Charlotte Brimner, 21, now Be Charlotte, started songwriting and performing at 14 and was backed by Creative Scotland on her next step up in the music business. Here she tells of her journey to her first album.

For everybody starting out you quickly realise how much everything costs - guitars and instruments and equipment you need or just getting to gigs.

When you start playing live you play so many shows for free that you don’t make any money for a while until you can hopefully get bookings.

Read more: Bands and solo musicians get breakthrough grants for next stage of career​

I just kept developing my style and I wanted to make a bigger sound but didn’t know who to ask to help me.

When I got the funding from Creative Scotland - which was £15,000 - that was one of the first times I had been given money to do what I wanted to do and we used that money to go to Asia, primarily to take part in a song-writing camp and work on some songs but also to go and do a tour of Asia, which was great, in like six countries out there, and we got a really good reception.

I think there’s people who maybe didn’t understand why Creative Scotland would have given me that money as a young person and why would I go to Asia and what was the point but it is all about the story that you create and about the opportunities you give yourself.

I could’ve used that money to do a tour round Scotland but I don’t think it would’ve helped me get further on in my career.

Read more: Bands and solo musicians get breakthrough grants for next stage of career​

You could see straight away after it the impact it had on Spotify and online and on social media - you could see different people liking it.

To get funding was amazing just to know that someone has your back a bit I guess.

The biggest thing to remember is with funding you don’t always get the full amount of what it is going to cost but it might contribute and you still need to find the rest yourself.

It is about figuring out how to maintain a business at the end of the day. I took me a while to realise this is a business. You still need to figure out how to make money.

Read more: Bands and solo musicians get breakthrough grants for next stage of career​

It was and still is huge amount of money to me but it was more that Creative Scotland had believed in me enough to give me that money.

For the past three or four years I've dedicated all my time to music whether or not I make enough money of it and had to dedicate my time and energy otherwise you're never going to get the results and then this year I signed my record deal which has meant that I can obviously now make a little bit of a living from it.