Hey guys, welcome to electronic dance money, your number one business resource for making money as electronic musicians and producers.
Okay, awesome. So we’re back with another new episode of electronic dance money. What’s up everyone tuning in? Today I’ve got a great guests, someone I admire and have followed for a couple of years now. So I’m super excited to have him here. We’ve got your Vin benediction. I said that correctly, right? Sweet. Yes, of course. You’re the author. So you’ve got two books. We’re gonna be talking about one of them. The first book is step by step mixing which you got some pretty good notoriety. Yeah, that one, didn’t you? Yeah, I it’s it’s sells keep selling. So people keep buying it. People keep reviewing it. It has I think 395 reviews on Amazon. Yeah. Yeah, it’s about 20 copies a day. So I think I’m about 15 to 20,000 copies sold, which is good for a niche industry like audio. Yeah, congrats. That’s awesome. I mean, talk about which I’m gonna be mentioning it passive income. That’s, I mean, great way to just get that, you know, get that source of income kind of flowing in every single day. That’s Congrats, dude. But you also have you’re also very well known for your website audio issues, which you have, I think you’re I remember, I made a post I think in the six figure home studio community about how people get leads, I think you mentioned you have, what over like 1000 blog writes or something on your website. Yeah. So I’ve audio issues is 10 years old. So I’ve been blogging about audio production, music, mixing and random stuff. Also, just like a bunch of weird stories from my life.
For about 10 years, I started off in 2009, as a school project at the SAE Institute in Madrid, where I went to audio engineering school, and I started the blog as a way to just start writing down what I was learning to pay forward, and sort of kind of solidifying the knowledge in my head. Because if you can teach something, you you know it better than if you’re just trying to learn it yourself. Because it just there’s, there’s some sort of mind shift that happens when you need to be able to teach something. So I wrote everything down. I was learning. And I just never stopped writing. And I think, like you said, it’s has probably about 1000 blog posts on that site. And then there’s content all over various other audio production websites online. And yeah, so it’s been gone for a while. Dude, that’s fantastic. That you’re 100% right about the teaching thing, for some reason, even like, which we’ll probably talk about imposter syndrome a little bit. But I mean, I always experienced imposter syndrome, especially with the podcast, funny enough. And I think it’s something about that vote even more vulnerability of like, putting yourself out there. But I’ll, I’ll have topic ideas. And I’m like, Am I don’t even know what I’m talking about here. Like, is this gonna be good? And I always freak out about that. And then I start talking about it. And then I kind of forget what I’ve talked about in the episode until I start editing it and I release new I’m like, oh, wow, this is like a crazy wealth of knowledge. Okay. I do know, at least a little bit. So that’s, you know that that’s nice. But even when I do lessons, or even blog writes, as well, it’s like, oh, okay, I actually think I know what I’m talking about fine. I find, oh, all of a sudden, I know what a compressor is. Because I’m explaining it to someone. It’s that sort of stuff that just kind of solidifies what you know, and what you might need to work on and learn a little bit more about how can I figure this out in order to teach other people really, that’s, that’s the thing, right? So um, why don’t you first kind of introduce yourself and your kind of history and music and where you’ve, how you’ve gotten to where you’re at? Because I would argue you’re pretty, pretty damn successful in the audio industry. So why don’t you just tell your story? Sure. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. I appreciate that a lot. Okay, so let’s, let’s rewind a little bit. So first of all, I’ve been a musician since I was 15. I’ve been in bands since I was 15. I played an instrument in some way, shape or form since I was eight. I started off in audio because I was a youth leader at a in Iceland, all these sort of
junior high schools from like 13 to 16 year olds, and then you have
sort of college level youth centers as well. And so I was a youth leader at a youth center for ages 13 to 16.
Basically I was in a band, I was in a rock band at the time. So I was like, the cool rock lead guitar player in that youth center. And I had like a music club where basically, my job was to help teenagers like form a band and be in a band play together a jam, which is not a bad gig and a bad job to have, when you’re not at all. 20. I was 20 at the time. And so from there, I was doing music and I was playing live. And I was working out in in education basically. And one day I got a sort of the youth leader youth centers got a memo was like we’re doing a workshop on live sound in this at this other music venue slash center for for teenagers, anybody who wants to come check it out, and learn how to like connect to your and stuff. And, and I had been, I was in a band we recording, we had recorded our own album at the time, we created our own recording studio in our rehearsal space and recorded the debut album, which does not sound great, but still proud of it. And
but at that time, I was just the lead guitar player, I was just like, the asshole, guitar player that wanted to be louder in the mix, or I thought everything sounded like shit. And but when we got that sort of email to, for that workshop, I went down there, I was encouraged to go check it out. So I went down there. And basically, it was just like a crash course in signal flow, how to connect up
analog 16, Channel Mixer to a PA, and how microphones worked and all that sort of things that I kind of knew a little bit about. But then I got sort of a crash course in running live sound. And little did I know at the time that basically the guy that was running the workshop, he was like the live sound dude for the town of the town council. And he didn’t want to run sound for that venue, any longer or, or didn’t always have time to do it or whatever. So because I was fairly enthusiastic about it, I had played that music venue before.
And it was a really cool, sort of underground up and coming bands. And a lot a lot of cool Icelandic bands came out of that music venue or came through that venue. And I
kind of jumped at the opportunity was like, well, let’s try this out. And I’ll, I’ll see.
I’ll try being like, I’ll try doing live sound. And you know, getting an hour or two, our Crash Course and signal flow and connecting cables does not make you a live sound engineer.
I don’t think it would either. So it’s a lot of trial by fire. But basically it was like, Well, if you want this, if you want this job, like you’re hired, and we already have your information from the other center, because everything everything’s very when you’re in a democratic socialist country, and you work for the town, everything’s very well connected. So it’s just like, we’ll just put you on the payroll here. And you work here to now and the there’s a gig on Thursday, you should come and you’ll get the you have like, you’ll shadow this person for a few gigs. And then you then I ended up basically being the live sound engineer there. And then at the same time was the assistant director of another Youth Center and that guy encouraged me or the director of that youth center encouraged me to pursue audio engineering as a career. So I did live sound for a sound reinforcement company. While I was saving up money to go to Spain to SAE Institute and the school of audio engineering or I think that’s what it’s called now. There’s the SAE Institute, it’s all over the world hook has campuses all over the world. In the US, it’s you know, la Atlanta, all the hubs, you know, but I went to Spain to Madrid because it was cheaper. And I kind of wanted to, to learn Spanish or sort of masterminds, but I’d learned Spanish in school that took a lot of languages in high school. And I wanted to pursue Spanish sort of on the side sort of as an as an unofficial extracurricular activity. So all the so I went to Spain, at the height of the economic crash, and all my savings was just kind of not I wouldn’t say wiped out but definitely the currency exchange at the time was really bleeding me dry. So that was it was rough, but it really taught you a lot about budgeting how to live on like five euros a day, which is came in handy.
