292. Building Your Company & Career

In Episode 292, the hosts turn to a question from the Signal to Noise Discord community and take a trip to Signal to Noise University, where professor Sean treats Andy and the listeners to Marketing 101 with a look at how to make yourself indispensable to clients. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Whether you’re a small to medium-sized sound provider looking for new business, a freelancer seeking for work from one of those providers, or you’re doing (or trying to do) weddings, corporate events, and concerts — or a mix of all those and more — Sean provides some great advice based on his experience in building his own successful sound company.

Episode Links:
Audio Engineers Northwest
Episode 292 Transcript

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The Signal To Noise Podcast on ProSoundWeb is co-hosted by pro audio veterans Andy Leviss and Sean Walker.

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Transcript

Episode 292 - Marketing for Freelancers and Small Production Companies

Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!

Voiceover: You’re listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb podcast network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:

Allen & Heath, whose new dLive RackUltra FX upgrade levels up your console with 8 next-generation FX racks – putting powerful tools like vocal tuning, harmonizing, and amp simulation right at your fingertips. Learn more at allen-heath.com

RCF and TT+ AUDIO.... Delivering premium audio solutions designed for tour sound and music professionals for over 75 years. Visit RCF at RCF-USA.com to keep up with the latest news and product information.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green

[00:00:53] Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and with me is always the mick to my double Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean?

[00:01:03] Sean Walker: What's up dude?

[00:01:04] Andy Leviss: I mean, that would be much, that would be much more offensive if you were like heavily Irish than I couldn't have said that, but

[00:01:11] Sean Walker: I mean, you know I am you son of a bitch.

[00:01:17] Andy Leviss: You, you darn Mick. No.

[00:01:18] Sean Walker: Yeah. Oh, come on. Easy. Easy, killer. Easy. Come on, dude.

[00:01:22] Andy Leviss: Um, what's, what's going on?

[00:01:25] Sean Walker: You know the usual man. Paperwork companies, shows. We're we're.

[00:01:29] Andy Leviss: I feel like I haven't seen you in a bit 'cause like last, last time I was just hanging with Cody without you,

[00:01:34] Sean Walker: Yep. Totally, totally

[00:01:36] Andy Leviss: and we, we went way off the, off the rails on like a dad tangent at the top of the episode, but that was fun talking about like, snot suckers and ear, ear rinsers and, and,

[00:01:46] Sean Walker: my gosh.

[00:01:47] Andy Leviss: drops.

Yeah, we got back on topic though. Lots of cool RF stuff.

[00:01:50] Sean Walker: All right. Sweet.

[00:01:52] Andy Leviss: Yeah. So, uh, yeah, no, you should go back and listen if you haven't yet. He's like, Nope, it was my week off. I don't listen.

[00:02:00] Sean Walker: I mean, candidly, I, I don't listen. Like who wants to listen themselves, dude, that's, you know, come on.

[00:02:06] Andy Leviss: Yeah. That, that's why I got stuck editing all of them.

[00:02:09] Sean Walker: That's right. Yeah. I already, I already went, I already went through the experience once. I don't need it twice. I,

[00:02:13] Andy Leviss: Um, yeah. Yeah. And no, we're record. I, you know, I was about to say, if anybody's gonna be at Jazz Fest in New Orleans this weekend to reach out and say, Hey, but by the time people hear this, I'll actually be back in New York.

[00:02:25] Sean Walker: oh yeah.

[00:02:26] Andy Leviss: yeah, hopping on, hopping on an airplane to New Orleans early tomorrow morning for a quick in and out, although scheduled it, so I get like most of tomorrow to myself in New Orleans, and I'm not leaving until, like, I don't, my flight isn't until like 6:55 PM on Monday.

So I've got a good chunk of Monday.

[00:02:42] Sean Walker: That's awesome, dude. Dude, that'll be a fun gig, dude. That'll be super sweet.

[00:02:45] Andy Leviss: yeah. It'll be cool. I mean, I've, I've never been to Jazz Fest and it's supposed to be awesome. So.

[00:02:49] Sean Walker: and is. Are any of the homies that live down there going, do you know other people that are gonna be there or are you

[00:02:54] Andy Leviss: I, he, I don't, he's not gonna be there, but I'm, I'm gonna catch up with Medders at some point.

[00:02:58] Sean Walker: All right. Sick,

[00:02:59] Andy Leviss: Yeah, we've been, we've been texting. Um, yeah, so I catch up with him. I gotta see who else is around. Um, but yeah, and like some other cool acts I'm gonna try and see, and I'm just hopping in for a quick little one of the acts, it's like, been on tour and doing large shows, is coming out with their comm rig and needed a Riedel cover, uh, who was US based, so,

[00:03:18] Sean Walker: sweet. There you are. Calm

[00:03:21] Andy Leviss: it was, yeah, and it was solidly one of those, like there's a Riedel group on Facebook and the guy who, you know, runs their rig posted, Hey, I need somebody who's free this weekend in New York, uh, if anybody's interested. And I reached out and here we are. And, uh, yeah, and, and it was sort of like, I guess it was sort of reverse marketing at that point.

[00:03:40] Sean Walker: All right. All right.

[00:03:41] Andy Leviss: But, uh, on, on that. Yeah. Right. Um, but on, on that subject, that, that was actually what we wanted to, I figured we'd kind of do a, we'll call it one of our like, Signal to Noise University. See, we should have branded it that way sooner. Like all these like little like crash course deep dives. We could have called it Signal Noise University.

It could be a whole like miniseries thing we do. Why didn't I think of that till

[00:04:02] Sean Walker: All right. Yeah. You son of a bitch. What? You fucked up

[00:04:06] Andy Leviss: I mean, I can't, I can't do everything, Sean.

[00:04:09] Sean Walker: dude, I rely on you for these things. Okay? You're the smart one, Andy. God.

[00:04:14] Andy Leviss: Well, see, that's, that's, that's the funny thing. 'cause what I want to talk about today is one of the subjects that you're the smart one on.

[00:04:21] Sean Walker: Oh, easy, killer. I'm about low expectations, easy

[00:04:25] Andy Leviss: but, uh, no, we had, there was a question that came up.

