On October 14 I spent two hours at The Music District in Fort Collins, Colorado, talking with producers from The Workout, the District's production and engineering program. Some were alumni. Some were mid-program, about to track a real band's song for the first time. Most of them want to do this full time and don't know where to start.
Here's what we got into.
Mixing Is a Small Part of the Business
The first thing I said is that the craft is one piece of the business. A small piece. Mixing is like one eighteenth of the scope of the business.
When people want to level up, they usually reach for the visible stuff. I'm making my new logo. I need better photos. A new name for my studio. Better gear. All of that is good in isolation. It will never make you money on its own.
What does? Having actual leads. A list of real names. A clear offer. Real pricing. These aren't cool, sexy things. They're the foundation of your entire business.
The technician waits to be chosen. The owner doesn't. The owner creates demand.
Work You Wait For vs. Work You Create
Referrals, word of mouth, someone remembering you, a studio sending work your way. All of these are passive. It's work you're waiting to come in, not work you're creating the conditions for.
I'm not against luck. Allow randomness to be random. But also set up the infrastructure that creates conditions for work.
Say you commit to going to the same venue every single week, and you just met the owner. That's making luck. It's very different from waiting for a band to hit you up because they think you're good.
And for a small town, here's the thing: you don't need a thousand connections. Sometimes you only need three manager connections, or two A&R connections, and you're set. That could be a whole career.
Competing Isn't Being Mean
Everyone who can do the work is the top line. That's a big pool. Then ask: are they willing to start conversations? Follow up? Say a price and keep that price? Track what happens? That's a much smaller pool.
Competing really is not being mean to anyone around you. You're showing up more. You're not giving up. You're pursuing things on purpose. That's enough to compete.
A lot of the room was young, so we talked about comparison too. If you're 20 years old, why would you compare yourself to someone who's 40? What you're doing at 20 and what you're doing at 40 are vastly different. When someone seems to really have it down, yeah, now. But what is now for them is years and years of honing this stuff. You didn't see all the dinners those people had together, the nights out together. You just see that they're here now.
Free and $0 Are Not the Same Price
This is the one I keep thinking about.
If you've always done the work for free, nobody ever knew your price. Your price was $0.
Free and $0 sound like the same thing. They aren't. Free is a price: it's not costing them anything. $0 says this thing is worth nothing. And it changes how people show up. When something is worth nothing to them, they likely won't value it as much.
Some people feel that talking about money is selling out. But the whole point of a business is offering a service in exchange for money. If you're comfortable providing a service but not receiving money, that's kind of a broken business. And if there's even a slight discomfort to it, that's a real problem. It won't go away by itself. It'll get worse.
Think about the last thing you bought. That was a sale just as much, and you weren't mad at the person who sold it to you.
When you say a price, say the number and pause. Don't say it and caveat it right away. Being able to say a number and nothing else is really, really hard. It's a discipline.
The Follow-Up Is Where the Work Is
Most people send their first message and stop, because they let the rejection sink in. Oftentimes the answer comes on the third or fourth or fifth message.
I've had people thank me for following up, because they forgot and were grateful I reached out again.
Nobody is going to pat you on the back for sending a follow-up email. It's not exciting. It has also led to a lot of work.
And this isn't a weekend and one email. It could be years. Several follow-ups, then you meet them for coffee. It also matters where the artist is when you reach them. Someone in the middle of creating, someone who just put something out, and someone taking a year off are three very different people to talk to.
Specialize, Then Go Deeper
Your positioning filters people in or out. Filtering people out isn't a bad thing. It depends on what you're filtering out.
The total market for music is bigger than the market for dream pop. But if you spread yourself across everything, are you going to build trust in any lane? If you're talking to everyone, you've gone very shallow into every genre. Why not carve some out and go deeper?
When people specialize, the people who matter in that lane are drawn to them. Someone who is highly invested is more excited to work with someone who is also highly invested.
Will your first dream pop records sound like shit? Probably. They'll sound more like shit when it's one dream pop record in every fifteen other records you do. It isn't time dependent. It's commitment dependent. There are trade-offs in every decision you make, and commitment is accepting the trade-off.
You don't have to tell everyone everything you do. Even at 80/20, the public sees you 100% doing one thing, and you'll feel the benefits: fewer people to meet, less to get better at, easier flow, easier momentum, easier referrals.
And a studio job isn't the only real path. You could do mixing only. Mixing with a full-time job. Mixing with a part-time job. Mixing with other audio work. There is no right answer. They all have risk attached.
Content Is for People Who Buy
Content is for people who buy. Not for followers. And not for peers: if you're a mixer making content for mixers, that's peers.
Getting likes from your aunt and uncle doesn't mean anything. My aunt and uncle aren't buying anything.
Same with your website. Websites don't bring traffic. They build trust. They're there to catch the traffic that's already coming, so you're there when someone looks you up.
A Project Should Leave Behind More Than Money
We ended where most people never look: after the work is done.
Businesses are relationships and agreements. The human part is the relationship. The technical part is the agreement. And the agreement can be one page: the scope, revisions, a timeline, payment terms, both your names. That's it. It doesn't need to be crazy and complicated.
When a project's finished, that doesn't mean the project's over. The project now has a life. Good work doesn't automatically create repeat work, so what can you do in between?
Bringing up the next record the moment you deliver is kind of useless. It's a little desperate, and they don't have answers yet. Give it a second. But that artist is very likely going to make at least one more song, so why wouldn't you be the person for it? Getting someone to buy the first time is the harder mountain to climb. They already know you.
A project should leave behind more than money: proof, a credit, a testimonial, referrals, reputation, a relationship. Ask for the testimonial. Ask for the referral. There's no shame in asking if you're actually legit.
People always want a tip or a tactic. But it's all of these things compounding over time that makes something happen. It's not one moment. It's the unsexy stuff.
That room asked the questions people usually keep to themselves. Thank you to Ryan Adams for the introduction, and to the Music District team: Kyle James Hauser, Head of the Music District; Riley Phipps, General Manager; Dan Perez, Membership Coordinator; Annalee Knies, Artist Development Coordinator; and Diego Felix, Jessi Reed and Hayden Farr. What you've built in Fort Collins, a place where producers can talk about the business openly and without gatekeeping, is rare.
If this is the part of the business that feels stuck, the Mentorship Call is sixty minutes of looking at your specific situation and mapping out what to do next.
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