But yeah, I went to audio engineering school in Spain there there and took and that was a year of technically back in the day you could do a year which was basically a diploma or an honor for sort of a vocational degree. And then you could continue for another year and get a degree like a BA in audio
or music production, whatever. But during the first year I met a girl and as one does, yeah, as well, because she was backpacking through Europe, I was studying. And we
we liked each other as they do, and,
and fast for that sort of be that sort of side story. Now we live together in Tucson. We have been married for five years. And or actually close to seven if you count the immigration wedding too. And now we have a four day old daughter, which is congrats so adorable. Oh, man, that’s so exciting. Yeah. So in audio engineering school in Spain, I started writing down everything that I learned and blogging about it, and never stopped blogging. And then when I graduated there, I came to Tucson because she went to law school here. And the easiest way to stay in the US,
legally is to become a student. So I went and became a student again, I went to Pima, I went to community college here. And then I transferred over to the University of Arizona. And I got a Business Economics and entrepreneurship degree. At the University of Arizona. I started a startup called crowd audio, which was basically a mixing music mixing version of the 99 designs. Oh, yeah, musicians would post their multi tracks. And then engineers would compete for the best mix. Oh, yeah. So we did crowd audio for a while, while I was in college. And meanwhile, I was, I was still writing audio on audio issues, writing books, and things like that. And after, after college, we we ran crowd audio for a while until we sort of just, it’s, it’s sort of fizzled out in a way, like, technical reasons, because none of us were like coders. But also we sort of wanted to do other things, then we started spreading out across the country, you know, University, the University experience really helps keep you together in the same city. But once Yeah, once people graduate, they might take jobs elsewhere and stuff like that. So I, that sort of we disbanded that basically, after a few years, but we were profitable, and it was it was a really fun experience, for sure. And then I just focused on audio issues. And I’ve been focused focusing on audio issues. Ever since then, more or less, writing books, step by step mixing came out in 2017, the first version I wrote, rewrote the book and published it last.
In 2019, I think it’s due, it’s actually kind of due for a third version of because how I, how I write a lot of the books is, I’ll blog about a subject for maybe a couple years. And then I will just put a lot of that together and sort of edit it together for comprehension, so that it’s concise, and, and sort of a solid piece of work. And then then I released that as a book. So yeah, I feel like that’s a really good way to write some I was actually have you read? Um, have you read a steal like an artist? Yeah, Austin kleon. Yeah, have keep going right there, I need to get keep going. So I read a I read both steal like an artist and show your work, which were fantastic backback. They’re great books, I need to read, keep going. But I got the I got what I think is a really good idea for a book that I’d like to do. At the time, when I read that book I was doing a lot of I was trying to grow my Instagram page, but I didn’t have really, I didn’t really have a reason to want to grow it. And so I was doing a bunch of tips and tricks, where I would just basically, you know, on all sorts of different audio stuff on mixing, mastering production, you know, using specific tools. And so I would use images and basically create all these posts on with Canva. And then I’d post them on Instagram, and I thought, Oh, I know what I can do. I can do this for three or four years post, like every other day. And then I can take everything that I’ve posted and take all these images and create it into like 1001 production tips or something absolutely, where every single page you flip is an image and it’s talking about a certain effect and what you can do with it, and so I was like, I don’t think anyone’s doing that. I think that might be a really good idea. But then I like and then I but then I stopped post doing those posts on Instagram because it was taking away you know, going into like the 8020 principle. It was kind of taking away from the stuff that I need to be doing at the time. That was actually getting me good results. So I stopped doing that but I was I keep thinking like I think I’ve got a little bit more free time. So I might
Want to start doing that to just build that library of stuff for myself later in the future to just combined into a book?
Yeah, totally. I mean, like blogging or book is like a very standard or not, I don’t know, standard, but it’s a really good method because
writing a 50,000 word book, or step by step makes sense that 35,000 words is an undertaking. But if you commit to like 300 500 words a day, that’s not that bad. And they don’t have to be great. You know, they just have to be on the page. Yeah, you can always edit it later. My girlfriend Marty, she’s my editor. She’s editing an article for me today I like I’ll write through an article and I’ll be it she’ll she just marked it up like crazy, because I think that I’m terrible with grammar. And I’ll just get in my head, I just need to get it out on the paper, and then leave it to someone else to edit that stuff. But you’ve got a new book out, which is why I wanted to have you here, which is called you get what you give. And I crushed through it. It is fantastic. I’ve got it here. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that book, because it’s in it. It’s an inspiration from a book that I religiously tell my listeners to read, which is the go giver? So go ahead and take the floor and tell us all about it. Sure. Yeah. Thank you so much for saying I really appreciate you taking the time to read it. Also leaving a review. I saw that reviews. super helpful for me for sure. But yeah, you’re right. So the go giver, didn’t the go giver is great. I have it on the shelf there. And it’s a great book. But it’s maybe not rock and roll enough for the music producers. And although the principles and sort of the business principles, and the success strategies, as I like to call them are,
are great in any industry. And so what I wanted to do was write a quote unquote, a go giver style business parable for music producers that want to achieve success in the music industry, whether they’re whether, you know, music producers, beatmakers Studio engineers, make online mixing engineers, you know, whatever, really, because it is applicable, sort of across the board, because there are more strategies, broad term strategies, then really nitpicky tactics, right. So it’s written as an in a sort of a novel esque way. So it’s a narrative storyline, it’s written in third person, and you’re following the story of the protagonist, Casey, who is unhappy with his job, we really only see him in his job for like three pages or something because I make him big, I make him rage quit his job almost immediately, the beginning is he’s so tired of working for the marketing agency that’s doing anything for anybody and therefore doing everything pretty poorly.
And a lot of that stuff is based on just my knowledge of marketing, my knowledge, being a marketing strategist for hire, and just sort of understanding how also that sort of agency model worked. So he quits his job. And because and, you know, he went to technically went to audio school, but doesn’t realize that, you know, even with audio chops, use, still don’t know what you how you can get clients or how you can achieve success and how you can really, like make this a living. So he’s he quits his job and is basically at square one, but he has a bunch of equipment, you know, so he, he, the the job allowed him the privilege of buying gear, but who’s gonna use the gear when you don’t know how to get clients? Right. So he, you know, he tried, he throws everything at the wall to see what sticks. And he quickly realizes that when you are trying to be do anything for anybody, and you’ll take any, any deal available to you attract very low value, and low quality clients. So true. Oh my god, it’s crazy how true that is. And so we see this scene where he’s basically recording this band that does not appreciate him for what he is doing. And they also just, it’s basically a sort of an amalgamation of the nightmare band, you know, in the studio, that the drummer doesn’t know how to play to a click, the drummer doesn’t realize that he actually needs to be able to play
the the singer is an egomaniac with a drug.
