From an anxiety hole to work that felt like his grounding.

Not a problem to fix

Alex spent eight years learning to perfect someone else’s sound, then left to find his own. He didn’t come to coaching with one problem. He saw a chance to grow into what he believed he was capable of.

What he did bring was the worry most freelancers know: whether the next project will come, and whether the work in front of you will lead to more. Looking closely at how he held his work together, he wrote, “we found pinholes, we found gashes.”

“A lot of what I believe we go through is wondering if anyone out there is thinking about us, whether there will ever be any more work. Will the work we do now bring more work? It’s an anxiety hole that can very negatively affect the day to day.”

Respect for every step

They mapped everything a song goes through from first message to archive, and built a Notion workflow where potential clients flow in and finished projects get organized. Alex started doing session prep at the end of a long day of mixing, and thinking about next week’s work while this week’s was still open.

“Truly landing in the understanding that mixing one song takes so much more than the time it takes to mix a song - client reach out, acquisition of files, preparation of session, mixing, send away, notes, send back away, more notes, finish song, send to mastering, archive files. It has allowed my brain to treat each step with a lot more respect than I ever gave to them.”

Networking as a human experience

Alex likes people. What he didn’t like was the idea of networking as a transaction. Once he let himself do it his way, being himself, asking real questions and saying plainly who he would like to work with, reaching out became part of his day: a couple of hours of it, every day.

“I’ve found myself fortunate enough to love connecting potential collaborators because I now see networking as a human experience and not a ‘hollywood’ transaction. It suits me much better, too.”

Grounding

Midway through the program, Alex’s life got a lot less predictable. The plans they had built were made for real life, so he kept up with outreach and delivered to clients from the road.

He came out of it with a clearer idea of who he is as an engineer, a mixer who is also a finisher, and more creative energy than he had felt in years.

“I have been able to establish a strong enough workflow and communication with my clients that during perhaps the most volatile time in my adult life, with a child and an international move, work has felt like my grounding. I don’t know if I ever could have predicted that.”