Sharon Salazar
Hello! My name is Sharon Salazar, CEO/Founder of Zumo Colaboratorio Cultural.
I was born in Lamas, in the jungle of Peru in 1989, but at the age of 3, we had to move with my whole family to Trujillo (in the north) because terrorism had taken over the city and it was already very dangerous to live there. I grew up and studied in Trujillo. I graduated from the Communication Sciences career but I was always interested in the world of art and culture. I participated in various cultural movements and worked both in publishing and theater but what was always my passion was music. I used to have a band and there I learned many things and I met many people in the music scene.
In 2014, I moved to Lima after having won a scholarship for young entrepreneurs and started working in some NGOs but I was always involved in the world of music in one way or another and I had the opportunity to participate in a program of the Ministry of Culture to train music entrepreneurs. Thanks to that program, I was awarded a scholarship to be part of an Artistic Residence on the Island of Providencia in Colombia. In that residence, I learned many things about the music business and met many people from different countries.
Returning from the residence with everything I had learned and seen, I decided to start my own agency, with a single artist with whom I had already been working independently. So little by little, the agency was growing and today, five years later, we have already worked with more than 60 artists and I have a team of 10 people under my charge.
Also thanks to Zumo, I was awarded a scholarship by the United States Embassy to follow an internship program in Miami in 2018, where I was able to work at a local concert production company. I was also recognized as a cultural entrepreneur by the Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú and a successful graduate from my University (Universidad Privada Antenor Orrego). Today, Zumo is one of the most important representation agencies in the country, and thanks to that, I have been able to travel to many countries and continue learning about the music business which is what I am most passionate about!
Company Name: Zumo Colaboratorio Cultural
Location: Lima, Peru
Operating since: 2015
Company Website: www.zumocolaboratorio.com
Socials: @zumo.colaboratorio (Instagram), @ZumoCC (Twitter)
Tell us all about your company. What services do you offer?
Zumo is a co-creation laboratory between musicians and agents of the musical ecosystem. We offer strategic solutions tailored to each project, covering different areas of music management such as management, booking, event production, BTL, PR, training workshops, among others.
We also have a non-profit association with which we travel through different parts of Peru sharing information about the world of music and mapping new emerging talent since, in cities in the interior of the country, it is very difficult to dedicate to music. In parallel, we are working on an online music management education platform that will allow many emerging artists who still cannot afford a management team to manage their careers, and in the future, work with a management team.
Tell us a bit about your co-founders at Zumo.
I started the company on my own in 2015 and, little by little, I had more collaborators, mostly women. The first four years we were all women, now we are 80% women. Last year, I called up Rebeca Vega, administrator, who I met on the YLAI scholarship, of which we were both creditors, to do an internship in the USA. I called her to help me with the issue of the platform we were working on because she had experience in technological startups. When she saw me so busy she offered to help me with administrative tasks and she began to work with me. Together with her, we grew a lot and we became very friendly, and by the end of 2019, I made her a partner and now we both run the company.
How did you get the idea or concept for your company? What was your mission at the outset? Was there anything in particular that inspired you to start at the time you did?
Before doing the residency in Colombia, I was very undecided about whether to dedicate myself purely to Communications, which is what I had studied, or to dedicate myself to music. I thought I had to choose because, in Peru, there were not many models of music management companies. When I left my country and saw other scenarios, I realized that I did not have to choose and that I could combine both skills and knowledge and that is what I did. I saw that there was a great need on the part of the musicians to have a management team to help them develop their careers. I lived it firsthand as a musician and a large part of why I stopped making music was because it was very exhausting to deal with the creative part and in addition to the organizational part. Then I saw that it was really necessary for artists to have a team to help them grow.
Growing up, did you always intend to start your own company/organization?
Yes, since childhood I have always been involved in undertaking new things. When I was about 10 years old, I organized, with my neighbors, small recitals where we sang, danced, performed, songs, plays, and choreographies created by ourselves and we also charged an entrance fee (significant of course) but I think that my passion for cultural management began from there.
At university, I was always involved in organizing concerts or cultural events. At the age of 20, I opened a small virtual store of independent design clothes that did not prosper because we still lacked a lot of experience. Also, with a friend, we had an ad-media communication company and so I was trying various projects until Zumo came to my life and it all started to make more sense.
How have your past personal & professional experiences helped you to run your company?
All my past experiences have helped me a lot to take on a responsibility as great as running a company. Since I was a girl, I have been very entrepreneurial and I think that beyond the knowledge acquired in the university, it was the experiences of life in general that prepared me. Also, the fact that I was raised in a home where most of us are women, because I have two more sisters and my mother gave me strong and self-confident female figures, that helped me to trust myself and be able to work in a mostly patriarchal society.
What is the biggest obstacle you've had to overcome?
I think that the biggest obstacle for me has been that, when I started, I was quite young and also a woman and that communion automatically makes you almost a child for the society and makes you lose your voice. Many times I have not been taken seriously, even now it happens to me, for being a young woman and I feel that I have had to assert my voice unlike my male contemporaries who have a space earned just because they are men whatever their age.
What's your definition of success? Do you consider yourself a success? If not, when will you?
For me, being successful is being able to do what you are passionate about and being able to live from it - and I can do it and in a country like Peru where it is extremely difficult to dedicate yourself to art and being able to live 100% of them is almost a privilege, so I consider myself to be successful. Of course, I still have many goals to accomplish and I'm working on them but I do consider myself successful and I am grateful for that.
Have the women around you helped you to rise? How?
Of course! I come from a matriarchal home where my mom and my older sisters have always been positive figures, strong and hard-working women who have come out with a lot of effort in very difficult contexts such as in the midst of terrorism and drug trafficking.
I also studied in a women's college, and although at the time I did not like the idea very much, today I appreciate it very much because I grew up in an environment where we were all the same and had the same opportunities. Of course, when I entered university, I realized that this was not the case in the real world, but having grown up surrounded by strong women, it helped to shape my self-esteem and self-confidence, and that allowed me to get ahead without thinking that I was less because of being a woman.
What are some of your future plans? Are you working on anything else right now?
I dedicate myself 100% to my company but thanks to the quarantine (for the COVID-19), I have been able to rediscover old hobbies that I had put aside due to the hustle and bustle of daily life such as writing for example, which is something I really like, so in In the future I would like to take a script or creative writing course and who knows how to write a book.
As for Zumo, we have plans to open new markets like Mexico and the USA and to win many Grammys with our artists.
What advice would you give to a woman starting out in your industry or starting her own company/organization?
That she never lower her voice, that she always trust herself and her abilities even when everything seems to be going wrong. That she not to be afraid to give her opinion, and that she should not pay attention to the stigmas of machismo - her work will prove that they are wrong.
Describe yourself in ONE word. Significative
Complete this sentence: "To be a girl or woman today is..."
To be brave. Being a woman today is being a rebel and those people are the ones who have always changed the world.