But throughout those those stories, I also do talk a lot about sort of music production and engineering in general, like how to approach the session how to
sort of how to have
have the mindset of like, how to get good music going,
even if you have an awful band, and so he he fails at first, of course, and then he gets bummed out. But he quickly gets introduced to a mentor who is sort of a
music Turner, I guess I call him character sort of an entrepreneur is basically a very successful person. In the music industry. We see him having a very,
I would maybe rigid routine, almost sort of an other worldly success routine. Like he’s kind of very Zen but also very approachable and personal, but at the same time, you know, sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, but when I was when I was reading about the character, his name is Noah, when I kept reading him out, especially on his habits page, which I love that chapter on the habits.
He reminded me kind of I don’t know Billy Decker at all, but just from his interviews, he I got like, I got a billy Decker vibe from Noah when I was reading about him. Hmm, really? That’s That’s interesting. I don’t know enough about like I am yet I need to read his book. It’s come across my radar too many times not to check it out his new mixing template book, and I do use some of his plugins, the Joey Sturgis plugin. Yeah, I do those, Joey. I haven’t used any of those. But I’ve heard of them. I’ve seen clips of them. And they look oh, they’re fantastic. They’re great. They’re great. Yeah. So but he’s basically based on, you know, the sort of overall like, archetype of the mentor first. Yeah, you know, there’s a little bit of there’s a little bit of
Bob Iger who’s the CEO of Disney, and then there’s a little bit of Charles Schwab and there’s a little bit of Tim Ferriss in
my routine is sort of like are his routine is very much modeled after my routine in certain ways. Let’s dive in. Why don’t we kind of pick apart this chapter in the Yeah, this chapter right now because the the chapter and the success strategy is all about building healthy habits. And this is actually something that I’m currently going through right now. And I think just about everyone, regardless of even what industry you’re in, healthy habits are very important in having like almost a ritual esque type thing where you kind of do you know, these repetitive tasks that further you in a positive way are very, very significant. You know, it’s like one grain of sand at a time. It just builds up this massive thing.
What was your inspiration for that for that chapter? Because I really it it’s a perfect like the way you just break down his routine in the morning and this how this sets him up for his entire day. I’m curious like when did you realize that that your no habits did had this effect? And what I guess what is your your current routine? I’ll go over mine too. Yes, you’re done. Definitely. So I’ve had a morning routine if you if you will, for a very very long time.
And it’s all based on because I’ve been indoctrinated. indoctrinated by, you know, the Tim Ferriss cult, if you will,
of like, doing like I meditate so my basically my my ideal routine that I try to stick to is I get up and I do while I have to walk the dog. So I get a little bit of walking. Yeah, I meditate I read a page of
and I read the daily stoic page of the daily stoic by Ryan Holiday, which is great. So good. Is the enemy one of the best books. Oh, yeah, no, I yeah, he’s Ryan Holiday is definitely one of my favorite authors. And then I actually do read a page of and this is not a suggestion for anybody else really. But I do read a page of how Vermont everyday which is the words of Odin, and they’re in sort of Old Norse. So I
do that’s badass that talks about metal so I have a book that’s basically the words of Odin in high school in Iceland. You have to read how Amal in Old Norse and so I’ve always liked and a lot of Oden’s wisdom is basically don’t be an asshole be a good guest know how to throw a party. drink in moderation. Like don’t leave your sword at home.
Dude, I love those. I’m gonna have to pick up north star reading this. Yeah. So he has it has like the book I have now is is the English translations than the analysis and then it has Old Norse in the back to non basically I flipped through the Old Norse because the Old Norse is very close to Icelandic so I i understand some of the Old Norse words. And then I sort of refer to the English just to see how it all ties together. Yeah, so But all this to say I do a little bit
Bit of reading, so two pages of reading, and then I do 10 minutes of meditation, I do try to do some yoga or some stretching, and then I do running. And if I can some sort of exercise like that, some cardio, and then I try to write a little bit at the beginning, how much does your routine take up of your morning? I would say it’s probably about an hour and a half. Yeah, you know, this is actually something that I’ve been. So
I’ll wake up at 830. To work, I have to work starting exactly at 830. And so I’ll sleep until the very last minute. And I’ve been doing this for a while. And it wasn’t until just so I started doing this new goal setting for the entire year that I do with my girlfriend where we sit down for five minutes, it takes about two hours or so which I want to do this with my clients. But basically, you have these six different sections that are like it’s like health, finance, art of life,
charity, craft and career and there’s another one that I’m spacing on. But you spend five minutes writing down a paragraph in the past tense of what you achieve that year. And then once you go through all those, then you spend another about five minutes or so writing your action items to start those because goals are nothing unless you are and you have action items to actually do them. And so I like I’ve set up this new routine, like for the past three months, I’ve been meditating as well. I’ve been getting really into the meditation stuff, which I love.
And I just I took like a month break because of all this vacation stuff I was doing. I was too lazy to do it. But I started back up again. Have you heard of waking up by Sam Harris? Oh, yeah. Sam Harris, the 10% happier. Yeah, yeah. 10% change my life. It’s great. Dude, Sam Harris is a legend. His way waking up is fantastic. It’s as he says meditation app where he basically takes you through guided meditations. And he’s got this whole lesson system to it’s like 25 days, I think he takes you through how to meditate. And then after that you have daily meditations you can do where it’s still guided with him. I changed my life. I mean, meditation is, it’s fantastic. So
I’ve finally like realized, okay, well, I need to wake up earlier, because every time I like, I’ll wake up and I have to start at 830. And I’ll spend 30 minutes kind of going through my routine. And so finally I’m like, Alright, I got to go to bed earlier, I got to wake up earlier. And I’ve been doing that for a week now. And my routine is like, I’ll get up, I make my cup of coffee, I follow Chris Graham and Brian hood. They’re their coffee addictions with how they brew everything. I’m right there with them.
And so I’ll brew my coffee, I’ll feed the animals, I’ll take the dog out. Sometimes if it’s my day, my girlfriend, I can switch off and then I’ll meditate for 10 minutes, and then answer some emails. And I’m like, I do all that. And I’m like, shit, I still need another 30 minutes to like, do some extra stuff. So I think I have to wake up even earlier. But the point is, is you know, it might take an hour, an hour and a half out of your morning. But I’m doing that stuff to kind of it’s almost like me time preparing yourself for the day making sure that you’re taking care of before you start the big legwork and you know really dive into what you need to get done in.
Man, does it feel good to like, get a head start on the day almost, you know, wake up a little bit earlier, get in your routines that you need to do you get, especially with meditation stuff, I mean, that talk about like one grain of sand at a time. I mean, it takes forever to really find out like how you need to meditate and what it’s doing for you. And sometimes you don’t even see good results until two months later when you’re like, Oh, you know what, like, I’m much more calm. I’m not reacting to things as much. It’s, it’s amazing what that mindfulness can really do in the gratefulness. Yes, because you it’s sort of it manages it allows you to sort of see the, in the spaces in between the thoughts in a way and one of the weird benefits of meditation and sort of being able to think quicker in a way is I’m I’m getting really good at catching things that fall down show interesting. It’s like imagine if you’re like you’re rummaging around on the top shelf, and then because you’re rummaging it like pushes something else and like maybe you know like a bottle falls down or whatever. And but I can see that out of the corner of my eye and I know where it’s going and like I’m so clear in my head that I can just grab it on the way down just sort of like not not like going where I like it like Wayne Gretzky says like going where the pucks going to be. Yeah, as opposed to like trying to catch the bottle. Where was
I’m like, I’m quick enough on my feet now. And I, I attributed this to meditation. It’s the awareness man. It’s just being aware that because that’s essentially what you’re doing in meditation, you’re just aware of the different sounds around you have the thoughts going through your head of feeling. It’s just the awareness, the mindfulness of like, knowing kind of yourself and your surroundings. And so yeah, I mean, it kind of makes sense that you can kind of, you know, you get a sense of things that are going on around you, without even necessarily without paying attention, because that’s the point, you know, you’re not paying attention to any one thing, really, when you’re meditating. It’s all things around you. That’s funny, though.
