Meet Nathan Dohse | I am a music industry professional providing independent A&R, producer management, and artist development. I am now the co-founder of Flash Library, a supplemental education brand for homeschoolers and teachers.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nathan Dohse and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nathan, as a parent, what do you feel is the most meaningful thing you’ve done for them?
Last year, a week before the school year started, we decided to homeschool our kiddo. Little did I know, that I would be making a full career shift 6 months later. There was a lot of positives about this and a lot of negatives. As an entrepreneur, I am able to set my own schedule, which means I am able to shift to taking a couple days to teach my child while my partner expands her own business (yes, two entrepreneurs in the same family). As my partner and I began the journey of homeschool, like entrepreneurs do so often, we saw holes in the resources available, and having time to reflect and create we had a new business built and ready to launch by year two of our homeschool journey.

So, in addition to my work as an Independant A&R in the music business, co-founder of an artist education brand (AGD Entertainment) and a public speaker, we now have a homeschool business called Flash Library. It is a subscription based business for parents and teachers to receive supplemental education materials based on topics their children or classrooms take interest in. It is the first business I have launched that is fully capable of creating residual income, which will have a lasting impact on our family in many different ways.

But what did this do for our child specifically?

First, they have way more hands on attention from both of their parents instead of just one. Second, they have absorbed a ton of our positive energy around creativity and risk taking. Third, they are learning about personal finance, while we are forced to make very intentional decisions around every purchase while we rebuild out income base. Fourth, they witnessed me leaving a career position that was not serving our family which showed that being present and content is more important than work or income.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I saw a meme… which is the greatest start to any question btw. But this meme says, “We don’t do this because it is easy. We do this because we thought it would be easy.”

This is probably the cornerstone of every decision I’ve made in my creative journey. I have a brain that sees an end goal, the final product. I mean, I see it clear as day. The problem, the path to that end goal usually requires quite a few things happening that are completely out of my control. Over my years of being a creative, I have slowly chipped away at eliminating any projects that I do not have all the resources to complete the project, whether personally or easily accessible from my community. I’ve learned that good projects stay present in your mind, and when those resources come available you will know, and be able to launch that project at that time, which is probably something to do with the universe opening and closing doors or some other cosmic metaphor.

But what is my art?

I started out as a songwriter in a Christian Screamo band when I was 17… so that says a lot I think. What it says I’m not sure, but it’s definitely a lot. I stayed in that band for 10 years, struggling to break through during one of the most challenging times in the music industry, when social media had not really made it’s full cultural impact, piracy was wreaking havoc on artists revenue and gas was $6/gallon so touring was never profitable. But we survived long enough to make it to Nashville where I recorded my fifth and final studio album before jumping the desk and diving into artist management and development.

Still always reaching into my creative well, I wrote a curriculum for artists on how to release their albums in a commercially minded way. This program has served over 400 artists and continues to make a big impact with multiple artist development brands across the country. I hadn’t realized how much education and process were a major part of my creative flow, but over the next few years, I would see how much they impacted me.

I then moved on to artist management, label services, and publishing work for a private group out of Canada. They wanted to create a new sound around an artist who was working towards their debut release. This was an opportunity to get involved on the ground floor in a creative build-out and use all my skills within one project. It got me back into songwriting for the first time in 8 years and the whole project was a big success!

I completed my work on that project at the beginning of 2023 and gifted myself some time to rest and reflect. Now I am spending my time creating with friends and family and serving others by providing creative direction, strategic development and any other service they need that I can offer.

The biggest challenge I have faced, and I’m still tackling is that over much of the time I have been making stuff, very little of it was ever for me or something I wanted to be creating. Now I am committed to always working on a project that is something I want to make. There is always an invitation for collaboration, but the project itself will always stay central to my creative vision.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If I had friends visiting Nashville on the first day I would start with a hike around Percy Warner or Radnor if it was a weekday. Then head to breakfast at Cafe Roze. After, I would take them down to Broadway… and leave for a few hours. That evening grab dinner downtown, probably Husk. Through the rest of the week we would see a show at the Ryman, do a river trip on either the Caney or Little Harpeth. We would visit Southern Grist brewery where I can enjoy a Non-Alcoholic craft brew while they do a local beet tasting. I would set us up to hang by the pool at Soho House for a bit. We would do an evening at Cheekwood, and an afternoon at the Nashville Zoo (it’s really great y’all, especially if you have kids.). Other breakfasts would include Big Bad Breakfast, lunches would include Radish and Red Perch. Dinners would be Butchertown Hall and 615Chutney.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My S/O would go to Heather Parady. When I was in the last phase of building out the Zero To 60 artist development program I needed help with a few portions of the online course. Over the ten years of running AGD Entertainment full time I had hired a ton of people to work on projects, so many of them over-promised and under-delivered. When I began working with Heather Parady I learned so much about providing a service to others and I am implementing those things I learned every day.

The biggest takeaway is that your service and your brand can have different elements and will serve each other organically because they both center around you and your values. I also learned that everything doesn’t have to be packaged, custom service offerings are much better for both parties than a set product or system. This is probably only possible as an independent contractor, which inspired me to shift towards that kind of work.

Having had this experience with Heather, I can craft my services in the music business in a much more fluid way, where all my skill sets are available to everyone in my community while keeping my values and interests at the forefront of my brand.

Website: nathanjdohse.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanjdohse/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathandohse/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nathan.dohse

Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@nathanjdohse