the the risk is you don't have a job at the end of the day versus if you've got investors, investment, you're scaling, you know, lots of businesses are not in profit for their first six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years.

01:12:47.10
Isobel Anderson
yeah

01:12:47.90
Rosie
Whereas when it comes to the type of business that goes to Adelaide Nobbs was, you have to be in profit from day one, pretty much Otherwise, how do you feed yourself?

01:12:53.74
Isobel Anderson
yeah yeah

01:12:56.77
Rosie
And that pressure too, especially in the climate,

01:12:57.04
Isobel Anderson
yeah

01:13:00.78
Isobel Anderson
m

01:13:01.58
Rosie
you know, where what we're looking at. but That's a lot. That's a lot.

01:13:04.24
Isobel Anderson
yeah

01:13:04.68
Rosie
And so i think all these strands together, that plus the emotional side, the artistic side, and then just generally like where you are in your life, you are like a million times the business owner that you were when you first started.

01:13:17.65
Rosie
You know more. And so maybe the horizon looks different, which brings me to kind of the last couple of questions. One of them being, if you could go back,

01:13:29.48
Rosie
and have a redo, what would you change?

01:13:35.62
Isobel Anderson
it's really difficult to say about going back, but if I was gonna, is it okay if I answer it, if I was to do it all again now?

01:13:44.12
Rosie
Yeah, we can answer it however it comes to you.

01:13:44.95
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. If I was to do this all again now, I would partner with a male ally because I feel like we're beyond raising awareness and I really do not see a future for gender equality initiatives that do not include men.

01:14:08.22
Isobel Anderson
I just think we're beyond that. Like we all know, we've all been to the panels, we've all, you know, like everyone knows, everyone knows that there is a gender inequality issue and and a misogyny issue in music.

01:14:22.36
Isobel Anderson
I just feel like we're at the point now where that is not gonna change unless men get involved. So if I were to start Girls Twiddling Knobs again, it would probably be called something different and I would do it with a male ally.

01:14:36.60
Isobel Anderson
I would look for investment early on. I would... If I was going make sure it was serving a marginalised group, I would make it a charity.

01:14:51.03
Isobel Anderson
And if it wasn't going to be specifically serving a marginalised group, I would look for private and investment.

01:14:58.40
Isobel Anderson
I would... i mean... If I was going to do it now, I'd do what do with anything I'd do next if it's a business, which is just be really clear on who I'm serving, why I'm serving them, and have a very simple structure where there's one clear product or offer and maybe a couple of other you know smaller offers that serve people that can't afford that offer or help people kind of go along that journey to to having that main offer.

01:15:32.22
Isobel Anderson
yeah and I think also the other thing is so what's something that how my life has changed this is a question you asked I didn't really quite answer but like one of the big things that changed when I made that decision I pulled that launch was I just got really clear on this is a formula that I have to start now otherwise I will never get there which is how what's the maximum I want to work and what's the minimum I need to earn?

01:16:00.52
Isobel Anderson
And I need to work that much or less and earn that much or more.

01:16:06.64
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

01:16:06.66
Isobel Anderson
That's it. You know, it's as simple as that. And again, I think as an artist, you don't come to it with that. attitude you come to with the background of just having to like pull all the hours or do all the stuff or or float around you know however that that thing's going to get made whereas and it's really given me a really good perspective on like what I want to expect of my music income wise because after running a business and knowing what that entails and really understanding what that means to make a product that you need hundreds of people to put their hands in their pockets and pay you for.

01:16:47.81
Isobel Anderson
And that that needs to happen at scale and consistently. That's a very, very different situation to be in. Having that experience, I don't want actually necessarily want to put my music through that, which isn't to say that I wouldn't be open to my music making money for me again.

01:17:02.06
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

01:17:06.58
Isobel Anderson
But it is to say that I'm very clear on... i there's There's just a practical reality that I need to earn an income. I don't necessarily need that to be my music. In fact, I don't necessarily want that to be my music.