Yeah, but the habit stuff. I mean, it’s going through his daily routine routine, I loved it, it was really, it was awesome to see kind of a breakdown of someone who’s successful for routine. And I mean, you look at anyone successful, and I guarantee they have a routine that they go, whether it’s exercise, and then they go and do writing, or they do reading. And then they just go through this list of things that they need to get done, so that they can take care of themselves, and then they can kick ass throughout the entire day. And I think it’s just, it’s not necessarily the routine, like, there is the routine, but there is no one routine, that’s better. Yeah, it’s having the routine because it’s ultimately about control. So if you’re in control, that’s what really matters. But if you’re not in control of what you’re supposed to be doing that day, from the very start of your day, you need to think you need to really be really look at what, like, what changes you need to make in your life. Because if you’re constantly reacting to other people’s agendas, instead of making your own and sticking to your own stuff.
Like you’re not gonna you’re not gonna have the clarity and the awareness to actually
have have the success that you want. Right? Well, the healthy habits, you know, if you’re not building healthy habits, it’s hard to really get anywhere. It’s, you know, if you want to be a great musician, it’s not like you can just play whatever instrument you’re playing or write any tracks once a month. And then that’s it. And like, just wait, I mean, if you want to be a musician, and a great one, you got to practice you have to have like, habits down where I’m practicing this hour, and then I’m going to write it this hour. And you got to do that consistently. It’s, you know, the the quantity will build up over time, and it just realized, Oh, shit, six months later, I’ve progressed significantly because of these good healthy habits. Yeah, and people don’t want to believe that I remember this meme where it’s I think it’s there’s somebody that’s gushing over a musician. And the gusher is basically like, Oh, my God, you’re so good at your instrument, like, it must, like you must have been born with it. And then the music is like it was practice. I mean, it must have just, it must be like in your finger. It was practice. I mean, it would have loved to be able to I’ll never be able to do that. Because I wasn’t born with this innate ability. It was practice. Oh, yeah. It’s so so rare that you find that I mean, it’s like, probably less than 1% that you find those people where it is almost natural. They’re just a freak of nature, where you’re like, Oh, Jesus, this took you two years to do this. And they just get it. And those freakin actors are out there. You may be one, but probably not. And I mean, even when I was when I was doing a lot of EDM production, in trying to be a big producer and DJ and whatnot.
I thought the same thing all the time. And it is almost like this victim mentality that people some people have where or even you could even say might be imposter syndrome, where they go, Oh, well, that person’s just where they’re at, because they’ve got something that I don’t have, you know, they’ve and they probably do and what it is, is the practice, or the time, the time they put in the time, like if you’re comparing yourself to somebody that that took five years to get to where they are and you expect to just like go through a wormhole five years into the future and have those things you’re pulling herself. You know, you have to put in the time you have to put in the the effort of learning and getting to it. Nobody hands you status you earn Yes. and respect. Same with respect in your industry. You gotta you know, you got to work for those kinds of things. What’s your favorite chapter of the book? I’m actually curious what it is.
Let’s see. Ah, oh, that’s a hard question to
answer, I think, well, to be fair, I like the imposter syndrome chapter a lot, because it’s sort of it sort of goes, but like, there’s a there’s a flashback, like halfway through it, where it’s just an Iceland. And so like that one was good. I really liked the first lunch.
Because it just is. It sort of sets the scene for everything sets a tone for sure. And then
I like like the epilogue
is a sort of more is the most novel esque of them all. I think it’s very much coming from me in a way like I have that or my dad actually does have that. Both gags record. Like that is a that is a personal memory of mine. Yeah. Damn. Yeah. So like that song is very, like close to me and is like that story is just autobiographical. Yeah, yeah, I love that the epilogue was a nice way of tying things up of kinda like almost a touch of looking into the future of what happened. And it was a nice tie up of the it was like, okay, sweet, the hero of the story got, you know, he got what he wanted. And it was very well tied up the imposter syndrome. One I love to that’s what I wrote part of my review on and I’m so obsessed with imposter syndrome, because it’s something that’s just not talked about enough. Everyone goes through it. And one of the biggest producers in my industry for electronic music, his name is Gareth Emery, a ton of I mean, everyone listening probably knows who he is. But he just posted he just made a post on I think it was Facebook or Instagram, where he’s, I think he’s releasing a new album. And this is the first time he’s ever saying and been recorded. Singing, he’s releasing a song He’s like, I’m fucking scared as shit. It’s like, this is one of I mean, the dude has written for the biggest artists. He’s been in the top 100 DJs. He’s, he’s made it. I mean, he’s extremely successful. And here’s a guy who’s like, probably dealing with crazy amounts of imposter syndrome. And it’s almost like when you’re at that level to the important imposter syndrome is even bigger, because like the pressures on you know, you’ve got a major audience that are they have these expectations, right. And that’s also it’s interesting, because a lot of times, people don’t succeed, because they’re actually afraid of success. They don’t know if they can handle that. Like, what if I do all these things, and it doesn’t work is one option. But like, what if I do all these things, and my life changes, and I might not like it, or I’m not ready for that, or things of that nature? Like that, that’s equally and that’s not necessarily something people actively aware of, are aware of in their thinking.
But it’s easier for them to be like, Oh, well, I’ll never succeed, you know, because it’s easier to be it’s easier to not try than to try and succeed and then be terrified of your success. It’s also easier, you know, that victim mentality as well, you know, if you see someone else and say, Well, again, like we were talking about earlier, they have something that I don’t, it’s easier to just say that and kind of dwell in it, rather than being like, Well, no, I have to actually fail in order to succeed. And so it’s going to be a lot of that before I see anything. Great coming out of this. I really, I really like that. Let’s talk about impact, because that was a major, major theme of the book. And it made me I you know, I really liked the way I count. What chapter was it in? I
think it was when he met up with who’s the second person I met up with at the group meeting.
