Connye Florance

I attribute my success to tenacity and treating everybody right. I think the thing that has kept things flowing best for me is doing what my mother told me to do, which was treating people like I want to be treated, and being good at what I do. I mean, that helps. I'm well steeped in the stage, and the stage is my second home - I'm not sure if it's my second or my first home, actually. But I am very comfortable on the stage, and I'm able to make other people feel comfortable with me on the stage, which means the audience is enjoying what you're doing. I've worked with so many singers that they think they want to be on stage, but they look so uncomfortable up there. So part of what I have to do is train them how to at least pretend to look comfortable, even if they're not.

The best career advice I've received was to not pigeonhole myself in one place and to go out and experience and explore all that I'm capable of. When I was a performer on the General Jackson when Opryland was still Opryland, I was one of the lead or star performers, and we had a guest artist with us for a couple of contracts who was a ventriloquist. He traveled all the way around the country - we were 20-somethings at the time, and he had already been to Vegas and back doing all that stuff. He told me that I could be doing my own stuff, that I didn't need to stay under somebody else's umbrella. He told me that I was good enough to go do my own stuff. And I said, alright, I'll give that a shot. And I have been ever since.

These days, I couldn't tell you what advice to give because I look out into the field and I wonder what it really is. I have some rather negative opinions about the quality of what is being put out by large numbers of artists as art, when it's really just sex with music attached. So I don't know what I would tell young artists these days. I would say be good at what you do, but then the next question I have is, what is it that you do? I mean, without having a tuner attached to you, without having tons of flashing lights and costumes and nakedness and dancers around you, what is it that you do? And I'm not sure I understand what that is anymore. So I would ask lots of questions - that's what I do. I ask lots of questions to help artists answer them for themselves. I would just say be good at what you do, and understand that fame is not all it looks like it's cracked up to be. That's my biggest piece of advice to everybody - just reminding them that fame looks like something that it may not be when you get there, so if you think that's what you want, be ready for full exposure of whatever that is. You can't be famous and keep a private life simultaneously. Some people do a good job of it, but it's really hard.

I don't know if I can point to the biggest challenge, but I think the biggest challenge is that our country does not value arts and entertainment, unless there is some sort of fame and celebrity attachment. The value of the arts is only as good as the level of celebrity, according to the U.S. In other parts of the world, they recognize that the arts are essential to life and living, and artists get paid well for their skill and their craft. They're able to make a good life and a good living without having to do 15 things to bring in the income. That, to me, is the biggest challenge - our cultural perspective on the value of the arts is very low. Even though we want entertainment, we want to be entertained, we want music, but we think it just should all be mostly free. So making a decent income without having to stretch all of your wires to the limit is probably the biggest challenge. The other challenge is that with the new society and everything being video and automated, I don't think we've decided that we know where live performance fits into our lives anymore. That's becoming a challenge. Marketing is always a challenge if you're not a salesperson, and that would be me. Finding agents that you can actually trust is another challenge.

In my personal life, honesty, clarity - I am one who continues to appreciate the truth while it continues to disappear around me. I think honesty and sincerity and respect are really important values for me. My husband says I spent a lot of money to maintain my integrity. I do appreciate maintaining my integrity. I think our culture has lost a lot of its integrity overall. I'm not sure how important maintaining mine is, but it is of value to me.