01:17:22.90
Isobel Anderson
I want to work a certain you know maximum amount or less and I need to earn a minimum amount or more. And so I went to a four-day week. So if you can imagine after working six days pretty much and then a lot those days, like 10 hours, I went down to a four day week, maximum eight hours each day.

01:17:42.22
Isobel Anderson
And just was very clear on like, kind of going back to a freelance attitude rather than a business owner. It's like, right, so and I had to let go of it. I let go of you. i let go of Quiver who had been in the team as well had to let go of people pretty much immediately within the contracted obviously and I went back to being a freelancer of like right what's my monthly income goal each each month this is what I need to make and it kind of went back to that so

01:18:13.82
Isobel Anderson
If I was to start Girls Twiddling Knobs again, i would start it immediately with that in mind and know that it might take longer to build what I built, but that over the long run, that's actually better because it's more sustainable.

01:18:27.32
Rosie
Mm. Mm.

01:18:29.54
Isobel Anderson
You'll have more of a life outside of it. Saying that, I think, I do think starting a business, especially without any capital, is hard work, but i Yeah, but that's 100%. I would come at it from, I'm not going to work more than four days and it has to earn this much. And I would have paid myself more quicker, for sure. And I would have taken that...

01:18:59.52
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, I think now I would pay myself more and just know that that panic that i feel that in three months' time I'll run out of money, that if I run out of money, so be it, because if it's not going to pay me a certain amount, then it's not sustainable again.

01:19:12.68
Isobel Anderson
It's just, like, it's that sustainability, like, building it in right from the beginning.

01:19:17.62
Rosie
Yeah, and and being very, very clear on what that looks like for you in your life.

01:19:19.99
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Mm.

01:19:22.80
Rosie
Yeah, instead of otherwise, it can just unravel until the point where, you know, you're up till one in the morning every other day.

01:19:27.70
Isobel Anderson
Mm.

01:19:30.84
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:19:31.98
Rosie
And exactly, it's like really reducing the quality of our life. for what at the end of the day especially if we're still not paying ourself a wage that that counterbalances that it's got to feel and that that's where the burnout can creep in you know putting in all this work not necessarily seeing all the results of it and so

01:19:46.84
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:19:54.10
Isobel Anderson
and And I'll be honest, like, I... I put far too much of my identity into it because I'd had to walk away from my own music career.

01:20:04.76
Isobel Anderson
And my music career at that time, it wasn't, you know, like i I was by no means kind of like successful music.

01:20:16.88
Isobel Anderson
a lot of terms, but there was stuff to walk away from, you know, like I had been awarded some like great funding from PRS, for example, when make music, and I'd been working with a manager finally, and I'd booked some great gigs and, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

01:20:35.78
Isobel Anderson
And it it was heartbreaking to walk away from that. And so I think, you know, like, yeah, just, just, I definitely kind of,

01:20:46.95
Isobel Anderson
put my identity into Girls Twilling Nobs in a way that partly saved me in a sense. Like it it was great to feel like I had an identity again, but also i definitely over-identified with it in other ways.

01:21:00.41
Rosie
Yeah, that makes a lot sense as well, you know, and it comes back to as a person, like some people can go into things like business, just very, very strategic and almost without so much emotions.

01:21:02.41
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:21:17.60
Rosie
And I think it it goes to show how much you were invested in girls twiddling knobs as a project that it was, I suppose, maybe just from the outside looking, it looks like it it's a little bit of an extension of yourself in this world and so perhaps closing it down is going to give you that space back for your music which I know you've been working on and to kind of tie the conversation up my last question is what's coming next so I suppose like hit is worth it musical business what is coming next maybe maybe you're still not too sure as well so we'd love to know where you're at with it all

01:21:31.40
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:21:38.41
Isobel Anderson
yeah

01:21:54.66
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. I don't know in terms of work-wise as in terms of like what will I do to earn the money I need to earn to pay rent to breathe on this planet.

