Interview with Maria Barbirotto, Entrepreneur, Writer & Business owner

We had the privilege to speak to Maria Barbirotto; she is a diversification entrepreneur, music industry manager and consultant, writer, art curator and cooking business creator working internationally.

Thank You Maria de la Paz Barbirotto for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with us:

WITH A CAREER IN THE MUSIC AND ART INDUSTRY SPANNING SOME TEN YEARS, WITH GREAT RESULTS AND NUMEROUS SELF-MADE ACHIEVEMENTS, WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE IN THOSE FIELDS?
M.B.: The music industry is a pool full of sharks. The art industry is a pool full of aristocrats. I don’t belong to neither of those categories but my vision of life reflects on my vision of business and I tried to create something different, against the standard rules, focusing on motivation, sharing, mutual collaboration, dreams and willpower. I gave out my time, my money, my years of studies and my skills for ridiculous rewards, putting together two agencies that were oriented to create an artist-centred team operating on all the essentials departments an artist needs to improve its career but competing to other thousands of “wannabes” and with the main market. We were giving a hundred for the price of one and getting back zero. Artists are really tough personalities to deal with, each of them is following a lifetime dream and, even if I had mostly great experiences and relationships, there’s something that took me apart. There was a part of my life when, due to private matters, I needed to slow down and interrupt most of the working relationships I had with my clients. This decision has been really hard for me, but accepting that certain clients considered that interruption as an injustice against them was even harder. I can’t stand to violent confrontations and cheap attacks, I’m not interested in the new world unconscious speak aggressivity and hate and I decided to focus on myself and the good I have created. I gave refunds to people, including some of the ones that didn’t have the rights to receive it according to our policies, and surrounded myself only with people that have respect and seek a righteous life. From there we took out the toxicity and we started to work again to create positivity. I’m glad we all went through this together, some of the artists that work with me came out with a better vision and a more humble approach towards the music business, starting to build an alternative option opposed to all that part of the industry that is willing to fight and create competition. The art and entertainment market is saturated. After coming out of a rough period, I was tired of being part of their game and I thought diversification was a great move for a fresh start, giving new options and alternative tools to those artists that before judging how their agency works want to take time to learn how things work in the industry, that are well-grounded and down to earth. I still create great things in music and art but mostly focusing on a niche market and slow approach.

WHAT DID MAKE YOU GO INTO ENTREPRENEUR DIVERSIFICATION?
M.B.: What I was missing was the human connection. A lot of people couldn’t understand me cause they didn’t have a direct opportunity to get to know me for my personal stories, my behaviour and my life conduct. A more diversified entrepreneurial experience comes with scaled down entrepreneurial projects and ideas, which allow you to connect with people in a real life size. My clients need to know me and trust me, and I want to know them and trust them before starting any sort of relationship. I don’t see my decision being connected to the lower risk possibility of the investment, which is definitely a thing, but in my case it’s more a desire of going back to the roots of our experience in this earth and bring to life some of my lifetime dreams and skills I worked for.

AS A WOMAN, YOUNG, NOMADIC AND ENTREPRENEUR, HOW HARD HAS IT BEEN TO START AND ARRIVE WHERE YOU ARE AT TODAY?
M.B.: It’s been hard as it’s hard for a man to create something from scratch and make it worthy as a career. It’s more to understand your chances and playing the right characteristic of your personality. With the cooking business (coming soon) it’s going to be much comforting for my clients to play hard on the fact that I’m an Italian woman due to the identity direction of the project, but I’ll never let the fact that I’m a woman play the game for me. The nature of my achievements comes from years of studies, experience, tendency to good business visions, entrepreneurial instinct, ethics. My luck is that I don’t see this kind of obstacles when I’m focused on what I want to create, I live my life under the motto “If you can think it, you can do it.