Um, it was, uh, Carlos Alfaro on the Discord, uh, uh, popped in like a couple weeks ago and pinged you specifically and like Evan and a few other folks, and, and Carlos said was, do you guys have advice on how to generate leads? I wanna be intentional and start marketing our services as a production provider.

And Sean, in typical Sean fashion, wrote like an epic novel answer that was fucking awesome on it. He then got caught up in the heavy handed automatic moderation pots on the server that was like, yo, dude, chill, chill the profanity down a little bit, which, uh, we should probably figure out where to

[00:05:04] Sean Walker: Yeah. What the fuck?

[00:05:06] Andy Leviss: it's, it's a def, it's a discord default, man. I don't know. Um, and so Sean had to go back and edit the whole thing and post it again. So, but I, as I read it, I was like, oh shit, this should be an episode.

[00:05:20] Sean Walker: the but does know we're in production, right? Like it does know we do concerts for a living, right?

[00:05:26] Andy Leviss: I am trying to remember, there was a while ago, there was a while ago that I, I think it was Chris Leonard actually posted like a job post for like some gig he was looking at in the city that was listed in. It had like something that was like vaguely like, sounded like profanity, but it was the name of the city.

But like the bot was like, Nope, you can't post that. And he was like, what's going

[00:05:47] Sean Walker: oh my God.

[00:05:49] Andy Leviss: to go back and like look at what got rejected. And once I realized it was like, I was like, the name of the city tripped the auto mod.

[00:05:56] Sean Walker: I mean, to be fair, mine was solidly in the string of four letter words. Like, you know, the, it, it wasn't, there was no, like, what? I wonder what tripped the auto mind. It was like, what in the fuck didn't trip the auto mod?

[00:06:11] Andy Leviss: That said it was both useful information and I figured we could do the uncensored, unrehearsed version here. So

[00:06:19] Sean Walker: cool man.

[00:06:19] Andy Leviss: don't we start there and see where we go. And then I know, you know, when I mentioned to you that we want, I want, I thought we should do an episode on marketing. You said like, well, as a, as a business or as a freelancer.

And in typical me fashion, my answer was like, yes.

[00:06:31] Sean Walker: Yeah. Right. Thanks. Thanks for that

[00:06:33] Andy Leviss: So, but I figure we'll start with like, Carlos's question was clearly from like the provider business side of it. So let's start there and see where we go. And if, if we have time to branch into like marketing yourself as a freelancer, we can dig into that too.

And if not, we'll stick a pin in that one for a future episode.

[00:06:48] Sean Walker: Okay, cool. Well then I will, I will start rambling and I'm going to assume that we are talking about small to medium size sound companies, right? I'm gonna assume the Claire's and solo techs of the world have got this figured out, and they don't need me to tell them how

[00:07:07] Andy Leviss: I was gonna say, as, as you get, as you get large, you've, you've gotten large somehow. Either that or you've inherited a ton of money

[00:07:13] Sean Walker: they already know what they're doing. So everybody who, who works for the Claire brands can just, you know, nod and smile and go, yeah, yeah, yeah. We already already got this. So this isn't for you guys, right? This is for the, like, just starting out, or they've got a, you know, the, the companies. That are sub $1 million a year of gross income.

Right? So a lot of, a lot of small sound, small medium sound companies, right? The first thing that I would say, and, and, and I did when Carlos asked is, who is your ideal client? Right? Who is this person or entity that you are trying to market to? 'cause the, you know, they're trying to get more customers, like, what is your customer?

So is your customer concert promoters, wedding planners? Like, what, what are you, what are we talking about here? You know what I mean? Because you're gonna speak to them very differently and you're gonna offer very different services, right? If you are speaking to concert promoters, they're gonna have a little bit, they're gonna be a little hipper to what gear, what people are asking for, what they're used to seeing, the way things are kind of laid out and, and not that they're.

This is how it's gonna be. But like, you know, they, they've seen wineries before, they've seen substack, they know what's up. And that's gonna be different than if you're talking to, let's say a wedding planner. 'cause you're like, Hey man, if you're a small sound provider, you can print piles of money providing sleek little packages for wedding bands of what?

[00:08:48] Andy Leviss: Of white speakers.

[00:08:49] Sean Walker: Oh yeah, dude, for little wedding bands, right? Like, like that's, that's where things like the RCF, NXL 24 or El Acoustic Siva absolutely shine, right? Where you got this slick little package that's beautiful to look at either in black, white, or what does the Brown Row that come in? Anyway, I don't know what the color is, but you know what I mean?

Like, those are intentional, right? So if you're like, Hey man, wedding bands are my jam. Or across the pond, do they call them function bands because man, I'm, I'm America as fuck. I don't know what, I don't know what to call 'em across the pond, but I think they call 'em function bands, right?

[00:09:22] Andy Leviss: sounds right, and if not, we'll, we'll get, we'll get dragged on on the discord.

[00:09:26] Sean Walker: Oh, come on man. They're gonna, they're gonna lamb base me for it anyway, dude, I, we had some something called a bog roll the other day. I was like, I dunno what the fuck that is, man? And they were like, you're so dumb. I was like, I know, man. I said I was sorry. I just don't know what it is,

[00:09:37] Andy Leviss: I was like, I thought it was what my gamer friends smoked in college, but apparently it turns out it's what those weirdos over there called toilet paper,

[00:09:45] Sean Walker: right. Totally.

[00:09:46] Andy Leviss: once I know I can follow the thread back to how they got

[00:09:49] Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Like, okay, I get it now. It makes sense. But anyway, you're gonna speak to those people very differently. Right. To back, back on topic. So the wedding planners, they don't give one flying hoot about the manufacturer in the box. They don't, there's not a writer, there's nothing about it.

You can choose every bit of the kit that you've got for this and you can choose it specifically for this task. Right? So

[00:10:13] Andy Leviss: but like, I'm not gonna see the speakers right.

[00:10:16] Sean Walker: correct. Yeah. Yeah. Never they, they disappear. It just shows up outta the ether. Uh, so like. You're not like, Hey man, I've got this speakers and this console and this wireless and blah, blah blah, blah.