01:22:05.41
Isobel Anderson
I don't know. you fucking arseholes.

01:22:08.30
Rosie
Capitalism, you know? Jesus, it's true.

01:22:11.72
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. I don't know. But that's that's a big thing that's changed for me after running a business. I feel less panicked about that, you know? And actually after spending the last two years kind of lolloping along, not in the kind of like traditional online business, you have courses, you launch them, rinse, repeat.

01:22:32.73
Isobel Anderson
but I've kind of not been doing that. I've been like just cobbling together my income every month. And and actually that's given me a lot more confidence that I will be okay. So and again, it comes back to that skill set, like running a business, you build these skill sets that almost feel like superpowers at the beginning, that you could have an idea and be able to create a product that people would want to buy and that that happens.

01:22:56.23
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

01:22:57.38
Isobel Anderson
That's fucking incredible. So so I don't know what my income is going to come from. But I have nearly finished a new album called End Times, which I'm going to be releasing next year.

01:23:13.91
Isobel Anderson
Releasing very much with no idea of, you know, how to make it a success. I'm just letting go of that. And across my lifetime, that's been a pattern where I just hit these points where I just say, oh, fuck it.

01:23:26.45
Isobel Anderson
And and that's how I then allow myself to like do something.

01:23:27.04
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

01:23:30.45
Isobel Anderson
But ultimately doing it round the back route or, you know, the kind of unconventional way. So I don't know, like it may... not go anywhere.

01:23:41.64
Isobel Anderson
It doesn't kind of matter in a way in that I have the zero faith in the industry as somewhere that would nurture and support me as an artist, rightly or wrongly.

01:23:53.11
Isobel Anderson
So the point of it is not to, you know, have some kind of comeback or whatever.

01:24:00.04
Isobel Anderson
It's really just to, that I have reconnected with my artistry again and my artistic practice and, And I'm sharing the fruits of that. So I'm doing that next year for sure.

01:24:11.98
Isobel Anderson
And this year i have done a lot of like really cool collaborations. I did this really lovely sound installation with a ceramicist where we placed my voice inside her pots and it kind of creates this three part vocal piece.

01:24:30.68
Isobel Anderson
And I've worked with this amazing photographer who we might do some more work with. So I'm kind of been doing a lot of artistic things. And that's been incredible to kind of open up that space again.

01:24:43.68
Isobel Anderson
but very much... not in conflict to everything we said. Like, like I said, I hold very little faith that the industry, that social media, that all of those platforms that we interface with as artists, that, that, that has anything much to offer me. So it's very much coming from a place of just personal fulfillment, nourishment, but not just that it's like, and this is what I talked to a lot of my students about.

01:25:08.94
Isobel Anderson
It's about standing with integrity that this is who I am and I'm going to show the world who I am through this practice, through this art. like And also that I have integrity and that I haven't wanted to do that for a few years. Genuinely haven't wanted to do it. That's why prioritised Girls Twiddling Knobs as much as anything else, as much as an income, as much as not being able to engage with music. I i really haven't wanted to.

01:25:34.65
Isobel Anderson
And I think that's healthy. I think it's really healthy for artists to take time away. from their practice. And for me, that was for many years. And I always felt completely secure in the fact that my practice was still in me. It's just who I am. So I don't i didn't need to worry about it, but I got to a point, and I think through creating more space, I got to that point where I wanted to reconnect with it again, but with no agenda. You know, I didn't know that I actually didn't really want to make an album. It felt so predictable that I'd make an album, but it's kind of ended up happening. But like I said, I've been doing all these other things as well that are much more kind of installation, gallery based, et cetera, et cetera. So...

01:26:15.22
Rosie
And if it's a reflection, if the art the artist makes is a reflection of the life the artist has lived, then you needed that time and you're not the same person.

