Can you give a brief background? Where are you from? What’s your current role?
I’m Kathryn Frazier. I own Biz 3, which is a music company I have had for 25 years, and I’m also a certified life coach and a certified relationship coach. I’m born and raised in Michigan and then lived in Chicago for 20 years. I’ve been in Los Angeles for 7 years. I’m a single mom with two kids- running these businesses.
Describe your day-to-day life. How much do you sleep? What time do you end?
I am a firm believer in routines, so I have a pretty strict routine of when I sleep so I don’t fall into stress and depression and all these things. I always say I want to go to bed by 10:30 pm, but I have lights out by 11 pm, and I’m usually up at 6:30/7 am. The more I meditate, and I’m doing a new particular type of deep meditation twice a day, I find that I need to sleep less, which I don’t usually advise people to sleep less. When I say less I mean I sleep 7 hours instead of 8 [hours]. I wake up and I do a gratitude list, a powerless list, and some days I’ll grab my journal and do a quick page on how I’m feeling. I usually go straight into Shambhavi Mahamudra, which is a type of Kriya yoga that I practice now, and I’m in the middle of a 40-day mandala, which means I have to do it twice a day and if I miss one day it starts the mandala over- so it’s very strict. I come out and do it, and I have my yoga mat– it’s not yoga-like poses. It’s about 10 minutes of poses and about 21 minutes of ancient energetic practice, which I do twice a day. After that, I take my kids to school and come back and begin work. I’m trying to figure out exercise in all of this because the rigid yoga program is so firm that I feel like I need to get up an extra hour to exercise. I hike every single night, and I hike up a mountain, which has to do with mental health, management of stress and anxiety, and all that stuff. I work all day and I try to intermittent fast, so I don’t eat until noon and my last meal is before 8 pm, so I only eat between 8 hours a day. I love it. It keeps me energetic; I’m almost 52 and I don’t feel any different- I feel healthier than I was in my 20’s and 30’s, and I think it’s because of these kinds of practices. I have a shit ton of supplements and vitamins that I take in every room. I have daytime/afternoon ones that I take while I’m on calls. I have a bunch that I take in the morning. It’s all-natural stuff, and I have a bunch I take at night. On my website, I actually list out everything I take and why. You know, I work all day- with 80 million Zooms and calls, and all kinds of things related to Biz 3. I tend to have my coaching in the evenings, and then I have a pretty firm time when I stop working. When I was building this company, for decades, I worked way longer than what would certainly be an 8 hour day. I have more boundaries now. At about 6 pm I’m done, my first thing is at 9 am, so it’s about a 9 hour day. Then, I go hiking with my kids, or I start dinner. After dinner, I don’t go back to work unless there’s something happening. I’ll spend time with my partner, hang out with my teenage kids, and try to be in bed by 10 pm reading. No screens before bed because the white light is just not good for sleeping, so I try to just read until I go to sleep.
What does music mean to you and how has your love for music shifted after working in the music industry?
Music is super important. It transforms things. That’s why I wanted to be in the industry in the first place because I was such a deep music lover. I wanted to work in something I cared about. I do think working in music can kind of ruin it for you a little bit. I sometimes struggle, weirdly, to keep up with new music. In a way that when I wasn’t so involved with the music industry, I was diligently passionate about [finding new music]. Sometimes on the weekends, I’m like, “ugh I just want to listen to Eckhart Tolle talk about presence.” With that said, it’s still important, like this weekend I went on a trip with my son, and we just traded back and forth with each song selection. It was so fun- we were both in such a good mood. We were turning each other on to new music. It’s definitely a cool language that I share with my kids. They really like my music selection. It’s cool that I turn them on to music, and then I hear them playing it on their own. I love music. We listen to it all the time– when I’m making dinner and when we eat dinner we have it on–we’re a music family. I have a feeling that one day when I’m not working in music, I’ll go back to being a really rabid music discovery person. [However,] when you do something all day long, you don’t tend to want to go home and do it. They say “chef’s don’t go home and make big meals.”
Music is important in coping. How do you use music? What songs make you feel better?
