It's been a while since I've sat down and written anything particularly informative on this board. A recent thread got me thinking about a stage in a person's audio engineering career that people seldom give any real thought to. This applies mainly to those few of you who hope to do this as a full-time career.
With the right combination of skill, work ethic and luck you eventually reach a point where you no longer have to compete across the bottom rung for projects. You're not price slashing, and beating all the other up and comers with a club in order to stand out from the pack. People are now coming to you - possibly in droves. This stage brings with it some very new and very real considerations - many of which I didn't tackle too well myself upon reaching this point.
Schedule Management
The singularly most important element of reaching this stage of being constantly booked is the ability to manage your time. You've spent years dealing with sporadic bookings and massive dry spells, so you're not used to getting this tremendous influx of projects and the need to jigsaw them around each other.
What you need to do first is separate the wheat from the chaff. You find out which of your potential clients are serious, and which aren't. The best way to do this is to ask for a deposit as soon as possible for any agreed upon work, for any agreed upon stretch of time. This allows you to start filling up your calendar with serious bookings, and keeping tabs on how much time you have to finish any given project (did I mention? GET A DIGITAL CALENDAR!!).
Managing Expectations
One of the fun elements of working as a producer or audio engineer is that many indie bands' deadlines are essentially limitless when it comes to working on their own material. Yet, as soon as that material makes its way to you, the world will suddenly implode if you don't have everything delivered by a set date. Yes, it could've taken two years to track, but if you dawdle for a few weeks, you can be sure they'll let you know about it.
As such, regular communication is pivotal. Keeping the artist apprised of your situation and progress can be a great way to keep the communication flowing back and forth, even if there is nothing to show of the work. If you're anything like me, mixing can sometimes take a while. I often iterate and iterate until I feel confident enough to show an artist the result, because it's important that their first impression be a good one, and it's equally important to feel like their money was well invested. Bridging that gap of time between commission and showing them the first draft is critical in order to maintain confidence between the parties.
Even in cases where for whatever reason or circumstance we might have greatly overshot our initial deadline, I generally find that artists are still responsive, assuming that the communication remained consistent throughout the process.
Work/Life Balance
When you are overbooked, or mismanaging your schedule, one of the things this job loves to do is suck you into a pit of despair, from which you feel you'll never emerge. Being stuck indoors for 8 to 16 hours per day, working endlessly on tasks which are immensely mentally draining, with no real physical element is absolute hell on your mind and body. There is only so long one can sustain this without collapsing.
I was initially afraid. Afraid that if I dropped the ball for a second, somebody else would be there to take it and make the run instead of me. I felt if I didn't stay sharp, listen to my reference records for hours per day, and just absolutely hammer it out that I'd never achieve my original goal of being one of the best in the world at what I do. This kind of attitude places an immense amount of unhealthy pressure on you. Even if your aspirations aren't so lofty, it's still very easy to get carried away with the job until your physical health and social relationships start to wane significantly. Most of us sacrifice a lot to make this job a reality - but we often don't need to sacrifice as much as we think we do.
It's vital that you maintain some form of physical exercise plan throughout your life. Whether it be as basic as long walks in the morning to get some fresh air, martial arts, hitting the cardio machines, rock climbing, lifting weights etc.
What I found after coming back at this job with a more balanced lifestyle is that my work quality actually improved. I was no longer stuck inside my own head, obsessing about every single detail, but more prone to letting things go which were outside of my control, and keeping a clearer head throughout the process. I began to understand that there is more to life than this particular project, at any given moment in time. At the end of the day, no amount of renown, no paycheck and no pats on the back are worth destroying your own health.
Beware The Sociopath
As you continue to work and gain renown, people will inevitably want a piece of you. They sure didn't when you were a 'nobody', but now that you're in a position to help them, boy are they interested!
This was traditionally a mentor/apprentice industry. One person's skillset was passed on to his or her assistants, who then went on to forge careers of their own, subsequently passing their mentor's and their own bag of tricks to their assistants, and so on and so forth. So naturally many of us have the inclination to help others as we ourselves were helped when we first started.