01:26:25.04
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:26:26.50
Rosie
And I've heard your album and it's absolutely fucking amazing and it's going to blow everybody's pants right off.

01:26:26.80
Isobel Anderson
No. No.

01:26:33.70
Rosie
it's worth it, you know, and and seeing you also reconnect, because when I was with you inside Girls Twiddling Knobs, you weren't making music, you didn't have you know, kind of daily, weekly, monthly practice, and since then, since you made the decision to

01:26:41.61
Isobel Anderson
no

01:26:45.32
Isobel Anderson
no

01:26:50.38
Rosie
tie things up maybe you weren't quite at the time you hadn't quite decided to close but you definitely decided something has to change here for your happiness and your health and then seeing the music and the art sort of emerge organically in many ways like that's really cool and it's

01:26:56.72
Isobel Anderson
hmm

01:27:09.58
Rosie
Sort of, to me, it's kind of how it should be. i think a lot of this feels very forced when we push our projects into a space where we demand like success from them.

01:27:22.00
Rosie
And we demand results and we demand, demand, demand. It's kind of this little organic, you know, kind of ethereal thing, this creativity thing, you know, this thing that happens to us or the thing that we practice. So it's been really cool seeing you kind re-engage with it. And so is this the last podcast episode?

01:27:43.48
Isobel Anderson
Not quite. There's going to be one more.

01:27:44.40
Rosie
Okay.

01:27:46.23
Isobel Anderson
Well, I'll do more of a kind of personal goodbye type thing.

01:27:46.99
Rosie
Right.

01:27:50.10
Rosie
oh because I was going to say, do you have anything that you would want to say to your audience? But maybe you can leave that for the last one.

01:27:57.46
Isobel Anderson
Mm. Mm-hmm.

01:27:59.56
Rosie
But I suppose, yeah, from to tie everything up, how could we, what's a nice way to tie out the conversation?

01:28:09.20
Isobel Anderson
Oh, I don't know. Well, there's what one thing I want to just add, which isn't tying it up at all, but it's to come back, which is, to yeah, there's one thing I just want to add, which is like, I think after, you know, when you go through, when you're in online business and you do course launches and you kind of

01:28:17.10
Rosie
maybe we don't need to.

01:28:29.38
Isobel Anderson
best practices you analyze the data and the stats and everything and you you can see you start to be able to predict when I launch this course because I have an audience that is this size and because the other three times I launched it this percentage of those people bought this thing or you know therefore I know if I launch this thing it will likely make x amount of income and there may be variables etc etc So after having all of five years experience of that and seeing all the ups and downs, but seeing that consistency and that kind of, it it is about not the numbers.

01:29:01.40
Isobel Anderson
It is about, it's a formula. it The same does not apply to music that has come from your soul that nobody asked for and that purely just expresses a moment in time for you.

01:29:12.14
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

01:29:20.10
Isobel Anderson
So I have this really clear kind of, I can see that so clearly now. Of course, I was kind of knew it, but you're you're just, I came into music coming at it from that point of view of like, I just expressed stuff that I had to express.

01:29:35.90
Isobel Anderson
I don't really want to make music every day. i couldn't be fucking arsed with that. I know some people that they just, they they're musicians as in they just want to make music every day. I don't. I want to express things when I need to express them. And music is the best way that I can do it. And I i know if I made more music, I'd probably be happier and healthier. But as in, if I just like sang around a campfire, that's what I'm talking about.

01:30:00.69
Isobel Anderson
But that has given me a lot of clarity of what and how I want to approach, or I should even expect to approach my music. If I'm someone who wants to make an income from my music, then I have to be prepared to put it through that grinder of I have this many audience members. They've bought this, this and this in the past. So I'm going to make basically a kind of replica of that so that I can then make enough money to pay my mortgage. And I don't want to do that.

01:30:32.94
Isobel Anderson
Like I said, if am one of those unicorns, which hasn't happened yet and I'm 41, there are those unicorns out there who, through luck, through the right contacts, etc., they do make an income just through their genius.

