82: How to Invest as a Working Musician
and the Mission of Virtuoso Advising for Artists
with Tiffany Soricelli
When does somebody earn enough money to actually start investing.
When somebody earns money?
Kellogg:
I didn't ask that very well...
Soricelli:
No, no, no! I mean the idea of-- There's this belief system that, “I can't start investing until I've made a certain amount of money” or there are certain pundits in this this world, these financial experts that say, “Well, you can't start investing until you have no debt” but the thing about investing is that it's something that you can start at any time. And I encourage people, as long as you've earned income, you can start saving, you can start investing for your retirement, you can start investing just to get money working for you in the market.
I would advocate that if you are going to start investing, to be mindful of the other hierarchy of needs, your income sources, your emergency fund savings, liquidity, because you don't want to put all your money in the market and then, uh oh! need it, and, and have it not there or in a down market where you have to lock in some losses. But I think it's something that we begin early and we just make a part of our financial system, is just investing, saving regularly.
Kellogg:
So the stock market is a really complicated mechanism and for a lot of musicians, investing in the stock market is just a crazy idea. How does somebody who has maybe even just a fear of losing their money or a fear of, "What is that thing called stock market?" How do they begin to learn and get comfortable so they can invest?
Soricelli:
It's one of those things that you get comfortable by doing. There's a lot there's a lot of resources out there. There are amazing fund companies that cater to providing support, low cost or even free resources to young musicians, companies like Vanguard.com or Fidelity.com that have free IRAs.
But then also at their website, they have resources where they're going to explain, What is an IRA? What is an ETF? and really break it down so that the very beginner can, can get a grasp on what these financial tools are and how do they fit in your toolbox. I mean, I would argue that picking up an instrument or begin, beginning reading music is also super abstract when you start, but you get experienced by doing and you get better by doing. So it's one of those things that you just have to dip a toe in and begin educating yourself.
I could make a shameless plug, but Virtuoso Advising for Artists is the parent company to my asset management company, Virtuoso Asset Management, and because I see so many people that have this question, we've started a membership program. It's $6/month, where we can talk about these concepts and people have direct access to me, a licensed advisor, to ask these questions without necessary really getting, you know, advice that's not really suited for a working musician, but maybe a W-2 employee. But we're building this community. It's in its infancy, but we're building a community of financially savvy and like-minded creative professionals.
Kellogg:
For some people, the idea of investing is emotionally terrifying. The idea that their money might drop, they might lose money. What do you suggest for them?
Soricelli:
I think that if, if you're scared around investing, it's important to educate yourself, know your numbers meaning, understand what you have available to save, even breaking it down to the simplest idea of, if you don't invest your dollars that you want to spend ten years from now, knowing that the opportunity cost of keeping your money stashed under your mattress or in a coffee can in the backyard (I had a client that did that), that money is going to stay flat when everything around us is increasing at the rate of inflation.
So it's important to understand why we invest in the stock market. And then if you're scared around losing money, it's a function of the financial system because I think a lot of the news media talks about the Dow being down today or up or down and it's just constant noise.
So tune out the noise and seek out the resources that will support you. And so that might be a friend who is comfortable investing in the stock market. That might be a financial advisor, that is comfortable guiding you, holding your hand, educating you as you go. Or if you don't want to engage on it at all and you just want someone to do it for you, there's those asset managers out there as well. That's their job. That's our job to do that.
But it's a matter of understanding why we invest and how it supports your goals, and then finding the support system, finding either the friend or the computer or the professional to, to guide you on that path.
Kellogg:
Wonderful.
Tiffany, you started out as a singer and now you manage investment assets and you're a financial counselor. Tell us how you got here.
Soricelli:
It's a very roundabout way. And there was a lot of times on this path where I was just looking, I was not sure what I was doing.
So I got my undergraduate degree in performance and I moved to New York to work in management because I wasn't sure if I wanted to do grad school in performance or in vocal performance or work in the industry. And that industry experience showed me that, that it's hard and there is a lot of financial inconsistency. And even when you've quote unquote “made it” that life is hard and it wasn't, I think I was scared at the time. So I ended up following, you know, my path from that managerial role.
I was looking for something new in New York still, and I went to a hedge fund in an administrative capacity, and I leveraged my business degree background in addition to my vocal performance degree and worked as the second assistant to the owner of a hedge fund, an $11 billion hedge fund. And I had access to-- I was in meetings taking notes. I was seeing how ultra-wealthy individuals were making decisions around money.
And this was all the lead up to the subprime mortgage bubble burst - so, 2007, 2008 - and it was very interesting to see the interconnectivity of the financial system from that bird's eye view. And yet in that place the sky wasn't falling, people were making intentional decisions around their money and they weren't repeating the same noise that we were hearing in the media when the markets crashed.