You're like, yes, I can do sound for the band that you hired. Yes, it will be, you know, it'll disappear or it'll, it'll sound great and it'll look great and it'll fit within your budget and you're winning, right? Like those are the talking points. They're talking about also point, they call it av. They have no idea that audio, video and lighting are different departments and different companies and different skill sets.

So you're just gonna talk about av. You're also almost certainly going to be required to bring a lighting rig, park, hands on trees, some something cute, little stick of trust with some fricking something on it. 'cause they're probably not hiring an outside lighting vendor. So you are the A VL vendor of this whole thing, right?

Maybe they've got uplights from somebody else, but like you're gonna do this. We've done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these kinds of shows. Uh. When we were first starting out, when we were a 80 beat low sound company and I basically had a business license so that they had something to write a check to rather than me personally.

Right. Um, and it's, if you're talking about being a one person army or a two person army or whatever, depending on how the scale of it, it is an excellent, excellent way to make a lot of money in the summertime here. 'cause you can get here in the Pacific Northwest, I'm sure it's similar in Southern California, probably in New York and probably in any of the coasts here, right?

You can get two to 4,000 bucks a day for a little audio package and some people in a truck that does a good job. 20 to 50 shows a year. So if you're just like me, my sprinter and my best buddy are going to work. You guys can make a pile of money with some, like I, I would do NXL 20 fours, 8,000, whatever those things are.

Threes maybe, or X eighteens whatever, like single sub, single top powered. The little column things that are cute with enough huts. Put it into a band a little like sq five some ears, couple channels of wireless. Make it slick in a rack, can move it on with your life. And you just get like two to four grand a day depending on how good you're at sales for this little package that you just roll around and listen to.

Mediocres cover bands. Some of 'em are actually pres smoking. To be honest, we, we ran into a couple cover bands where I was like, holy shit, you guys are awesome. Like, yeah, yeah. We're basically rock stars from other bands that come make our money and doing this, which is kind of a treat, but a lot of 'em are, you know, average as bands, but it's, you know, it's a fricking gig.

And knowing the timing of that and knowing like when different things happen. Boom. You can make some add-ons so that you're like, Hey man, we can do the ceremony, the reception, which is the band we're talking about, right? We can do the after party if there's gonna be a dj, you know what I mean? If there's gonna be a, um, oh my God, it's been so long.

Step down. I want, I forget the middle. What's the middle one? Cocktail hour, right? You think be like, maybe there's like a jazz trio at cocktail hour or something. So you can have multiple setups and you can, you can make a fricking pile of money. Dude. Each of those setups should be another another thousand bucks, basically.

You know what I mean? So you got like, let's say on the low side, you got two grand for this reception, which is the band thing. We just described. Another basically 500 ish or a thousand for cocktail hour and another thousand for the ceremony. You know, you're talking about like 4, 5, 6, depending where you're at, grand for the day.

It's a pile of money. I see Andy churning right now. He's like, oh man, I just became a sound company,

[00:14:01] Andy Leviss: No,

[00:14:05] Sean Walker: but.

[00:14:06] Andy Leviss: but pre presupposing that I was, Sean, you were mentioning like providing like uplights and stuff. So am I going out and buying a pile of uplights and all that sort of

[00:14:13] Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, totally. Because you get like 50 bucks per a piece per day for these things.

[00:14:18] Andy Leviss: Gotcha. So, so like small companies should be looking at buying those. You think that's not a, that's not like a sub kinda

[00:14:23] Sean Walker: I, I, I mean it would depend on your clientele, right? We'll get to that in a second. I would say if you're going at the wedding market, you should own 12 to 24 uplights and some kind of a lighting tree. I know we're on an audio podcast. I'm talking about lighting, but bear with me y'all. Some kinda a light, like a four bar or something that like, doesn't look stupid.

Anybody that has experienced with lighting will chime in and go, Hey man, actually that's really dumb and here's the cool thing you want, but we did it with a cheesy, cheesy like little four bar LED thing. 'cause we don't know any better and I'm not, you know, I'm not a lighting guy. Uh, and you can just have a gig that you go do this right word to the wives from somebody who's gotten their ass handed to them for years doing this when we were coming up.

Each new add-on is a new person ceremony is a person. Reception is two people. If they've got a, uh, a, um, cocktail hour, right? You're gonna, you could probably get, if you have three people told, you can probably get away with that going, but like, these are not venues in the classic sense that we're used to.

This is not like, Hey man, we're gonna roll up to the dock, tip this truck, fly this rig out and go to lunch. Right? This is like, Hey, you in a suit or a dress or whatever, you're, you know, wherever you're at, like you're hauling cases and stuff, up and down stairs, across grass lawns, down to the docks, down to, you know what I mean, to the, like, not the, the loading docks, but down to the fricking like docks in the water.

Like all these happen at beautiful destination kind of places. We did a lot in the islands up here where it was like, take ferry across, be be up at 1:00 AM to be on a 6:00 AM ferry to be. Load in at 10:00 AM to go straight to fricking soundcheck to go straight to thing. And it was like 1:00 AM alarm went off and at 1:00 AM again truck door closes and you go back to the hotel to go do it.

Right? So this is not like, Hey, here's this easy breezy way to make a pile of money. But if you're like, look, I, I know what to do with this sound thing. I can figure out how to plug in some lights and watch a YouTube video on how to turn these things. Basically white or amber or whatever color makes skin tone not look pale.

Uh, you can make a lot of money if you're willing to work really hard, right? That's the other part is you're gonna work really hard any way you slice this. If you're gonna run a sound company, you're gonna work really hard. So that's one option. And you would talk to those

[00:16:44] Andy Leviss: I was in this for the easy money.

[00:16:45] Sean Walker: shit dog, go sell insurance.

[00:16:47] Andy Leviss: That and the glory.

[00:16:49] Sean Walker: The glory.

Oh, oh buddy. Oh buddy. I got in thinking I was gonna mix Big rock shows and I'm actually a logistics. A logistics person that happens to mix a show once in a while for most of my career. But, uh, so with that said, I, I know that's way too long and people are like, for fuck's sake, shut up Walker. But, uh, you would talk to those people in like, Hey, I can solve your problems, right?