So there it is. It’s when they were talking about positioning yourself. Like how to position yourself. Yeah, so like the one when the drummer or the Amy is with them? Or are they at the Japanese restaurant? The Yeah, I think it’s the Japanese restaurant, Japanese restaurant. Okay. Okay. Yeah, the Japanese restaurant is when they’re talking about sort of, what problem are you solving? And yes, how, like, that’s right. The band like a band playing a venue is solving a problem for the venue. They’re not like, they they’re not No, no musician is entitled to play live, they The reason venues and bars and, you know, people hire you to perform is that they have a problem that they’re hoping you can solve, like, in the case of a bar, or a venue, they’re, they’re hoping they draw you draw a crowd so that they can make money off the bar or hat or part of the ticket sales, or whatever. Unfortunately, musicians tend to not truly understand that. The industry is all working as a business except them sometimes. And they just want to be artists, which they should be, but they really need to have a slight business mentality when it comes to just understanding the other person’s point of view. like think about their sight, like why like why should we care about your music? in a way like how does how does your music or your fan base or your audience your platform? How does that help the band or the the other person the the your customer quote unquote, because as a touring band, like a venue is your customer. Your fans are your
Fans, your audience or your fans, they’re also caught your customers to a certain extent, because they pay tickets, and then by merchants, stuff like that, but there’s a, there’s a primary customer in the form of the venue, and then the secondary customer sort of in the form of the audience. And that’s really interesting, I’ve never thought about it that way is like the venue, being a customer of the artists. But that makes so much sense. It’s, it is true. And, you know, going into I’m so happy you mentioned it, because I mentioned it over and over again, it’s the reason for the podcast is for producers and artists to learn the business side of the industry. You know, it’s the stuff that the artists don’t want to learn that they need, you know, like you said, artists should be artists, they, they’re creating art, but there is a business side to this whole thing.
And that impact, you know, the whole impact theme of the entire book really struck me and the problem solving and positioning because it made me look at my business and go all the way you just put into words of how to position yourself and how to problem solve and really made sense. It kind of struck this light where I was like, okay, because, you know, like the six figure home studio podcast, Chris and Brian talk about that all the time, how important positioning is, and they explain it well. But I don’t think that you explained it in a different sense, where when you put the words on paper, for some reason, it just clicked me. I was like, okay, like I understood before, but now I really understand I’m like, really like analyzing my business, like, Am I positioning properly? How can I position for impact too, because that is what you’re selling? You know, whether or not you’re doing mixing, mastering recording, if you’re doing vocal editing, or if you are just a musician, I mean, the impact that you’re trying to make as a musician is all about the music you’re making. And how are you making an impact with that music? And how can you translate that you are making an impact with that music and I think when you’re looking at impact as artists or producers, it really comes across as you know, let’s say you are trying to get more fans and that’s you’re trying to make an impact with your fans. I think at that point, it’s all about the storytelling and how you can get them to relate to the message that you’re trying to send out to people. And that is I mean that do you do you have any experience with drawing that impact of like telling I mean, actually no, you definitely have some advice you could probably give for telling a story the right way because your email marketing brain when that listen to the two part email marketing series that I did. Everything I learned from is beyond even here, I might need to bring you on for another episode another day to talk about even more.
Dude, you’re a lead it is oh my lord Bjorkman is the is a beast at email marketing, your story, the way you talk about how you need to tell story, really, I had already written like, 20 emails that I had in a
queue or whatever for when people join. And I had to go through and rewrite every single one of them, because I was like, I’m not telling you a story in any of these. Yeah, so well, when it comes to impact, especially when it comes to fan base, like, I’d highly recommend people like that aren’t hip to Seth Godin to go check them out? him out, because what he talks about a lot is this term he calls enrollment. Like,
the only way to lead people is that if they have enrolled on the, in the journey with you, right, they’ve okay if they’ve like,
they’ve raised their hands and said, I’m in I believe where you’re going, I think that you can help me out. Right? So they’re enrolled in the journey of life, whether that is whether you’re helping them out with some, you know, practical stuff, or whether you just entertaining them with your music or your content or whatever. You have to, you have to sort of
relate to them in such a way that they they, they are happy to follow. Right? And telling your story is probably the easiest way to find the people that can relate to you. Because if you don’t tell your story, how on earth is anybody going to know how they can relate to you if they have no idea who you are, what you stand for? where you come from? What you like this? Like, you know what your pet peeves are? Like, there’s a reason you Pete we have friends is that they like the same stuff as we do. They understand you. They they kind of like they may think that like some of us are stupid, but they like you anyway. But yeah, you know, and because it’s the way that you are and you’re you personable and you’re like authentic as a term has been like driven into the ground too, too hard, but it’s just sharing, you know, being you in in such a way that is helpful to them. Don’t be you like completely like there’s a dark side or there’s an edge to where you don’t need to share your story because if it doesn’t benefit them in any way. If you’re just ranting or you’re bitching about stuff or
You are maybe too personal and and it has no real benefit to your your followers as as an audience that came to you for a specific reason I have failed at this multiple times, which is why I learned why I preach it because I’ve learned that the hard way. But always keep in mind, like, it’s always back and forth kinda like how we talked about the venue and the venue in the band is like, Why are Why are people on your lips? Why are they listening to you? What did they come to you for in the beginning? And how can you share your story in such a way that creates a connection for them to you, and also helps them out at the same time. Because I’ve been running audio issues for 10 years, and a lot of people come to me and it’s like, when they act either either actually meet me, or, you know, go on a zoom call or join me for one of the like, group coaching calls that I do as with my insiders, and they sometimes they say like, I feel like I know you so well, you know, and I’ve like never, like I’ve never talked to them before or like I may have like read their emails, reply to them via email. But because of the way I share my story, and because of the way that like, the first time you get on my email list, I share a very specific story. And like, I tried to sort of tackle my arc, while simultaneously showing them the techniques that they came there to learn. Like, I talked about my first few weeks as a live sound engineer
at the, at the old library as it was called.
And, and I talked about, and I tell that story of me being basically thrown into the deep end. But the the purpose of one of those blog posts is, that’s where I realized that 250 to 200 hertz is muddiness, because I I realized that on the knobs when I was like, working, working the live sound. So like, I give them the tip that is helpful to them. But I also share who I am what I stand for where I come from at the same time, without being you know, too long winded. But I’m also almost a predominantly a writer. So I like telling stories that sort of has become more natural to me, don’t don’t get me wrong, like I did not. Like I said it’s practice like I did not I was not a great writer to begin with. But when you write 500 words or so every day for 10 years, you end up knowing things to about syntax and grammar and storytelling. That’s fantastic. 500 words a day is crazy, especially when you look at like an entire year that’s just that’s that’s so so many damn words so much to tell. I love that but the story Yeah, the storytelling thing is so important. That’s You know, I’ve been I’ve preached to that’s another thing I preach very significant. I Okay, before I listen to you, and I first heard about you on the six figure home studio podcast.