So that gave me a taste of the financial system. But it wasn't until seven years later, after a brief stint in nonprofit management and fundraising, that I decided to fully go into personal financial planning.
I really liked fundraising for nonprofits. I started at an orchestra, and the best part was, was asking for money for the institution to align our donors’ goals with the institutional goals. So moving to personal finance was not a big leap. It was asking the donor or the client to save for their own goals and align their money with what they wanted.
And I've always been a financial geek. I love, I love how-- I say to my friends and clients, my job is to help people make their own dreams come true. And that's what we do. We align their financial systems with their goals and, and bring it all together.
So when I transitioned to personal financial planning, I realized very quickly that the financial system was not really built for creative professionals. And even the software was not working for people living on an inconsistent income stream. And so I began working with my own network and, and teaching some of these basic financial concepts. I wasn't taught in my education.
And so I partnered with Opera America and I became one of their speakers for some of their young artist opportunities and content. And then Washington National Opera reached out. They were looking for a financial counselor to complement the other amazing faculty that they have working with their young artists because they identified that this was a missing piece.
And so we began developing a curriculum to serve that young cohort. And again, I measured net worth, I measured our progress during that year, and by having intentional education, financial systems and really building awareness around their finances, in that first year as a cohort, I believe that they raised their overall net worth by $75,000 in ten months, living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. And so that's when it's like, wow, this really has legs.
And so then the next year I worked at Minnesota Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. The following year it was the Adler program at San Francisco. And this past year we've added three more opera companies and New World Symphony and you know really Virtuoso Advising for Artists has become this-- I mean my mission is to provide these educational resources to create a whole generation of financially empowered artists.
And the idea is that if we can build this generation who can stay in the career and have the financial systems in place, we can ensure that the world as a whole will always have access to the beauty, the artistry, and the music, which is essentially what we all need.
In 2021, after working for six years for other firms, I actually went fully independent and opened Virtuoso Asset Management, which is really an extension of the financial education that we're doing. So now, being fully independent, I can do the education side through the educational company and then also be and build this safe haven for artists and supporters of the arts to get conflict free financial advice, resources, asset management, and services. And so that's, that's, that's the journey of how I came to be getting to here, I guess.
Kellogg:
Tell us about your work as a financial counselor - when you work with somebody one-on-one, how does that how does that go?
Soricelli:
So that's my work as a financial advisor, and counselor is more of the coaching from the educational company. If I'm working as a financial advisor, doing fee based financial advising, it's similar in that we start with goals. We start with an understanding of where the client is today, what do they want? What are their dreams and their hopes? And we look at their financial systems and the data. The math is the math. It's really-- for me, the big thing is understanding what are their fears and what do they want.
And then aligning the financial systems and the math with the achievement of those goals. So I mentioned we make dreams come true, where I help my clients make their own dreams come true by simply building the roadmap to that thing, whether it's a Disney trip or retirement or a house. I mean, it's really fun to celebrate those wins.
Kellogg:
So on the education side, you still do some stuff one-on-one, but you're not--
Soricelli:
Yeah, so as a financial counselor in the education company, when I'm working with artists in that one-on-one capacity, what we're looking at is a lot of the business systems. How do you market your work, your money mindset around where income comes from, your understand of one's own, you know, profit margins and systems, and really getting clarity.
A lot of times artists I work with are just trying to-- they have all the spokes, but they have no hub. And so we're trying to get clarity on what that hub is for their career, for their goals, so that all of the other things that they have working suddenly start working in tandem.
Kellogg:
Where can people find out more about your work?
Soricelli:
People can find out more about our work through our website, virtuosoadvising.com. We're on Instagram @virtuosoadvisingforartists, and Facebook @virtuosoadvising, and then for the asset management company, virtuosoassetmanagement.com.
Kellogg:
Are there any other resources or books or tools that you recommend all the time?
Soricelli:
I'm a huge fan of Mike MiChalowicz’s “Profit First.” Great book to talk about financial systems and, and-- no matter what industry or in. Yeah I guess that's it.
And then we have, we have a-- we're building out a whole resources page on our respective websites where we’ll list just free content. We've got tax prep checklists, business checklists, things that we're putting together for the artists that we're working with, we just make available.
Kellogg:
Are there things like Mint or TurboTax that you think are the best or they're just good tools and you don't recommend specific ones?
Soricelli:
It's hard to recommend specific ones because different tools work differently for different people. So I really encourage individuals to find works for them. And if they're using an app or a record-keeping system that doesn't work, it's not you, it's the system. Try something else until you find what works.