Music has always been an emotional crowbar for me, so I use music to help me feel. Sometimes, when I need to feel and I can’t, or I want to feel a certain way- whether it’s amped up or if I need to tap into sadness. Any blocked emotion is what creates mental problems and breakdowns. I had certain things that happened in my life that made me have a lot of reinforcement to put a wall around me and sometimes I felt this more complicated. I have always used music in this way. I’ll give you an example, the other day, I was feeling a lot, and I paid attention to my body a lot, and I was feeling a lot of heaviness in my chest and stomach, and it felt like there was some kind of blocked emotion there. I couldn’t consciously be like, “what is that, and how can I get it out,” so I put on certain songs that I know will make it come out. One of them is Radiohead's “Creep.” If I sing “Creep” really loud, I will start crying right away. Do you know the part where he yells at the end? I really get a release from it. Even just thinking about it almost makes me want to start crying. Music has made me feel more profoundly than almost anything.
What is something you wish you knew before getting into the music industry?
I wish I had known that they were going to start streaming music and not sell it anymore, and I probably would have become a booking agent instead. If I had known it [music] would have gone all to streaming, I don’t know if I would have worked in music. I don’t like to think in regret. What I wish I would have learned early on is self-care. That wasn’t even a term. Ifsomeone said “what’s your self-care,” you would be like, “what do you mean.” I learned it at an okay time, but better boundaries around sleeping and asking for what I was worth would be two things I would go back to do. It took me a long time to charge what I was worth.
What specific mental health issues pop up in your line of work?
In my line of work with artists, I find a lot of anxiety and depression. It’s several factors- I don’t think it’s normal to be famous. It’s really disruptive to your psyche. I think a lot of people are very young, and they get a lot of power and pressure put on them, and they don’t have the normal kind of crappy job you would have for a while, and you keep elevating slowly, and then by the time you’re president of the company you know how to do what you do. When you’re 22 and all of the sudden you’re famous and rich, and everybody just wants you to show up and do your best, it’s too much, and people can’t handle it. Touring is really unnatural for a human. We have circadian rhythms like our bodies want to go to sleep at the same time every day, and when you’re flying all over the world and you’re up super late and get up really early, I can’t tell you how many decades I’ve watched kids get really sick. They usually tend to start drinking or smoking a ton, or they get addicted to drugs. Addiction is massive. It is a massive problem in the music industry. Whether it’s alcoholism, all kinds of drugs, and now it’s like lean, which is like the new heroin in rap music. I just find that people are numbing out and checking out instead of getting help. I think people get drug dealers instead of a therapist. I think a lot of people in my industry, which is why I’m a coach and why I’m super passionate about this- I have seen so many people just totally bypass someone’s issue and keep putting them out on the road/booking them more shows when it’s obvious they are struggling big time. Everybody’s afraid of losing their job, and it’s a really upsetting thing. I, being a publicist, have always not had as much at the stake of losing clients, like I’m not the manager, they’re [the artist] not my only source of income. I have always been an outspoken person, even when I was a child I was always that person. I’m always the one for decades now that will see someone and pull them aside, and be like “what’s going on? You seem like you’re not doing well. Tell me what’s happening. What are you drinking? What are you eating? Do you have a therapist? Do you ever talk about this? Tell me what’s going on.” I can’t tell you how many very famous people over these years have shared with me how painful things are for them. I know some people right now who are very famous, very rich, and I would not want their life for anything, and they feel like they can't, you know, go to rehab because “oh no they’re going to cancel a tour.” It’s just so much.
The industry is a lot of chickens with their heads cut off running around stressed, overworking. That whole “always working, always grinding” is the shittiest message ever. It’s like that is not healthy. Having an unbalanced life means more room for mental illness to come in– mood disorders– all kinds of stuff. Work really hard and also rest and spend time with people you love and also take care of yourself. That whole thing is like “ugh.” it sends the wrong message. There’s an industry full of people who aren’t taking care of themselves, and they’re super stressed out and then they pass that energy around. I’ve been happy with this conscious movement of wellness that’s starting to take hold. I get asked to come to people’s companies to talk about how to take care of themselves, and I think that’s great. I think all companies should have somebody come in and talk to them about stress management and taking care of themselves because you’re gonna get a lot more out of your staff if they’re healthy and happy rather than grinding 24/7 and a wreck.