I thought email marketing, it was bullshit. I was like, who’s doing even like, I don’t look at my emails. Who the hell’s you know, why would I do email marketing I listen to the day I listened to your episode in the six figure home studio, I went home, and I started a MailChimp account and I started writing emails, I was like, Alright, I’d like you. I’m fully converted. This is fantastic. And after I’ve ran my own email marketing list, and actually when I when I really listened to that episode, and I started rewriting my emails, I noticed immediately my open rate, like doubled in same with my click through rate, I was like, holy shit, there is something to that to this. And since then, I’ve been preaching to musicians and artists, like, if you’re not growing an email list, you’re leaving so much out on the table, especially if you know you start a new tour, if you’re going to be playing in a specific city, you can easily you know, tag those people in that email to just send to those people in a specific city. But then also be able to like the more we’re talking about here, but being able to like tell your story as musicians why you’re involved in music why you want to be involved with music that’s what people want to hear you know, they will they want to relate to the art and they can relate to it. If you’re gonna build super fans, especially with you know, I actually just did my the last episode that was released last week. I
did the entire episode on Have you heard of it? Have you heard the band The main? Yeah, love me. Dude, I love the main they’re from Tucson, aren’t they? No. Are they? They’re from Arizona. I don’t know if it’s Tucson by no they are from Arizona. But the main is dude, I’ve been listening to them since 2009. I seen them so many times. And I actually had a you know James Krause, right?
Not sure he’s he’s Brian’s assistant. Oh, yeah, yeah, right. Right. So um, I was on in I, we did a, like a meeting or whatever, cuz I think I’m going to start sending podcasts him to have edited. And he listened to the podcast and we got into my music history I mentioned the main He’s like, dude, I don’t know why you haven’t done an episode on the main, like, they’re so big in their content, like they’re still getting bigger and bigger every day and what like, seems like a dying genre. And I was like, that’s actually a really good point. And so I started looking through their feed, I was like, they’re very consistent with their posts. They’re still I mean, writing almost an album every single year, they’re growing their fan base like crazy. So I was like, Damn, this is actually, this is really interesting. So I did a whole analysis on the main. And one thing that I noticed is that they almost
very specifically write albums. I was like, Okay, well, and they’re promoting them for almost an entire year. So that right there, they have the content, and they have the stories in the album. And then they can continue to tell their story through the content that they’re posting with the album. Sounds like that is like genius. I mean, no wonder why their fan base continues to grow on and they’ve created superfans, people who are like, they have I mean, it’s one of the reasons why I am still listening to them today is because I had, I mean, I was going through a lot when I was a teenager when I was younger. And all I was doing was listening to the main and they have a bunch of like breakup songs and stuff. And so I’ll go back and listen to those and remember like that time and how much more simple really was I didn’t realize it at the time. But like I I almost remember these personal stories in mind through the stories that they tell of their own music. And again, it’s create a superfan I’ve, I’ve shared their music with a bunch of people I’ve listened to so many of their albums, I bought albums, I bought merge. So they’ve you know, if you look at the then you can almost start to look at the lifetime value of a customer through that as a fan, which is great data to know if you’re trying to be a full time musician, but that one thing the album’s compared to like releasing singles, this is something I mentioned, like singles are great. They’re not bad. But there’s not a you know, there’s not a deeper story that you can usually tell where as, as you can with like an album and album, there’s 1015 songs that you’re writing an entire story through that each band member can write a story about, like there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of nuance there. And there’s a lot to be said definitely. Yeah, so like, the whole single versus album promotions thing is, is interesting because I I truly like albums. And I looked up the main here and like the so I had a 21 year old assistant a couple of years ago, and she turned me on to the main. And I think that band was like my top favorite band on Spotify wrapped that year or whatever, just like very much like the sort of music I listened to when I was like in my 20s. And still do but not as much as I did.
When I was in the band that sounded like similar to that. But when it comes to like the album’s versus singles, especially when you’re doing everything as an indie artist, like it’s easy to do it. And a lot of my audience are like, working on their own music. And they’re doing everything themselves. And at that point, I was recommended, like do a single because it’s like less work to do one single, and you can just release a single and then you talk about that. And you always have and then you maybe release another song, four to eight weeks later, and then always have something new to talk about. Until you get into this groove of like that being normal for you this cycle of like writing, recording, mixing, releasing, writing, recording, mixing, releasing, promoting, you know, and then you might want to do a bigger body of work, right? And but the end the album, and you can also do the album,
like later or first and then you just it’s really about the promotional part. Because you’re Yes, you release an album. And you’re constantly promoting the album every time like every month for like a year that can get tiring. But you have to think about my one of the one of the mentors that I learned from remits at safety, he talks about the prism strategy, which is basically you know, like the, you know, the dark side of the moon cover, you get a light and then through a prism, it has all these different colors. So right. So a one album, although it’s one thing, how many stories are in that album, right? Like the stories of the recording the stories of each individual songs, the stories of the artwork, the stories of like, any bar, basically anything that happened during the creation process, right? And you write that down, you talk about it, and you do
You just come up with a list. And then those are those. That’s your promotional content. Because it’s not marketing in the annoying brand marketing, like spamming or email where Hey, check out this new album, it was released last week. And this is their third post saying that same thing, or like brands that are just plain boring, and they have nothing to say. And
that’s why email, I think that’s why email marketing and marketing in general just gets a lot of flack because it’s done very poorly, most of the time, because big companies just pile money into advertising. And they don’t think about at the end of the day,
there’s an individual on the other side with a credit card. And have you connected with that individual. And as an independent artist, your audience is going to be smaller than Coca Cola or Jesus. Right? And which is good, because it enables you to be flexible and have those sort of almost individual conversations. Yeah. And people like being a part of the you know, almost, I’ve talked about this religiously to have you read contagious, I think it’s by I think it’s Jonah Berger.
It’s great, such a good book. But it takes talks, he talks about how to make viral content, like why content goes viral. And there’s this social currency aspect of if you’re a part of this, like secret group. You know, if you’re a part if you know a musician before they blow up, right, all you talk about after they blow up is Oh, I knew them before they blew up, you know, the hipster stuff that people always say. So people like being a part of, you know, something that’s unique and different. And not everyone knows about because they can go and tell their friends about it. And they introduce them to and be like, see, I know good stuff. I’m, you know, it’s the kind of egotistical stuff of people, but yeah, you know, one.
It’s, it’s funny, you bring it up like, you knew somebody before they blew up or whatever. Do you know of monsters and men? Yes. Mm hmm. So they
love telling the story just because it’s funny. Especially because Iceland just tiny, right? Yeah, super small spot. So that music venue, I used to work at a live sound engineer, there was this,
there was a band called Cliff klavan. And if I didn’t really know this at the time, because I wasn’t a cheers fan. But Cliff klavan is like the guy at the end of the bar
in tears, but they played stoner rock, so like Queens of the Stone, age style, rock, really cool band. But then the drummer went on to become the drummer and of monsters and men. Shit an automatic, like, it’s like a great guy. I did the live sound for him multiple times we hung out. And because it’s just a tiny community, but whenever I see him on, you know, on a video or whatever, I’m just like laughing because it’s just, it’s it’s like seeing you’re seeing somebody become something much bigger than what you knew them as, and you are so happy for them at the same time. Yeah, that’s like this. There’s this guy. His name is Kai watchi. He’s huge. Now in our scene, I mean, playing all the major festivals, but he grew up where I grew up. He’s two years older than me. And I’ve hung out with him a couple of times. And I remember at we, for the first we met each other for, for the first time walking by each other at Music Festival, because we had chatted online and stuff. And he was like, on this very clear path where everyone kind of knew, we’re like, oh, this guy is going to be huge. I mean, it’s just he connected with the right people at the right record label who was blowing people up. And it was such a tight knit group. And you’re like, Oh, yeah, I mean, he’s set in stone.
