Music journalist Kathryn Frazier was 'Ready to quit' the industry. Instead, she added “Life Coach” to her resume

For Mental health Awareness month this May, Advertising sign collaborates with Brandon Holman of Lazuli Collective on a series of articles focused on mindfulness and professional development for executives, creatives and artists in the music community.

Today's chat is with Catherine Fraserthe founder/owner of PR firm Biz3 — where her clients include The Weeknd and Skrillex — and a certified life, career and relationship coach who has worked with everyone from college students to world-famous musicians. Based in Los Angeles, Frazier also recently became a Reiki teacher, expanding her practice to care more for the mental, emotional and spiritual health of her clients. She says this not only helps people experience relief from suffering and makes her life and work more fulfilling, but also helps bring the world refreshing art from creative people who are mentally, physically and emotionally healthy. Three decades into her career in the music industry, Frazier is encouraged by the wellness trend, but believes many major music institutions could do more to help their employees navigate an inherently high-pressure industry.

The reason I got into coaching, and now I'm a Reiki master and the other things I do, is because I didn't see care for the mental, emotional and energetic health of artists. I saw many overworked, stressed, addicted people. People I worked with and people I didn't work with who weren't even able to live up to their PR and show their obligations and everything that comes with being an artist.

The parallel, to me, is as Lauryn Hill said: Everything is everything. Your mental and emotional health, what you had for breakfast, your relationship with a partner, your history with your parents, all relate to and will show up in different ways in what you do in relation to music. I started to see this more clearly from my own quest for growth and the layers of the onion, I started peeling myself when I started treatment when I was 26, and now I'm 54. The more I peeled, the more I saw how much this all affects always. I would rather come into a person's life and try to fortify them on all levels.

I have always, and do so much more now, have helped people with anxiety, stress, impostor syndrome, insecurity and compare and despair, along with challenging you and trying to get you news or help you find management. I was in management. I own record labels. I've been in all sides of the music industry and you can't really thrive and grow a career if someone at their core is unstable or malnourished or exhausted and hanging on by a thread.

That's when things like addiction and suicide [can happen], or I've seen artists who just couldn't keep up with it, and their careers just fizzled out. That doesn't mean I coach everyone I represent because I don't. But I certainly import elements of it. When I'm talking to people on the phone or on a shoot, I'm really checking in on people's well-being and talking to them about their emotions or what's going on with their energy or pull a key element oil or show someone how to do quadruple breathing. There are a lot of artists out there who could say we did this together.

I had someone say, “Oh, like the wellness trend? Are you tragically trendy?' They used some term that downplayed the wellness trend and I just laughed. I was like, “That's real bulls—, what you just said.” I'm not the most fluent in my speech, so it probably goes for the audience. I'm not trying to preach to the choir. I'm trying to get people who don't already know or care about these things to come and relieve themselves. So if wellness is trendy, awesome. How could anyone be against stopping people from suffering? Someone else said something to me like, “Oh, did you see so-and-so is now a Tiktok wellness influencer?” They said it in a negative way. And I said, “Great.” I can deliver something, and there might be five people who say, “I'm not listening to her.” But they might listen to someone else. Who cares. Whatever key goes in there and opens the door. The more messengers, the better.

I have [worked with] people who just got out of prison and were trying to figure out how to get back. I have worked with CEOs and famous musicians and actors. In general, they all have what I believe to be the same issue: Every person I coach has some level of brain that overthinks and causes them pain. It's what Eckhart Tolle talks about: The biggest thing we suffer from is our own thinking and our own runaway brain. When we think about the past and think about the future and are not in the present, we suffer. We worry, we are stressed, we are angry, we resent, we are contemptuous, we are closed, we are locked, we are stuck. All related to an overthinking mind.

So I always start by learning how much a person's brain and mental chatter goes and give the tools for that right out of the gate. It's a very common thing. There's a famous star that I talk to a lot right now, and he has the same comparison and hopelessness and negative self-talk and impostor syndrome as a college kid I work with. If you had bubbles above their heads saying how they feel, it's the same even though they're in completely different scenarios.

We work in a high-pressure world, in music. If I don't deliver, they call managers and labels. A lot is at stake. Will working in the music industry be stress-free and always relaxed? No, it's not the nature of the game, but you can make it better. I spent an hour on the phone with one of my staff today encouraging her, and she just read The Four Agreements, because I encouraged it. I send all our interns and staff The Power of Now. I have paid for people to go to the Landmark Forum. I have paid to go to transcendental meditation. Am I mad or disappointed? For sure. Am I always perfect with my communication or the way I process things? No. But I definitely think I'm doing better than a lot of people in our industry. I wish I could see [a culture of knowledge sharing] more at some of the larger institutions. Some of them are great and have people coming and sharing or providing services. I just think there should be more.

I've given these talks at William Morris and UCLA with my students, I always say you don't have to be an expert or Brené Brown to share tools. If you are an 18-year-old intern and reading The Power of Now and it helps you, and you have your powerful boss who is in his 50s and seems to need it, share it with them. Don't be afraid to start sharing with each other.

I was one thousand percent ready to quit the music industry. There was one summer in particular where I wasn't inspired by the rap music that I loved and worked on for a long time. It was the culmination of many boasts and it was all about monetary success. The media had changed. I just said, “I can't do this one second longer, and it's such a blessing to get paid to do this, but man, it sucks.”

That's when I worked really hard on training, supporting and putting in all the hours. Now I've done 3,000 hours, so I'm a master trainer. I have taken the time and that saved me because then I saw that I could bring a different energy to what I do. While helping to spread art to the world, I can actually help human beings to not suffer and then that energy goes through them to other people, even if they don't say it.