Because nobody buys anything without a problem. And so you just would talk to 'em about how it would be beautiful. It won't have any feedback. There will be no problems with their timeline. You won't be running late. The things that are important to them are not the things that are important to you, right?

Things that are important to wedding planners are that things run on time that they don't look bad. So it's gotta look beautiful because they've spent a lot of time with flowers and, you know, arrangements to make this place look beautiful for the bride and whoever else is involved in this, right? And.

You can't drop a bunch of rock and roll gear that looks like it belongs on a world tour into this beautiful setting and think that's gonna be okay. Right? It's a select set of tools for this job, and those things are gonna be really important to them. So you're gonna talk about how it's not a pile of rock and roll gear and how it is slick and beautiful and as discreet as can be, and things will run on time, right?

Those are gonna be things you're talking about, right? So maybe your marketing headline, if you were going after that market, would be like, are you tired of like these rock and roll companies trying to do private events and they're just poop and rock and roll cases all over your beautiful event or whatever you wanna say it.

Like, are you, are you tired of these rock and roll companies? Rock and rolling all over your event? We at, you know, a, b, c sound company, whatever. We get it. It doesn't have to be that way we can ensure that things run on time and smoothly, that you don't have those problems and that. Everything looks beautiful like you designed it to start with, you know what I mean?

Those kinds of things are what's gonna sell. They don't give one flying hoot about how many watts the speaker are or what manufacturer it is, or they don't, they don't care about any of that stuff. They don't know any of it, and they don't care. And, and that's not to say they're, they, they don't have taste or can't tell the difference, but like, they don't know the difference between acoustic and DMB and RCF and now Heath and like they don't know that.

They just know like either it sounds good or it doesn't. Either it looks good or it doesn't and it solves my problem or it doesn't. Right. So think in those terms and speak to people in those terms. Right. So the other most common thing with small sound companies is music gigs, right? Like, I know we were kind of talking about music, but that's like private events and, and wedding planners.

See, the other common thing is, is music, small music shows. So concerts in the park, which the wedding rig we just outlined would smash for concerts in the park. If you had little, like 500 to a thousand dollars a day, every city in the world's got 'em every June, July, August kind of a thing where it's like free show for the community and they got cover bands coming through or the kids' days or whatever, right.

They're go like, I got 500 bucks or

[00:20:04] Andy Leviss: town, the town stage, they have stashed away in storage

[00:20:06] Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. Totally,

[00:20:08] Andy Leviss: for the day.

[00:20:08] Sean Walker: totally. And again, I've done hundreds and hundreds of those in my career as a brand new sound kid trying to figure it out, you know, before I could figure out how to route an X 32. Right. And, uh, they are not enough money. You are literally going with your whole rig for a what is almost a day rate sometimes.

Right. And sometimes there can be enough money, but like that same wedding rig that we just, outcr we just outlined or described could double duty for the conscience of the park. So on on. Days that you don't have these wedding shows, you're like, sure, I'll make another 500 bucks or another thousand bucks, or whatever it is to go drag this rig probably in a sprinter or a car with a trailer or something, right?

Like a six by 12 covered, covered, you know, enclosed trailer would do it and go, do, you know, go make some extra money on the side with the doing these things, right? You keep yourself just like full steam ahead, busy in almost any reasonable size community, just doing those two things. If you wanted to go do that by yourself and you built this rig intentionally that you could deal with it by yourself, right?

Nothing's going in huge racks. Maybe one rack that's got the, like, control, you know, like an SQ five or whatever your, you know, console Azure that rack mounts is, and four channels of PSM or G three or G four, whatever the comparable wireless, the, the entry level, comparable ears are. Same thing for some like SLXD or whatever Sennheiser comparable.

Four channel Kid Wireless is, and it just lives in this wreck that all rolls together. Piece of cake. And you know, it, it would,

[00:21:42] Andy Leviss: I came up at, used to call 'em corporate racks. The

[00:21:45] Sean Walker: yeah. Yeah, dude.

[00:21:46] Andy Leviss: or 60 in space rack with the console rack on top.

[00:21:49] Sean Walker: Totally dude. Totally. The cool part is as your company matures, those will again work for your corporate breakouts, right? You could, it's, they're not perfect, but they're like, it can double and triple duty and that's what you need as a small company or a pile of multi tools, not usually things that are super hyper specific.

So I would buy the speakers in black, not in white, even for the weddings. If I only had one set of speakers, and if somebody requests white and they must be white speakers, I would bill somebody, whatever that speaker costs to replace, to rent for the day. So if it's 2000 bucks to buy it, it costs 2000 bucks to rent for the day for a white speaker if they must have it, and they will only deal.

And that is it. Because your other option, unless you're in la, your other option is to fly it in from someplace and that's it. Right? So.

[00:22:33] Andy Leviss: Or speaker socks.

[00:22:36] Sean Walker: Nah,

[00:22:37] Andy Leviss: I mean, they're hideous, but I've, I've seen people do it

[00:22:40] Sean Walker: sure, sure. Speaker socks, that's

[00:22:41] Andy Leviss: like span the spandex, like

[00:22:43] Sean Walker: You know, I know what you're talking about. I know what you're talking about. I'm just saying like, their options are limited, right? So the bla the, the black or brown, if you're, if you're no acoustics fan, right? Like those are all gonna be way more appropriate. And these are all places so far, we're talking about most of these manufacturers and brands are not going to be tier one, right?

This is not a place where Meyer and d and b and acoustics are going to shine. This is not their target market and that is not in any way, shape or form saying that they're not good tools, they're just not the right tool for this job. You don't sell a Rolls-Royce to somebody looking for Honda Civic.

That's what I'm trying to say, right? Like those tools are Rolls-Royces and they perform like it. The, this is Honda Civic territory. So buy something that's priced that way. Right? This is where the. Cfs, QSCs DB techs, like this is where those companies shine, right? With they're printing money and nobody's like, what name is on the front of that box?