And, you know, three years later, four years later, he’s playing the biggest festivals has his own tour that he’s headlining has hundreds of 1000s of fans now and just makes a living making music all the time. So yeah, it’s the same thing where it’s like, oh, yeah, it’s, I’m talking to this guy who I know is going to be huge. We’re hanging out for a couple of hours, one on one, getting to know him a little bit more. And then we never really talked much after that. But then just seeing like, it’s just seeing someone’s name in lights that you know, you’re like, Jesus. That’s fucking crazy. That’s insane. Yeah. If you I don’t know if you’ve seen there’s a for the song wild roses off the fever dream album, there’s a video monster, the men and it all happens in this indoor swimming pool. And that’s one of the weird things about just how small Iceland is. Like, that’s the swimming pool. I took swimming lessons in school for almost seven years. Shit. Yeah, dude.
We’ll talk about you talking about telling a story. I’m sure. Like people from Iceland are probably like, yeah, we fucking know these people. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We grew up with that. Yeah, there Yeah, definitely. Like that.
It’s because, well, there’s no Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and Iceland. It’s more like one bacon or too big.
It’s crazy. I’m curious. What are so what do you do specifically to kind of draw some impact for your like, What? How are you making an impact with your clients? And what would you suggest to people who are trying to figure out how to make an impact? Obviously, get the book because the book does a great explanation of that. But in your own words, I mean, I guess the book is, in your own words, but what would you say in this interview setting? Well, so I would? Yeah, well, let’s let me say that. So basically, audio issues, sort of encompasses a lot of the stuff that I talk about in the book, like I am, audio is not for everyone, it is for a very specific type of person, home studio, musicians, bedroom producers, they want to learn the technical skills of mixing and all those sort of production skills, and gain the confidence to be proud to release their, their records. So what I usually might sort of, quote unquote, tagline often is, I help you confidently finish your mixes, so you can be proud to release your record. And so I’m working at sort of the top if you know that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I’m working out the top, I am trying to foster a sense of confidence, so that you can self actualize as an artist, so that you can take that final step, and release your music because that music deserves to be out there and be heard by other people, because I’ve heard it and it’s amazing, you know, like, people send me their songs that they’re working on all the time. And I can sometimes go like, Well, I mean, the low end is a little muddy, or whatever. And the vocals are a little harsh, or it can be louder, like, those are all just technical issues that are super easy to solve. But what I want to help you solve for yourself as my audience, when I say you, is I want you to be confident in like, yeah, this song is good enough, it deserves to be released. And I should put this out as a beginning of my body of work. And I do a lot of that. But the biggest impact I probably have is with my insiders, members, because it’s all about that it’s all about helping them get feedback on their productions, so that they can improve their mixes to the point where they just released their music, because there’s a group of their peers, we have feedback Friday, every other week where people bring their mixes or their works in progress. And we just workshop them until nobody has any further feedback. And at that point, it’s like, it’s time to be released. And you wouldn’t believe how many people are scared that their, that their music isn’t good enough. When you when you play it and you’re like, Damn, I wish I could make this. You know. And, and that’s a lot of lot of the things that I do now, like most recently, is just through sort of this group coaching and making sure that they are confident in releasing what they have to offer, musically to the world. Because I think that if you look back on your life, and you didn’t release those records, aren’t you going to regret that?
You know, and I think you should like it. And it’s the same with the books because I’m more prominently a writer, and sort of a
producer, coach, than a musician, songwriter in any way. I’ve been in bands and release records and stuff like that. But I have the same I had the same sort of imposter syndrome and worry that you get what you give wasn’t good enough. Because I was like, Who is? Is anybody gonna like this? Like,
does this matter? Like, who am I just fooling myself that this somebody would care enough to read read this. But obviously, it was wrong, because I sold a lot of copies in the first week. Everybody was very,
like, everybody loved it, I got a lot of really great reviews, I’m very happy to have
to, you know, taking that step. And like I say in the introduction, it’s kind of ironic that I have this aversion to releasing this body of work, when my entire business model is, or my entire sort of impact model in a way is making other artists feel confident enough to release their own work. And it goes to like, my dad used to say this all the time. And and then I realized that it’s sort of, you know, it’s attributed as a quote to Mark Twain of like, you know, you paraphrase, I’m paraphrasing, but basically, you will regret the things that you didn’t do.
More than they did. Right? Within reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When it comes to creative, creative work and sort of,
you know, feeling like,
like feel scared to put yourself out there like that, that actually is an indicator of, of you might be going in the right direction. Like you said like that, well, he goes the enemy obstacles the way that is where you should be going. I just read Marie Forleo his book, everything is bigger audible. And she has.
I can’t remember she created a bunch of acronyms for fear that like meant something else. I have to look it up, I’ll send it to you or whatever I’m putting, yeah, I’m putting that in my book list. Yeah, definitely read that. I finished that one, just like,
very fast, it was very easily readable and a lot of fun, very inspirational. So definitely check that out. But, like, fears, basically telling you that you may be going in the right direction. Because if you are scared, you are pushing the envelope of your comfort zone. Yeah, the comfort zone thing, getting out of your comfort zone is so important. You know, I actually just started doing jujitsu, November night, there was so many I mean, I’ve been wanting to start Jiu Jitsu for years. And I haven’t done it because it’s like, I, I don’t want to be put in that weird position where I don’t know where I’m doing. And I’m embarrassed because I don’t know what I’m doing. And I want people to make fun of me. And that is so far from what happens when you go to jujitsu, like, at least depends on what gym you go to. But the gym I go to everyone was, so people were walking up introducing themselves to me, showing me some stuff helping me. And now like, I’m obsessed, and I love it. And still, they’re still this kind of, I’m still getting over this mental fee of wanting to go because I am still so new, and I still don’t know stuff. And it is I haven’t met every everyone. So it’s almost nervous when we had to pick a partner and work with them. Are they gonna, you know, are they going to make fun of me because I’m not doing things right, when it’s just bullshit in my head. That’s not true. You know, it’s all about what imposter syndrome is. But it’s helped me grow as person. And that’s what’s important there is, and you’re totally right, you know, getting that fear. And that nervousness, those butterflies in your stomach, are a great indicator of depending on what you’re doing is probably the right choice to make and do something you need to just push through. So you can mentally get there, you know, you can become a little bit more comfortable with it and, and get an experience that you probably wouldn’t get otherwise.