The drawback to this, as one of my early mentors once eloquently stated, 'when you train someone, you're essentially training your own competition'. This becomes problematic, and leads many engineers to become quite insular with their techniques, not wanting to share anything out of fear of it coming back to hurt them. The sad thing is, there is a certain validity to this.
We're all familiar with the sociopath insofar as we understand that our social structure, political structure and financial institutions are often governed by them. These are individuals who are disingenuous by nature, feigning emotion and intent in order to manipulate others into achieving their own ends. The unfortunate thing is that they also exist within our little industry.
As such, when you decide to take on an assistant, share with a colleague, or whatever else you choose to do, you need to go through the less than desirable task of gauging their strength of character. Are these going to be people who you will be able to involve on your projects? Will you feel confident passing whole projects onto them if you are overbooked? Or will they use it against you and attempt to harm your business?
My own colleagues have shared these stories many a time, and it's a heartbreaking thing to hear every time it comes up. There are few worse things to hear about in this business than when a person's own good will toward another was used against them. It shouldn't need explaining why these situations lead to bad outcomes for the industry as a whole.
That being said, resist the urge to be insular. Share your processes and techniques if you feel they are successful. It raises the bar for everybody. After all, without places like this forum, many of us would not have had a chance to be who we have become. Don't take with no give, but be very selective with whom you give to. Establish some form of trust and understanding, ensuring you're in a quid pro quo relationship.
Let Your Rates Determine Your Availability
You might find despite your best efforts, your booking calendar is starting to push several months in advance. Clients simply aren't willing to wait that long for you, no matter how great your quality of work.
The simplest way to solve this is by raising your rates. Every time you raise your rates, you put yourself into a different category. There is nothing which enshrines commitment quite so much as money in this society. If someone is willing to invest a lot in something, it generally means they care a great deal about it. Essentially, the more you charge, the greater the caliber of dedication you'll be dealing with.
Raising your rates has the ability to whittle down your workload quite a lot, giving you some valuable breathing (vacation!) room, all the while maintaining the quality of life you've become accustomed to. In many cases your projects become more enjoyable, as there was a greater dedication put into their preparation. Often you don't even need to enjoy the music as a listener - so long as you can see that the artist is passionate, and willing to commit many of their resources to their passion, that's all you need to give you the motivation to do your best work.
With the right combination of skill, work ethic and luck you eventually reach a point where you no longer have to compete across the bottom rung for projects. You're not price slashing, and beating all the other up and comers with a club in order to stand out from the pack. People are now coming to you - possibly in droves. This stage brings with it some very new and very real considerations - many of which I didn't tackle too well myself upon reaching this point.
Schedule Management
The singularly most important element of reaching this stage of being constantly booked is the ability to manage your time. You've spent years dealing with sporadic bookings and massive dry spells, so you're not used to getting this tremendous influx of projects and the need to jigsaw them around each other.
What you need to do first is separate the wheat from the chaff. You find out which of your potential clients are serious, and which aren't. The best way to do this is to ask for a deposit as soon as possible for any agreed upon work, for any agreed upon stretch of time. This allows you to start filling up your calendar with serious bookings, and keeping tabs on how much time you have to finish any given project (did I mention? GET A DIGITAL CALENDAR!!).
Managing Expectations
One of the fun elements of working as a producer or audio engineer is that many indie bands' deadlines are essentially limitless when it comes to working on their own material. Yet, as soon as that material makes its way to you, the world will suddenly implode if you don't have everything delivered by a set date. Yes, it could've taken two years to track, but if you dawdle for a few weeks, you can be sure they'll let you know about it.
As such, regular communication is pivotal. Keeping the artist apprised of your situation and progress can be a great way to keep the communication flowing back and forth, even if there is nothing to show of the work. If you're anything like me, mixing can sometimes take a while. I often iterate and iterate until I feel confident enough to show an artist the result, because it's important that their first impression be a good one, and it's equally important to feel like their money was well invested. Bridging that gap of time between commission and showing them the first draft is critical in order to maintain confidence between the parties.
Even in cases where for whatever reason or circumstance we might have greatly overshot our initial deadline, I generally find that artists are still responsive, assuming that the communication remained consistent throughout the process.