You know what I mean? So music, sorry, I've got sidetracked here. I'm sorry. So the other thing is gonna be small music festivals that aren't your basic content in the park, but like maybe something SL 75, SL 100, those kind of things. And we still do a fair amount of these in the summertime to let the, to let the, uh, team off the leash and go do some rock and roll, because it fits our wheelhouse when we're not doing corporate most of the time.

But these, again, are going to be small line array category, right, where you're talking about like HDL six, SRX 9,006, uh, HDL 28 or whatever the other equivalents are from other manufacturers, probably four a 18 subs and a six or eight pack of wedges and a pair of consoles like sq, advantis, whatever.

You're gonna just get to ripping you and two, two homies of yours, right front of house monitors, patch tech, somebody to help, and you're just gonna get to it, right? Uh, you're gonna market to those people very differently than you're going to market to your wedding planner, right? Those people are gonna be a little more tech savvy, uh, in what they want or what they're used to seeing.

The artists will have documents

[00:24:54] Andy Leviss: Rider is a strong

[00:24:55] Sean Walker: yeah, yeah. That, that are, they're gonna call 'em writers, but really what you're asking for are stage plots and input lists, right? They're gonna have, some of the artists will have writers and 99.9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9%. Only one in your career probably will be able to draw a hard line in the Sanz and not take whatever.

It's that you've got everybody else you can look in the face and go, Hey, do you want a paycheck? Or do you want that console? Great. I I knew you wanted a paycheck. Good. I'll, I'll see you on show day. Because they don't have the poll, they don't have the budget, they don't have the ticket sales. Right. To just start demanding other things.

So again, SRX 9,006, HDL six, they really shine in this capacity. 'cause they're super cost effective. They sound good, they got a lot of output and they're easy to use. Right? Those people you're gonna market to by telling them that you've got great customer service, good interfacing with the bands and artists, and they won't have any problems, right?

Those small music promoters, they just don't want a bunch of headaches, right? You're gonna see a theme here, like, you're just solving people's problems, right? People only buy if you solve a problem. So you gotta figure out what their problem is and then solve it. And I think in my long-winded Discord rant, I even said something about like, you know, what is their problem?

That's not audio, right? Like, are they having power problems? Do you know about power? Can you, I. Tech, a generator and figure that out. Okay, great. Right? Maybe salt that, sort that out for 'em. And then it doesn't matter what your audio prowess is, you, you're solving this problem for people, right? And, uh, those are gonna be the things that you can do.

And so, like with these, you know, you call this, Hey man, I, I think you did a great job with this festival last year. I'm super stoked. You're bringing something wonderful to our community. And I, you know, I'd like to, I'd like to be involved. I'd like to make something cool in our community. What are your challenges?

How can I help you? You know what I mean? And they'll start laying out their challenges. And candidly, it probably has nothing to do with audio because every single person you talk to already has a solution in place. They've already got an audio provider. You're not like, Hey man. I'm God's gift to audio. I have reinvented the wheel and I will solve all your audio challenges and you will never have audio challenges again.

Right? Like everybody has had that same pitch for the eternity of audio. We we're the best. We sound the best, right? Who gives a fuck? Like who cares? Nobody cares. And that's not to say we don't care that it sounds good. It's that it's such an overused pitch that it's numbing people. People don't, it's just noise at this point, right?

So find out what their actual problem is. Are they getting ripped off on stages? Are they getting screwed at the generators? Do they not have anybody that can sort it out? Do they love their generator company? Like, here's one that came up for us. I'll even overshare a little bit. They love their generator company love.

They get a smoking deal, they get brand new gens. They all work great. They get like the customer service is awesome. The generator company does not provide site power. They pull in, they drop off generators and they're out. Gimme my money, right? Which is fine. Site power is a whole ass thing. If you have.

People that can do site power and safely and well and that could like, that'll be a whole other rabbit hole. If you wanna go, Andy, let's not go down there, but if you have people that can do site power, you're in, you've solved this problem, by the way, you also do audio. You remember those lights you bought for the fricking wedding band that you were, you're tired of doing good.

Hang all eight of those on the front of this SL 100 and charge 'em for it. Band not in the dark. Good talk. Alright, there's another couple hundred bucks for you, right? These things will start to evolve over the years as you're, as you're building and moving and tweaking, you'll kind of see how they kind of like they'll fit together, right?

Is that the right tool for the job on an SL 100? Absolutely not. It's not bright enough. It doesn't have control. It looks average af all the lighting people in the world are freaking out right now. Can't even believe I said that, except that A one, this client doesn't have any more money. They're not hiring a lighting company.

They don't have another 3, 5, 10 grand for lighting company. They got 300 bucks for lights. So hang on. It's some fricking lights or the band's in the dark. Right, like you're, you're firefighting here, you're solving problems. You're not, it's not perfect. It's about solving problems and that is how people will buy from you and continue to buy from you 'cause you continue to solve their problems.

You know what I mean? I don't know anything about lighting anything. I barely even know what to call LED lighting. And we make tens of thousands of dollars a year off of lighting that we don't own because we'll just bring it and show up with it. We don't, I don't own it. I don't know anything about it. I dunno what to do.

I know how to sell it. I don't sell it. Hey man, can you bring some lights to the band's? Not in the dark. Sure dude. Let me bill you for eight park cans and go call somebody that's got eight park cans and beat 'em up on the price and go make a little money on the top. And yes, I'll bring some park hands.

[00:29:43] Andy Leviss: Copy. So like that's the skill where you're starting to get into like sub renting or subcontracting.

[00:29:47] Sean Walker: Totally. I say all this to say that like you're gonna talk to these people. You're gonna find out what their problem is, right? And you're gonna know, like some of you're going, aha, some of you're going shut the fuck up walker. But like, you'll know what their inherent problems are, solve those problems, and the audio that you want to sell them will come along for the ride.

Right? The most genius way I've seen it done, which makes me shake my head at the way it was executed in this particular case, but was this company offers mobile stages and also audio and and lighting. And so they sell the, they sell the client the stage. Hey man, I got this off-brand stage. Nobody wants right to go do this county fair or other thing.

And absolutely we can do the audio and the lighting on it too, no problem. Right? And so they sell the whole fricking, the whole package. 'cause the problem was they didn't have a stage, but they already had an audio vendor and a lighting vendor. They were happy with that. They were happy with the power vendor.

