Meet Julien Simoni | Pianist, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur

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

Hi Julien, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I work and think both as a musician and a real estate investor. I was of course kind of scared before jumping into those two fields, but experience told me that risks are sometimes not where you expect them to be. Indeed most of the time staying still is way riskier than taking a so-called “alternative path”.

Talking about music, the first question people generally ask is “whaoo Music?! Do you make a living out of it?”
I think that there’s actually a very little risk that I don’t cause I have a multitude of employers. If I lose one place where I play I’ll get 3 new ones instead. I also still give online piano classes, if one student stop, I’ll be fine as long as the flow of new arriving is higher. It’s pretty close to what real estate magnate Grant Cardone says about stability “it’s just a scam, things are either getting better or worse there’s no real stability”. Then you need to keep things getting better. This is true for everybody, people think they are safer with a permanent contract but that’s just false, risk wise it just means you put 100% of your trust in somebody else. I remember when I was doing my last internship as a business university student in an editing DVD company, my colleagues told me not to go into music cause “it wasn’t safe”. Turned out that the year after, I was making a decent amount of money as a musician and most of them lost their job because of an insolvency procedure of that company. That was very sad for them. With permanent contracts, there’s more inertia but once you reach the breaking point it’s generally way harder to get back to a safe zone.

The experience taught me that risk is not where you expect it to be in music. In my opinion, physical risks need to be acknowledged. I’m a piano player and a singer I try to protect my hands and my voice as much as I can. I avoid for instance driving motorbikes, which have a high probability of injuries to my hands. I’d rather like feeling safe and being able to sing and play the piano whenever I want than doing stupid risky experiences I don’t even want to do at first. Don’t worry I already have a lot of fun in my job with those crazy parties every night Ahah.

Sometimes unexpected risks occur. Covid was one of these. Well, I’m a strong believer that luck is not about what happens to you but rather what you do with what happens to you. I couldn’t gig during that time, but I used this time to put a stop to in-home classes and have 100% of my lessons given online. which eventually resulted in more money made in a smaller period of time and enabled me to do more things with my time, like recording a music video in Tenerife (Canaries Islands) during the latest french lockdown for my song “She wants to see the sun”.

Now things are back to normal, gigs are back and I still have my online piano lessons. This helped me with my real-estate investments.

In real estate, I tend to manage risk by choosing deals with a great margin opportunity. I invested in the coliving flats, which has greater margins than regular renting. In Real Estate, investors tend to buy as fast as they can with sometimes very little margins. Their only goal is to become as big as they can as fast as they can sometimes buying not-so-good deals as long as the bank lends them money. I noticed most of the time they tend to diversify by investing in many different areas to minimize risk.
In my humble opinion, this approach is riskier than they think. Of course, I’m not saying that diversification is a bad thing it’s indeed a good thing, but not regardless of margins. And you tend to have access to better deals in an area you know at least at the beginning of your career.
I think Real Estate is a market with a lot of inertia, you can easily be right for 20 years straight, and then boom something bad happens and it can last for years, when we face a systemic risk like Covid, I’d rather have high margins but fewer apartments so I make sure I can always lower the rent and not lose money, than diversified areas flats with little margins. The resulting Cash Flow is the same but in my opinion, the risk is lower. I think growing faster with smaller margins is smarter when you already have those first high-margin flats. Plus this approach teaches you to make better deals starting from the beginning, this is always a good skill.

To sum up, I’d say that risk is definitely something one does need to acknowledge, but we need to see it with a rational mind, in order to minimize it and be ok with it. It’s normal to be scared, but we need to avoid the irrational fears that stuck us in one place which is actually most of the time riskier even if you don’t feel it cause you know the place.

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’m a french singer, piano player, and composer. I do kind of my own brand of alternative pop music. I borrowed from a lot of styles that I crossed along the way. My music includes elements of pop, jazz, funk, R’n’B, and rock. I’ve been influenced by various artists such as Elton John, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Ed Sheeran, Dirty Loops, and many more.

I gig a lot and I love it, about 250 to 300 gigs a year which is about one gig a day. I’m based in Paris and play in many different venues including the Ritz Palace, and the Thoumieux restaurant, this summer I’ll be mostly in Monaco working at La Môme restaurant, an amazing place with a great view 🙂

I think every artist is unique in his own way, maybe my strengths are my piano skills and my understanding of sound which enables me to deliver a great experience at any event. I also have something with composition, a lot of my songs reminds Disney melodies. with a groovy vibe and great instrumentist skills in every song but still easy to listen to. You can easily listen to my songs on different platforms such as Spotify or Apple Music.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Alright, there are many places I love in Paris, I guess I could give someone a pretty good tour of Paris. First of all, as a musician there are many restaurants I would advise people to go to:
For a sample of crazy Parisian dinner and party, I recommend them to go to the “Thoumieux” restaurant (75007). The food is fantastic and everybody ends up dancing and partying to french and international repertoire performed by a Singer/Pianist (I’m one of them).

You can go and see the amazing view from Montmartre by night and wander around Place du Tertre where you’ll find many restaurants and live music such as “La Mere Catherine”.

If the night goes on and on, you can end up at one point in “Les 3 Mailletz” around St Michel where 2 concerts are happening at the same time with a resident band and food is served all night as well. Upstairs it’s unamplified typical french music with a pianist and a singer, downstairs it’s more of an international pop music show with an amazing band. I generally end up in this place around 2 am when I’m hungry after my shows to meet my friends and have a “bavette échalotte” 😉

One of my favorite restaurants in the city is “Le Fumoir” near the Louvre there’s no music there but the food is amazing and you can have dinner in a library.

I also recommend checking one of my favorite views of the Eiffel Tower from Trocadero plaza, you can see the majestic Eiffel Tower rising in between 2 museums

For a great view of Paris you can also climb all the way up to the top of the “Arc de Triomphe” from there you’ll see most of the major streets of Paris including “Champs Elysées” seeming to run away from you with a star-shaped pattern, I guess that’s why this area is called “l’Etoile” (the Star).

If you like street art I recommend a walk at “La Butte aux Cailles” you might like that

The list goes on and on but let’s say it’s a good start 😉

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
There are a lot of people to whom I could dedicate this Shoutout to. There’s my dear friend, Brice Sommen who helps me get this amazing sound on my songs, he is always a source of inspiration and a great musician. There’s my mentor in Real Estate french magnate Gilles Grimm. All of my friends and family for their constant support especially my father who also likes both real estate and music. There are also people I don’t know personally who are always sources of inspiration, especially musicians Elton John, Ed Sheeran, and Stevie Wonder for their music.

Website: https://juliensimoni.com

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

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julien-simoni-5098421b/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JulienSimoniMusic

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JulienSimoni

Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7BvjNm7PHJe29diEuU8Od4?si=H4ztrNdlQhGvaGSS8XtKWw

Image Credits
Matthieu Piriou Chloé Desnoyers