Work/Life Balance
When you are overbooked, or mismanaging your schedule, one of the things this job loves to do is suck you into a pit of despair, from which you feel you'll never emerge. Being stuck indoors for 8 to 16 hours per day, working endlessly on tasks which are immensely mentally draining, with no real physical element is absolute hell on your mind and body. There is only so long one can sustain this without collapsing.
I was initially afraid. Afraid that if I dropped the ball for a second, somebody else would be there to take it and make the run instead of me. I felt if I didn't stay sharp, listen to my reference records for hours per day, and just absolutely hammer it out that I'd never achieve my original goal of being one of the best in the world at what I do. This kind of attitude places an immense amount of unhealthy pressure on you. Even if your aspirations aren't so lofty, it's still very easy to get carried away with the job until your physical health and social relationships start to wane significantly. Most of us sacrifice a lot to make this job a reality - but we often don't need to sacrifice as much as we think we do.
It's vital that you maintain some form of physical exercise plan throughout your life. Whether it be as basic as long walks in the morning to get some fresh air, martial arts, hitting the cardio machines, rock climbing, lifting weights etc.
What I found after coming back at this job with a more balanced lifestyle is that my work quality actually improved. I was no longer stuck inside my own head, obsessing about every single detail, but more prone to letting things go which were outside of my control, and keeping a clearer head throughout the process. I began to understand that there is more to life than this particular project, at any given moment in time. At the end of the day, no amount of renown, no paycheck and no pats on the back are worth destroying your own health.
Beware The Sociopath
As you continue to work and gain renown, people will inevitably want a piece of you. They sure didn't when you were a 'nobody', but now that you're in a position to help them, boy are they interested!
This was traditionally a mentor/apprentice industry. One person's skillset was passed on to his or her assistants, who then went on to forge careers of their own, subsequently passing their mentor's and their own bag of tricks to their assistants, and so on and so forth. So naturally many of us have the inclination to help others as we ourselves were helped when we first started.
The drawback to this, as one of my early mentors once eloquently stated, 'when you train someone, you're essentially training your own competition'. This becomes problematic, and leads many engineers to become quite insular with their techniques, not wanting to share anything out of fear of it coming back to hurt them. The sad thing is, there is a certain validity to this.
We're all familiar with the sociopath insofar as we understand that our social structure, political structure and financial institutions are often governed by them. These are individuals who are disingenuous by nature, feigning emotion and intent in order to manipulate others into achieving their own ends. The unfortunate thing is that they also exist within our little industry.
As such, when you decide to take on an assistant, share with a colleague, or whatever else you choose to do, you need to go through the less than desirable task of gauging their strength of character. Are these going to be people who you will be able to involve on your projects? Will you feel confident passing whole projects onto them if you are overbooked? Or will they use it against you and attempt to harm your business?
My own colleagues have shared these stories many a time, and it's a heartbreaking thing to hear every time it comes up. There are few worse things to hear about in this business than when a person's own good will toward another was used against them. It shouldn't need explaining why these situations lead to bad outcomes for the industry as a whole.
That being said, resist the urge to be insular. Share your processes and techniques if you feel they are successful. It raises the bar for everybody. After all, without places like this forum, many of us would not have had a chance to be who we have become. Don't take with no give, but be very selective with whom you give to. Establish some form of trust and understanding, ensuring you're in a quid pro quo relationship.
Let Your Rates Determine Your Availability
You might find despite your best efforts, your booking calendar is starting to push several months in advance. Clients simply aren't willing to wait that long for you, no matter how great your quality of work.
The simplest way to solve this is by raising your rates. Every time you raise your rates, you put yourself into a different category. There is nothing which enshrines commitment quite so much as money in this society. If someone is willing to invest a lot in something, it generally means they care a great deal about it. Essentially, the more you charge, the greater the caliber of dedication you'll be dealing with.
Raising your rates has the ability to whittle down your workload quite a lot, giving you some valuable breathing (vacation!) room, all the while maintaining the quality of life you've become accustomed to. In many cases your projects become more enjoyable, as there was a greater dedication put into their preparation. Often you don't even need to enjoy the music as a listener - so long as you can see that the artist is passionate, and willing to commit many of their resources to their passion, that's all you need to give you the motivation to do your best work.
uke:. I was blind but now I see, too bad you didn't post this earlier lol.