01:30:48.30
Isobel Anderson
And that they are unicorns. And often what you'll find is increasingly behind the scenes is they are making to breathe. And that is what is actually paying their bills. But what you see is the cool gig they do in some Berlin warehouse where they're playing these amazing, you know, modular synth pieces they've created or whatever it is. But in reality, what's paying their bills is like music to sync and et cetera, cetera.

01:31:13.38
Isobel Anderson
I just want to kind of throw that out there. that that's That's where I've come to. I feel like that kind of, collapses a lot of those questions into one of like, what have you learned? How have you changed? What would you do differently? What are you doing next?

01:31:26.48
Isobel Anderson
I see this real clarity now about what I'm prepared to put my music through and what I'm not, and therefore why I'm not particularly bothered about it being successful industry-wise or making me an income, because I know what it takes to make an income consistently and at relative scale.

01:31:29.30
Rosie
Mm-hmm.

01:31:45.57
Isobel Anderson
And that's not what I want to do with my music. However, i am so up for my amazing new album, making me hundreds of thousands of pounds, millions of pounds.

01:31:58.90
Isobel Anderson
That would be great. But i'm just I'm just being realistic about this, you know? And I have no shade for people who come at music who just say, look, I want to make music all the time.

01:32:03.27
Rosie
yeah

01:32:08.18
Isobel Anderson
I want this to be my life. And I'm going to do whatever it takes for that to be my full-time, permanent, sustainable income. Because it's a different path and a different conversation to the one I have with my practice.

01:32:20.30
Rosie
Yes, exactly. Exactly. There's different approaches to it.

01:32:24.23
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:32:24.81
Rosie
And i feel sometimes, like from your side, it's almost like e square peg in a round hole.

01:32:32.04
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:32:32.22
Rosie
Making music for these reasons, If I'm going to also try and make money from it, make it a career, have it pay my bills, well, now that's shifted.

01:32:43.68
Rosie
Versus I want to have my full-time job be making music, well, then you have to have a lot of stands to your bow and the grind is forever until you maybe get to a place of prestige where your name is everywhere or whatever.

01:32:58.82
Rosie
So you're right. And...

01:33:00.52
Isobel Anderson
and you'll be making a lot of music that you don't necessarily doesn't come from you you know yeah and I don't I don't really i just I would rather earn an income doing something else and keep my music for for me for for for things that I actually care about and need to say that's just who I am

01:33:04.30
Rosie
Like... Exactly, exactly.

01:33:20.36
Rosie
Exactly. Yeah, 100%. And I think it's like...

01:33:23.06
Isobel Anderson
and And then you're like, you know, it comes back to what we were talking about before. I was saying no one approached me to manage me until I got to 10 million Spotify streams. Maybe this is why. Maybe I just give this out and people just see it immediately that I am not someone that's going to be just the workhorse for the industry that's going to just, like, chuck out a bunch of film scores that I don't really believe in.

01:33:43.18
Isobel Anderson
I don't know.

01:33:44.30
Rosie
Exactly.

01:33:44.85
Rosie
You're not going to betray your own artistry for someone else's profit because when you do get other people involved, they are not necessarily all involved because they really want the music to be great.

01:33:57.12
Rosie
Most of them are involved because they want money and they're going to make money from it, you know, and yeah.

01:34:00.34
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. But one thing I'm going to add is I i have this little unicorn on my desk now.

01:34:07.36
Rosie
Mm hmm.

01:34:08.58
Isobel Anderson
So I've said all this stuff about, you know, i don't I don't want to put my music through that grinder, blah, blah, But I am welcoming in success. So this unicorn represents me welcoming in success. And I use the words really intentionally, welcoming, because it's not that I'm against success.

01:34:26.77
Isobel Anderson
good stuff happening and getting paid and all that stuff. Of course I want that, but I want to welcome it in. I don't want to be scrambling desperately for it.