What is something you wish you could change about your job and what is something you wish you could change about the music industry as a whole?
I wish there was just more quality like when I first started doing this. The internet is kind of taking over and news and media and everything going digital and less money is put towards content in some ways. The whole clickbait culture has completely compromised media and the quality of the stories that people do and the amount of attention they put into it. The quality went from like 10 to 3, and even really major reputable media, I find them constantly just going for headlines that will be clickbait. It’s just really annoying. If I would have known it was going to be like that, then I would have gone into a different line in music. Management or I kind of do all these different things anyway, but I don’t love where things have gone with the internet in that regard. The good thing about the internet is, it gets music to so many people. It’s just an amazing way to transport music, so there are pros and cons of course. I would never even try to sum up this whole industry, I wouldn’t know how to do that. It is such a big complex thing. Overall, I find that most people in this industry are nice and try to do good things. I don’t have some kind of shady report of the music industry to give. I just don’t, but also I have been so boundaries that anytime someone’s an asshole, I just won’t work with them. I get away from them. Largely, my view of the music industry is a pretty okay place- I’ve created it for myself anyway.
Have you worked with anyone that needed to go treatment but didn’t or did? What held them back or allowed them to go?
I’ve worked with many people that went to treatment or wouldn’t go and still won’t go.
It’s just a challenging thing that just keeps needs to be pushed. I’ve had people go into treatment, and it helped them and changed their lives. I’ve had people go into treatment, and they’re out right away and back at it. It depends if we are talking about addiction or mental illness. I have some people that I have worked with who have over the years suffered from bi-polar disorder, and that’s a tricky one because when you’re in it, and you’re not- unfortunately, the main way to treat it is with medication, which isn’t usually my favorite route. Pharmaceuticals and psychotropic drugs are a bummer, but they also work for certain things. When someone is not treated, it can feel almost impossible to get them into treatment because they just won’t see it or go there, but they’re also spinning out regularly. That’s always hard when you just can’t get someone to–you can lead a horse to water kind of thing. That’s why I try, at least with treatment dealing with addiction, I try to get people to places where I think they’re going to feel comfortable so they won’t leave. I got an artist who had a pretty big addiction to lean, and I actually don’t represent them. I was brought in to help them, and they got into this really fancy place, and the other two people there were CEOs of major tech companies, and they felt totally uncomfortable and wanted to leave right away. That can be tricky, and the whole rehab scene is a money grab and weird, so that’s a whole other story.
What are the best practices for destigmatizing and providing work-life balance?
Talking about it. Every leader should be talking about this in their companies. I did it today. Today, I had a Biz 3 meeting because we are in crunch time with some really big spring records coming out. I was like, “You guys, because it’s so busy now, I can’t stress enough how much I want you to take care of yourselves, like go to sleep on time, get up early enough to have time for yourself, do not wake up and pick up your phone and start working- that’s like the most unhealthy/worst way to work.” I said this all today, and that’s how it should be. The bosses need to recognize this and stop having workplaces where everybody works nonstop around the clock, stressed out like respecting people’s boundaries. Respect when it’s nighttime. Respect when it’s the weekend. You can still get tons of work out of people, so I think it just needs to be talked about. Less on the grind and more post-up of graphics on how to kill it at work and kill it at life- have balance.
Is there anything else you want to share with the people reading?
Something that I think is important is you don’t need to be in a position of power, influence, or skill to help people. People who are having a hard time with mental or emotional stuff or addiction. I think, largely, people think that they can’t help because they’re not in one of those positions, and I think that is wrong. Pay attention to the people around you. You could be an intern at a company and see that your boss is super spinning out, and share a tool if you have it. Check in with your co-workers if they seem like things are hard. Stop and ask someone. I think it’s just- every human should just keep their eyes open and help other humans around them. When an entire company says they witnessed someone really having a hard time, and no one said anything- that’s when I’m like, “would you watch someone dying on the street?” or would you go up and ask to see if they’re okay and help. That’s my message. Everyone should try to help everybody.
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