Solving the Wrong Problem

I recorded this one driving back to LA from Arizona, with a list I'd written at a truck stop: ten misconceptions I keep seeing from mixers, audio engineers and the people I work with, each one written as a word, an arrow and another word. The problem you think you have, next to the one you might actually have. There are exceptions to all of it. This isn't about thinking that's right or wrong, only thinking that isn't serving you where you are now.

Key Moments

"Going into sales conversations with low confidence, you can almost ensure you will not be getting the rates that you want."

"So many times, it's the second time or the last time I follow up that someone actually responds."

"The sequence is get visibility, get distribution. And then your brand will help sell them even further."

"It might not be a confidence problem. It might be a repetition problem."

"It's not always about more information. It's very often about more implementation."

"They want the silver bullet. They want the answer."

1. It's Not Your Skill, It's Your Business

Obviously you need some degree of skill to sell a mix. But every business has an owner and an operator, and usually you're both. If I ran a business selling mixes and hired someone else to do them, my own mixing wouldn't need to exist at all. Skill is required to produce what a business sells. It isn't what makes it a business. It doesn't find customers or stay aware of the market. When people tell me they used to do this and now they don't, that rarely has anything to do with how good they are at mixing.

2. It's Not Your Rate, It's Your Confidence

People go into rate conversations without having done the math on what they need or how long the work takes, and without knowing why the work is worth it. So it comes out as "It's $300, but I can do whatever you need, I have discounts." That's really destabilizing for the person hearing it. If it's this, but it can also be less, why would they pay this? Your market plays a role too. But confidence does more than people think.

3. It's Not Your Followers, It's Your Clarity

Go to a lot of profiles and you'll find a photo of someone holding a mic, a headline that says mixer, mastering, producer, a handle like Mike's Music, and a link to an album from ten years ago. That's a lack of clarity, and I've been a victim of it myself. Years ago I was doing a bit of design, a bit of branding, a bit of coaching and a bit of teaching, all things I love. A friend I'd helped kickstart a business told me she'd met someone who really needed to work with me, and she didn't know what to tell them I did. I really needed money at that point. It was upsetting to hear, and it was completely clarifying.

You could have a ton of followers from an old artist project. You might be better off with ten followers on a page that's very clearly about mixing.

4. It's Not Getting Clients, It's Following Up

I can't tell you how many times I've gotten work because I followed up. To a lot of egos, following up feels wrong. If they wanted to work with me, they would. So the conversation just ends there. But silence has so many possible causes. People have told me they'd had a birth in the family, they were in the hospital, they were sick, they forgot, they felt insecure, or they were really busy that day. And yes, maybe they didn't want to work with you. That's okay too. It's one possibility out of many. Very often the reply comes on the second or last follow-up, along with an apology for not answering sooner.

5. It's Not Your Outreach, It's Your Targeting

Everyone wants to know how to do outreach, and before we get into it I always need to know who you're targeting. Some people are easier to access than others, and it's not the same path to everyone. Your messages might be bad, and usually they are. But it could also be the wrong genre, the wrong artist, or a page with no clarity on it when they get there. The same goes for goals. A lot of people want to make $100,000 or $200,000 a year when they haven't consistently made $30,000. That might be a target problem too.

6. It's Not Your Branding, It's Your Visibility

To most people, brand means a cool website, a cool font and a cool color palette. None of that gets you seen. Investors talk about distribution, whether your work can get in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and you need to think about that in your own world. Brand comes after. I've gotten people's brands right that went absolutely nowhere. Not being able to find you is a bigger problem than whether your logo is cool.

And since we're on logos, from someone who's been designing them for 20 years: please stop hybridizing music notes and microphones with other things. You don't really need a logo. Type your name out, in a font that fits your style of music. You're good.

7. It's Not The Algorithm, It's Your Consistency

Yes, the platforms are incentivized to have you pay for distribution. But the algorithm is mostly trying to work out whether what you post is valuable to the people it's reaching. It seeds a post out to a few people, and it only goes further if they engage. I've watched people build a big content strategy, make their first post, get four likes and blame the algorithm. If you keep showing up, try different things and dig into what resonates, you'll learn. A year later you're making things people want to save and share.

There's real randomness in it too. I've posted nearly the same thing twice and had one take off while the other did nothing. Don't base every decision on it.

8. It's Not Confidence, It's Repetition

People base their confidence, or their lack of it, on one event. One thing a friend or a partner said, one article, one podcast, and now that's the basis of what you believe. You send outreach once, it doesn't work, and you're done. I really do believe a big way of gaining confidence is sheer repetition: trying things over and over, speaking to different people, getting new information. That could take a year. But as long as you don't give up, you will build it.

9. It's Not Information, It's Implementation

I know what it sounds like to say this on a Live full of information. Information is good. It can give you a new perspective. But you can watch every Reel and like everything I post, and without a plan, a system or some accountability, it's gone very quickly. I was a teacher for a while, and it was almost like everything from the last class went out the window. The only way information lasts is by changing form, into new systems that keep creating output.

10. It's Not The Answer, It's The System

This one's personal, because I've dealt with it on calls. The point of a call like that is to see the big picture, look at the holes, and find the doorway to the path you want. A lot of people arrive expecting the answer: exactly how to work with major labels, exactly how to multiply their income. The answer is there, and it's everything on this list. Follow-up, targeting, structure, consistency, clarity, confidence, repetition. People don't really want to hear that. I'd love to tell you to pay for the call and be famous tomorrow. What you'll actually get are systems you have to take on and stay consistent with, and those are what move you toward the target.

Also In This One

• Why a post about road trips might flop on a mixing page, even if your audience loves road trips
• The algorithm as a ball thrown through a maze
• What distribution means, from labels paying for radio to ads today
• Crossing the California line, a bear sculpture and one very real donkey

Watch If...

• You think you need to get better before your business can
• People keep pushing back on your rate
• You're waiting for people to reach out
• You stopped posting because a post flopped
• You've taken in everything and changed nothing
• You're looking for the one thing that fixes it

Ten items on a scrap of paper, recorded from the driver's seat somewhere between Arizona and LA. The full session is on Instagram.