01:34:34.45
Rosie
Yeah.

01:34:35.45
Isobel Anderson
So i I got myself this little unicorn at the advice of a friend of mine who said, why don't you get some little kind of talisman or like object that represents this next phase. So I'm welcoming in success.

01:34:46.90
Isobel Anderson
The unicorn has a little spiky horn, so it will ward off bad actors.

01:34:52.22
Rosie
Yeah. Also, I mean, see it every time, National Animal Scotland, you can have a better animal on your table.

01:34:56.95
Isobel Anderson
Yes, it's true.

01:34:59.68
Rosie
we got that unicorn all over buildings in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

01:35:03.02
Isobel Anderson
That is true. Yeah.

01:35:05.78
Rosie
Because that's who we are. We are delusional people who believe in fantastical creatures.

01:35:08.10
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:35:10.62
Rosie
Us and the Welsh.

01:35:12.06
Isobel Anderson
Yes.

01:35:12.23
Rosie
Us is a dragon.

01:35:12.76
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:35:12.98
Rosie
Love it. So, yeah.

01:35:14.81
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. so I feel like that's a good place to end is like, I'm welcoming in success.

01:35:16.10
Rosie
Yes. Yes.

01:35:20.41
Isobel Anderson
with the kind of 41 year old like smarts of a unicorn horn but I am welcoming and success and I'm not entirely cynical and if you want to give me an amazing job or pay me lots of money I'm completely open to it no

01:35:26.62
Rosie
Yes.

01:35:35.42
Rosie
Don't hold back, get in touch. Isabel at Girls Twiddly Knobs.

01:35:39.99
Isobel Anderson
exactly

01:35:40.22
Rosie
i Amazing. said And so I want to say as well, like before we end, just a huge thank you because the work you've done has affected me in the most positive way, as we spoke about way back in 2018, all the way up till present day, because me and you still talk on a regular basis about business and many other things.

01:36:01.12
Rosie
And also on behalf of those students that I know for a fact their lives have changed, their their paths have changed the way they think the approach to music has changed just a huge huge thank you because you put in so much time and effort and you've gone above and beyond multiple times many times that I don't know how often you get a thank you so huge thank you on behalf of them and myself for running this amazing project amazing business

01:36:33.80
Rosie
showing us all what's possible as well supporting us but also thank you for choosing yourself when it's come to it to be able to say hey do you know what now this is the time and that's also really really inspiring and just really like it's just great to see it you know it's okay to I think I saw a clip of your event which unfortunately couldn't come to where you were like, this doesn't need to be sad.

01:37:03.65
Rosie
Things ending. Things ending could be really good. And so I think the unicorn there, welcoming in success, change, it's coming up to a new year. It's great.

01:37:14.42
Rosie
So thank you so much.

01:37:15.98
Isobel Anderson
Oh, thank you, Rosie.

01:37:16.32
Rosie
It's been wonderful.

01:37:17.26
Isobel Anderson
Well, thank you so much for doing this conversation with me, because I would have struggled so hard to actually talk about this without you like gently guiding me. And you have been such such an incredible support over the last couple of years, especially of me making this decision.

01:37:34.65
Isobel Anderson
yeah I found you really inspiring because you closed down, closing down things, but you closed down radical songwriting. And I was, you know, there along for the journey. And so, but also that we've had lots of really important conversations about burnout, about work-life balance. And it's never come from a place of judgment. It's always come from a place of,

01:37:55.69
Isobel Anderson
complete like understanding and being in the trenches and I've just really valued that and I I'm excited to see where those conversations take both of us in the future so thank you for doing this today and thank you for supporting me over the last couple of years because it's been huge

01:38:13.07
Rosie
you're welcome cool it's always a pleasure right life we're on this life thing who knows what's next stay tuned in folks yeah amazing

01:38:15.34
Isobel Anderson
yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Cool. definitely full