They. Because they could have a OneStop shop and write the check to everything, even though it probably was not better for audio, it was probably not better for lighting. It solved their problem. Right? So that's gonna be the recurring theme is go solve people's problems. Um, and then the way to talk to somebody about that, and I, you know, it may be like it, it may be like, you know, did I totally dig what you're doing in this community?

I love that you're bringing something cool here. You know, how do we help you? Right? And, and that's, that's it, dude. And you're gonna, you need to invite people into a story when you're talking to them, right? And it's a story where they are the hero and you are the guide, right? And you need to try to meet them where they're at in their buying journey, because nobody, like, when they see that you're at, or when, if you call 'em or email 'em, nobody's like, I.

Man, I can't wait to buy audio today. I'm just gonna wait for the audio guy to call me and bid on my stuff. Right. They're doing 9 trillion other things just like we are. And so you, you gotta like, not hammer people. Not like, you know, if you're like, dude, I wanna go do this show. Like, Hey, I saw this festival that just popped up.

I wanna go bid on the audio. If you figure out who to email or call, you're not like, Hey, I want a bid in the audio. I, I got a bid in the audio. Where do I send a bid? You know what I mean? Go, dude, what a cool thing you guys have made. This looks fricking awesome. Thank you for bringing something rad to our town and doing something fricking amazing here.

What are some of the challenges you guys have been facing along the way? Trying to get this up and running or get this to be successful for you? You know what I mean? I, I, and then shut the fuck up, which is not something I'm good at. And they will tell you people like to correct other people, Andy.

[00:32:42] Andy Leviss: Wow. wow.

[00:32:45] Sean Walker: But people will correct you. Right? So you're, you just see, like, what have you been your challenges trying to get this up and going and be and, and to be successful. And most people when they're doing stuff like this, have a whole bunch of pent up frustrations about what's going on, right? This is not an easy job to be in.

This is not an easy thing to do. So they'll be like, oh my God, the permits suck. They fricking can't find a stage. They have a freaking power company, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? Like, they'll just, they'll unload on you and be like, cool. Well, would you like some help solving those? Like, I can help you with that.

I know all those people and I can talk to 'em straight and get 'em sorted out and get it way easier for you. They're like, oh my God, yes, please. And you're like, cool. And they'll be like, wait, who are you? And what is it that you do? And you're like, oh yeah, we haven't even talked about it. I, I'm an audio company.

You know what I mean? But all of a sudden you're like solving problems and they, you've already got yeses before you even talked to about your product that they don't care about, you know?

[00:33:39] Andy Leviss: Yeah, and it's like it's a thing that I. Hope, anybody listening to us for this long, we don't need to say out loud, but I wanna point out that you've done this all, even in the situations in which you are perhaps replacing somebody they have that's not doing it as well for them, that you're not selling yourself by putting down their existing solution.

[00:33:59] Sean Walker: dude. Totally. Yeah. Talking a lot of trash about the other providers just makes you an asshole. It doesn't make you look good. Right,

[00:34:08] Andy Leviss: Yeah, like e even when, even when, if somebody reaches out to you 'cause they've heard of you, or if you reach out to them and in the conversation they start putting down their current provider, there's a way to answer that question without joining in on putting down the thing they're trying to solve.

[00:34:24] Sean Walker: totally, dude. Like, what were the challenges that you had with the other provider? Like what were some of the things that, that you could be improved upon? And then what are some of the things they did great? Because it's usually not all horrible, right? It's usually not all, everything about this sucked, right?

Maybe they had a killer pa, maybe they had killer consoles and they just didn't execute well, maybe they just had a day, maybe they're usually a great fricking team, and that day they were overtired and o under caffeinated and just like, they just had a, they're fucking human dude. They just had a day. So, you know, and, and this is a small industry, so if you're just out talking nonsense about people, you know, I, I'm, I made that mistake early in my career.

I'll be honest. I made that mistake and I, I wish I hadn't, right? Uh, but don't do it. You know what I mean? Take it from somebody who's, who's taking those lumps. Like, don't do it, man. Everybody's, by and large, everybody's doing the best. They know how, right? They're trying to do, everybody's trying to do a good job.

So if you think you do a better job, figure out what the client. Didn't think was excellent about this other provider and then solve those problems and then find out what they did think was excellent. Because maybe in that scenario, like it ended up sounding great, but it just took too long. Right? They were an hour late for soundcheck because they just couldn't get their poop in a group.

But ultimately everything turned out to be just fine. Well then you don't wanna slag on the brand of pa. If that's not the problem, then you just sound like a jerk, right? If you're like, oh yeah man, it can be tough. Like I, I understand everybody's running, running short. We've got plenty of crews so people don't show up extra tired and we can make sure to stay on time while also still giving you the quality of show that you're used to from, you know, provider A or whatever is a whole lot easier way to say, I don't beat my crew like a rented fucking gong.

And they won't show up with no fucking sleep. 'cause you know, like you just, again, trying to solve whatever the problem is and then. This is all, assuming we're talking about executing with integrity and with honesty, and you are actually going to solve those problems, right? At no time should we be misleading people.

At no time should we be doing anything that is not absolutely 100% on the up and up and, and giving people exactly what we have told them we would give. So if you cannot execute on something, do not promise that you will, that you will do it right? Because that will also be quickly gone around that like, oh, this person's over promising and underdelivering and yeah, they say they'll do it and yeah, they work cheap, but like then it really does suck, right?

Like then they really do like, oh man, I'll, I'll do it for half price and I'll do it quicker and faster and better and everything, blah, blah blah. And then you're like, yeah, well no, 'cause they don't have enough microphones or cables or stands and everything's half broken and like, no, it's not. You know what I mean?

So always do the very best you can for everybody. Uh, and one of the things that I read one time when I was coming up that, uh. I had never met him at the time, but I read this article when I was coming up from Dave Rat and he said that no matter what happens with the money, if you said you were going to do a job, do that job to the best of your ability and then decide after the job is done, if you would, if you want, do it again or if you would do it again, get your money straight, right?