And you could tell great stories through those two. I mean, going right into what we’re talking about marketing, you know, that’s Yeah, I mean, sharing your failures, sharing your wins, sharing your lessons, these are all if you if you decide to change your perspective, and think about marketing and storytelling, it just becomes what story do you want to tell? And how do you think that story can help? enlighten, inspire, inform,
educate and entertain other people? Like, that’s all you need to do? Just get that, put that out there in whatever shape you like, putting it out there, you seem like your thing is a podcast, my thing is more or less a blog, I do YouTube videos, too. But it’s
just if you’re good at writing, right? If you’re good at making videos, make videos, if you’re good at talking, make a podcast. Like Don’t, don’t let any of that stuff stop you.
If you if you’re wondering about, like, if you’re deciding between a bunch of different things, and you don’t know which one to start with. The worst choice is nothing, you know, so choose one, it doesn’t matter. Just pick one, if you don’t like doing that after a few weeks, then pick the other one if that, like riles you up and get you going and stick with it. But the inaction is, you know,
the worst thing. Yeah, the cliche is it’s you know, an object at rest stays at rest. Not doing anything at all is ultimate failure. That is true failure, you know, doing something, and then I do a whole episode on this. I think it’s called stop failing and start succeeding. And I talked about how, you know, failure is more so this learning aspect, it’s not really failing. You know, when you talk about failing, failing is ultimately not doing it, you know, not doing the thing that you could try out, you know, if you don’t try it out, you don’t know if you’re gonna like it, you’re really failing it at that point. Now, if you do something and you fuck up, or you mess up and you quote, unquote, fail, like what people say you say, and you learn something from that and grow from it, then you’re not really failing. At that point. You really are succeeding, you took a great lesson from that you changed your mindset or change the way you’re doing something. And now you’re getting into that, you know, like we good habits and the successful mindset of moving forward and taking what you learned and applying that to life.
Yeah, it’s about like,
yeah, you know, you’re you’re sorry. It’s just the learning learning process like and I think of, especially entrepreneurship, and especially when it comes to so advertising is obviously a subset of marketing. I look at app because I run a lot of ads. And that becomes almost more scientific, when it comes to failure. Because when your ads don’t perform, you know it from the numbers, it becomes a scientific experiment. But you can think of anything as an experiment, like, what happens, like what’s the engagement? Or what’s the reaction? I get? If I talk about this? Do I get replies to my emails? Do I get people to click through, just look at that, look at the behavior of the people that you’re talking to, to gauge whether things are succeeding are people that’s using specific words to even you know, if you change the way you phrase, a word that in and of itself can change the way someone you know whether they actually started? So I used to going right into what you’re talking about, with my emails, and my subject line, I used to just put exactly what I’m writing about, like very, in very plain words, like letters, just the title, like how to use a compressor. And then I stopped doing that, and I don’t remember if it was based off of a recommendation you’ve made somewhere I, I would imagine, it probably was, I can’t remember. But I started to change the way I created subject lines in like, making it more practical and talking about like asking a question, or putting it more in a phrase or statement of like, have you ever done this? Well, do you wanna do this or something, you know, making it not so much about like this very technical title, but instead making it about
how, like, if someone Are you having this issue is that significantly increase my open rate. And I was like, Jesus, that one little change, it’s very, something very simple that I realized, that was all through, you know, again, testing things out, I have this title here, that wasn’t that great. And then I change the title, and all of a sudden, boom, the open rate went up. So and as a DIY artists, regardless of the type of art you’re doing, you’re trying to create a platform, promote yourself, you are a marketer, and some of the time whether you like it or not.
And if you don’t want to be the only other way to, to not be is to hire it out. But if you’re a DIY er that doesn’t have the money to do so you’re stuck being a marketer. I don’t have to live with that. But one of the biggest skills you can learn as a marketer to help your storytelling to help your email open rates to help your message spread further is just learn copywriting skills, the writing good copy.
Because writing good copy is not just about writing ads that sell people on snake oil, right. And that’s, that’s the thing that people hate about copywriting. It’s like, Oh, it’s just this, you know, it’s this this bullshit product or whatever. But whereas, actually, that product might actually have helped a ton of people in general, but you as a marketer, musician, or what music producer, if you want to learn a skill that will help you improve your storytelling abilities.
Read copywriting read books on how to write copy better, because you can keep the story the same, you can keep the body of your message, the absolute same as an IF but if change, like the subject lines, the headlines, and maybe the calls to action, and just slightly tweak a few things, you’re gonna see the engagement with your audience skyrockets, and I totally agree, dude, well, I think that might be it. Is there anything else you want to discuss? I think we kind of we hit on all the points there. Yeah, I think I mean, that was a lot. I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I obviously keep talking forever about any of these things. But
just I’ll tell I’ll tell the audience that if they want to know anything more, just keep it keep asking questions. Check, check out the book, you get what you give book.com and I’d be happy to come on talk about anything that we missed in the future. If you wanted to have something about email marketing or copywriting I’d be happy to do that. And yeah, so feel free to drop me a line at at audio issues just go to audio issues.com you can subscribe to the email list there if you want. The the other books step by step mixing is helpful if you are wanting to learn mixing techniques in general. And yeah, but otherwise, otherwise I hope people listening found it useful. And I hope they check out the book if they have time to read
and Oh, they they better I hammer into my audience and like you guys gotta read read read I’m actually putting together I’m finally putting together my book list for this show that I’m going to post on the on my website, but
If all the links will be on my on my website Envious audio.com slash Episode 47 this is going to be the 47th episode actually coming out on my birthday on February 19.
Super exciting but uh, yeah, I’ll have all the links for both your books your website on all the on that page on my website, you guys can go check out as well. Yeah, links to the books obviously definitely get you get what you give. I mean it is I’m probably going to trade in I was telling you this I’m probably going to trade in the go giver for this book from now on. Because it’s very, it’s niche. It’s, I mean, very, very much so the you know, similar principles from the go giver success strategies and I there every every chapter, I was like, I know he’s gonna talk about and Yep, it’s totally true. So it was just it was really fantastic. But I do like your vision yet. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate you coming on. This was awesome. And you’re I’m definitely gonna hit you up. We’re gonna bring you on for some email marketing, copyright stuff, because I think that’ll be fun. A lot of fun, ya know? happy to do so. And thanks for having me. Of course take care, man. All right. Hey, guys, thank you for checking out this episode with the Oregon This one was a ton of fun. I’ve been waiting to get him on. So super happy that we got to sit down and talk a little bit about his book, you get what you give. I will have all of the links to his books. Especially you get what you give, which I strongly recommend that all of you guys go read on Envious audio.com slash Episode 47. Go check that out, grab a copy of his book, if you would like to check out the book list that I have created for all the books that I’m currently reading. The ones I’ve recommended on the show, and ones that I am going to be recommending on the show in the future had to Envious audio.com slash book list, you can check that out, grab some books off of Amazon that is an affiliate link to so if you want to support the show, that’s one of the best ways you can do it. Otherwise, go ahead and share this with a friend. Let them know if you think this episode would help them out. Other than that, I’ll see you guys next time. Take care