Case study
From avoiding the business side to reaching out to A&Rs and labels.
Josh Bowman already had the mixing handled. Once he stopped treating outreach like a pitch and stopped tying his self-worth to his rate, asking for more and reaching out to labels started to feel natural.
The numbers
- $650 → $800
- what he now asks new indie clients per song
- 3 A&Rs
- on his list he reached out to, to set up meetings
- About zero
- hours a week he spent on leads and planning before. Now it goes on the calendar
The mixing was handled
Josh is a mixer in Toronto with a steady career. What he didn’t have was a business side he trusted. He was getting $500 to $1,200 a song while he felt his work was worth $850 to $1,500, and asking for more based on the project felt, in his word, icky. He knew he had lost local gigs to engineers with lower rates.
He was taking meetings, but spending basically no time on leads, research or planning.
“What originally brought me to Michael was that although I had a solid handle on the actual ‘mixing’ part of my job, I know to get my career into the place I want it to I need to sharpen my business skills—especially in organization, networking, and development.”
Worth, and the rate, are two different things
They went through his money in detail: what came in, what went out, and which subscriptions and tools he was paying for without noticing. Then they worked on how he thinks about his rate.
The shift was letting the number flex from project to project without it meaning anything about him, and seeing that he really is worth the higher rates when he gets them.
“I’ve realized my rate can flex and it doesn’t devalue me personally. But I’ve also become more aware that I really am worth what I’m asking regardless of what the number is.”
A CRM full of people
Josh set up a CRM in Notion to track conversations, contacts, and current and upcoming projects. Putting in everyone he had met since moving to Toronto changed how he saw his own career.
“Looking at all the people I’ve met in my career since I moved to Toronto and like doing the whole CRM list and stuff. I was like, ‘Holy s***, like I’ve actually been working really hard and like I’m doing pretty good.’”
Relationships, not pitches
Near the end of the program another engineer posted on Instagram. Before, Josh would have felt a bit jealous and wondered what he could do if he lived where that engineer did. Instead, he made plans to follow up with two A&Rs in Canada and set up meetings.
He started asking new indie clients for $800 a song instead of $650, and put regular time for the business on his calendar. Those asks and meetings were still in progress when the program ended. What had already changed was that reaching out no longer scared him.
“I also started thinking about networking differently—it’s not just about pitching myself but about building real relationships and helping artists and labels bring their visions to life. That shift has made reaching out to A&Rs and labels feel much more natural.”
In Josh’s words
It wasn’t just about business; it helped me see the things I was already doing right and how they fit into my long-term vision, and realize I was holding onto some ideas that weren’t serving me and getting in the way of me doing my best work in certain situations.
You get out what you put into it, like anything.
Josh Bowman Mixing Engineer, Toronto, ON
These are real clients’ results, in their own words. Figures are self-reported by each client. Results vary with each engineer’s work, market and follow-through; nothing here is a promise of income.