But like, you know, a lot of times, oh hey, I got this much dough and blah, blah blah, and you're like, okay, cool. And then it turned out to be a gig that was way more than they said. Instead of going, well, screw it, they only paid me this much dough, so I'm only gonna do that much dough with the work. Like, do the best you can because that's what people remember.

They don't ever remember the paycheck. They don't remember that. It's like making movies or making records. Nobody knows how hard it was to make it. All they do is listen to the song, right? They don't care how many hours you spent in the studio, how many edits you did, how much vocal tuning or fucking whatever.

They don't care any of that. Just like was this song, does it move me emotionally? Right? It's the same thing with shows. They don't care if the money was straight. They don't care what kerfuffles happened with you and whoever behind the scenes. Like do the very best you can every time for everybody and sort that shit out behind the scenes.

Don't, don't make the audience know that there's ever anything going on. You know what I mean? What's a thing you go talk about? Like, don't break the fourth wall. Right? Like the show has to happen, dude. You know what I mean? The show's show's a date. So make it, make it happen. Right?

[00:38:43] Andy Leviss: To analyze it after the fact, but once you're there. Yeah, just do it.

[00:38:48] Sean Walker: Totally, totally. So like, you know, to marketing, right? You would just solve those problems they're having, they're just curious conversations with people is is how to go get more clients, right? This all wraps back to how do I get more clients? How do I get more leads? How do I make more money? Right? Have curious conversations with the clients that you want to have.

I. Solve the problems that come up during those curious conversations, and I mean, genuinely curious conversations. And if your solution, product problem, whatever your thing is, doesn't solve that problem, don't try to sell it to 'em, right? If like, if you're talking about like, Hey man, we do concerts and we do concerts, great.

Right? Cool dude. But like, do you do local concerts great. Or do you do download? Great, right? Those are two different scales of doing concerts. Great, right? I, I don't do download great. I'm not tooled up for it or not fricking ready to go. Like, I can't support a million dollar show or a million, not a million, a million person show, right?

Like, we're not tooled up for that. I don't have two zillion boxes of giant format pa. I don't freaking, that's not what we do. So I don't go sell those shows and I don't promise those people when they call that I'll do it. I just say, Hey man, you should call. You know, Carlson, solo Tech, Claire, whoever, like those guys do shows like that.

We, we aren't, we aren't geared up for that, right? We do, we do corporate shows at a high level. We make sure it's never fucked, right? It's always the best we can every time. So know your lane in state, in you're lane the best you can. And it's something that's learned over time. I didn't always know that, you know what I mean?

I, I was just trying to figure out how to pay bills and feed my kids man. You know what I mean? I was trying to learn how to do audio, feeling like I wasn't very good at it most of the time feeling like, dude, like there has to be some magic trick that makes this sound good. 'cause this doesn't sound good, but when you're doing sound in bars, the broom sucks.

The band sucks, the PA sucks and you suck. Right? Like that's, or at least I did, I won't say everybody else does, but like, at least I, none of it was good. So like, where do you start fixing? Good.

[00:41:00] Andy Leviss: the moment I was born.

[00:41:02] Sean Walker: I know your mom said, so she told me last time I talked to her,

[00:41:06] Andy Leviss: Wow.

[00:41:08] Sean Walker: uh. But like it's a journey, dude. It's not like you suddenly just know, you know what I mean? Spoiler alert, none of us have it all figured out. None of us, no matter how, like favorite engineer on a pedestal don't have it all figured out. They're doing the very best they can every day to be better and do better, and they've got more reps in their 10,000 hours in and they're awesome.

I'm not saying they're not awesome, but like nobody knows every answer to every problem. Like we're all just trying to figure it out, you know? So just do the very best you can every day, be obsessive about learning how to do whatever it is that is the next biggest roadblock in your way of success.

Whether that is learning to mix, whether that's learning to systems tune, whether that's learning to market your baby little sound company. That's the, those are the things to do. I will add to that. I wish that I learned to se long before I learned to mix if I had learned. The basics of open sound meter with some $99 microphone and a Scarlet Solo interface and some kind of a target curve to sort out my pa life.

Learning to mix would've come a whole lot faster and better. And I would've had a lot better. Like I, I would've had a lot better mental state if I had learned how to sort my pa out before I tried to learn how to mix, because I know in the Discord server I yap a lot about compressors and my pre 'cause. I, I like that shit.

But none of that is really gonna make your show sound better if your pa blows, especially in a fucking bar. Nobody cares, right? Like it's damage control more than it is, more than it is creative mixing and really sound reinforcement. 'cause that fricking guitar rig is way too loud and the stare drum just took everybody's head off without it being in the pa, you know?

Um, but back to marketing, 'cause you know, tangents in coffee, get a website. Do not rely on. Uh, do not rely on social media as the place to send people, because if you rely on social media as the place to send people, they can lock you out. And then they own that information. They own that data. And I went on a rant on Discord that I shouldn't have done.

Yeah. But if you have a website, you own the data. If you send it to social media, they own the data. Social media and the G word that I won't mention are the marketing tools to get people to your website. They are not the end result for your website. So make a website. Make a website that speaks to the customers that you want.

So if you want wedding planners, let's say, you know, and, and I, I did start there and looking back, I would start there again. I would just do it differently and better with knowing what I know. But you know. All of the pictures, all of the content, all of the copy needs to speak directly to it. If you're talking about concerts and corporate and comms and speakers and this and everything, and all the shows we've done, and this is all great.

Like it's confusing. People don't understand. They don't know, right? Like one of the examples I used on this Discord server was like, you guys ever watched an insurance commercial? Like, what does an emu have to do with insurance? Like, shoot me in the face. Are you kidding me? You know what I mean? Have you ever watched a Bud Light commercial?

Like they know their audience, dude nailed it. They know who they're talking to. They know how they're thinking. They know what language they use. They know what verbiage the, their client, their end customer uses, right? You don't, you don't use grape coupon language to Bud Light customers. It's not the same freaking thing and vice versa.

Right? And, and vice versa. And it's not that one is better, it's just that like. Figure out who your audience is, who are you talking to? And speak to them as a human, as a real person. And as AI and things are becoming more prevalent and and becoming great tools for a lot of things, they are not great tools to just like turn on and let it run.

Because really what we're selling, if I wanna boil it down to one word, all we're selling is trust. That's it. All we're selling is trust. The name on the front of the speaker. The reason we have writers, people trust that the reason that people get hired to do gigs, the reason the same two dozen people are touring the world with the biggest acts.

Trust people trust that if that person, 'cause they built a brand around, their person is there and those names on those speakers are there, it will be fine. They don't, they don't really ultimately know. They just think it will be fine. So all you're doing is building trust, right? You do that by. Talking to people in their own plain language.

If they speak plain language, right. If they're super, if you've got some super nerdy hoity-toity, then speak to 'em in their language. Right? But like most people use plain language. They don't know how many db the speaker is. They don't care. They just care that it sounds good. It's not gonna get 'em fired.

And that if, if you're doing weddings, it's gonna be beautiful. Right? Or even corporate. Corporate And weddings are not that far apart really. 'cause get outta the way of the video. It's gotta be pretty, and by the way, can you tuck yourself in a corner? Like, no, I'd really like to be in a front of house position.

I can hear, no, sorry, that we're gonna put cameras there or we're gonna put a bar there. Right. So it's not that far off. Right. And anybody who's not,

[00:46:32] Andy Leviss: said we can't have a microphone there.

[00:46:33] Sean Walker: dude totally. And anybody who's not nodding. Yeah, you do some more shows like, but like, you know, at, at some certain level you get a lot more flexibility at that.

But dude, just speak to people in the terms they understand. Bud Light has it nailed. Take a note outta their book and reminder, you are not the hero of this story, right? You are Yoda. They are Luke Skywalker. They are the hero of this story. Your client being, they, nobody gives one flying hoot about your certifications.

Nobody gives one flying hoot about how many training classes you've taken, about how many hours you've spent prepping your show file. Like nobody fricking cares, but you and your other nerd engineer friends, I care. I wanna know all about that shit. But your clients don't care, right? I love, I, I love to see all the nerd shit happen behind the scenes.

But the clients don't know. They don't care. They just wanna know you're gonna solve their problem and what is their problem? That's what you gotta find out. So when you figure that out for whatever your client is, solve it. So step one, who's my client? Step two, what's their problem? Step three, how am I gonna solve it in language that they understand and speak to them like that and only like that and stay on brand word.

[00:47:59] Andy Leviss: Yeah, sorry. No, I, I got backwards on my mute button and I wasn't trying to say something. I was like, Sean's being smart. I'm a shut up. I know that's a rare look for me, but

[00:48:08] Sean Walker: I be, it's a rare, it's a rare look for both of us, bro.

[00:48:10] Andy Leviss: Right.

[00:48:11] Sean Walker: Uh, I'll for the, for those of you not on the Discord server, I'll get that coffee going in the morning. I'll just start pounding away at the fricking keyboard and everybody's like, oh God. No, not again. Not another shot of espresso. We don't need 'em anymore.

[00:48:23] Andy Leviss: Although I'm also in my head, just as you were saying that thing about console files, the the way my brain goes this time of day, I'm picturing like the American psycho business card

[00:48:31] Sean Walker: yeah,

[00:48:31] Andy Leviss: with console files. Like, dude, check out my new console file,

[00:48:34] Sean Walker: yeah. Right. Totally. But it, it's really, it's that simple. And the hardest part of all of it is just getting out of our own way and not talking about us and not talking about our gear. 'cause that's what we are excited about, but that's not what our client's excited about. Right. Like, to give one more example, just 'cause like it's, it's pretty universal and I, I find, you know, examples worth a million words.

Like if you are going out to dinner, you sit down for a steak dinner for those of you that eat steak, if you come, if, when you go to a steak dinner, the waiter doesn't ask you what ingredients are going in your steak. They ask you if you want the filet mignon or the rib eye. Medium rare, you know, how do you want it medium rare?

Well, whatever. And what side do you want? But they're not telling you like, Hey man, it's got this many ounces of butter, and the butter was grass fed and then this is this way, and then it's got this thing and it's, you know what I mean? Like, they're not giving you the, the ingredients or the recipe for the thing, which is what we do,

[00:49:27] Andy Leviss: enough restaurants.

[00:49:29] Sean Walker: dog.

But they're not giving you the recipe to it. Right? They're giving you the highlights of like, Hey man, it's a Wagyu grass fed, blah, blah, blah, and it's got this, you know, medallion potatoes and it's got blah, blah, blah, and it could do in 19 blah, blah, blah cab. Yay. Right? But they're not like, here's the whole recipe, which is what we do miserably as a, as an entire industry, is event planners come to us asking for a steak dinner, and we give them the grocery list to go make a steak dinner.

And what we need to do is give them a steak dinner.

[00:50:02] Andy Leviss: Yeah, I mean that's almost a whole other episode in itself that I think, I think came up on the Discord unless it came up in a real life conversation recently. 'cause they'll blur together a bit about, uh, like wine item, everything or not, which I feel like that's like well past the scope of the 15 minute mark of this episode.

[00:50:19] Sean Walker: Yeah, dude, nobody wants to listen to me ramble about that for another hour. Like they're over me

[00:50:22] Andy Leviss: I do, but I'm fucking weird.

[00:50:25] Sean Walker: And that'll be really client dependent, right? Like how you do, that's gonna be super client dependent. Everybody's gonna feel that vibe out. But, but that's it. That's how to get more clients, dude or dude dots or all the above.

Like,

[00:50:35] Andy Leviss: I dig it and I mean, I feel like we're at like the 50 minute market. We haven't touched on the other side of marketing, which is freelancers, which is fine. I think we will definitely revisit. I, I feel like we should sort of like

[00:50:46] Sean Walker: I can do that in two minutes. Surprisingly enough.

[00:50:48] Andy Leviss: do the two minute version, but then I feel like at some point we should grab like Maddox and Curtis and like do a little panel on like the business of freelancing

[00:50:55] Sean Walker: Cool, man.

[00:50:56] Andy Leviss: as, as I volunteer people who have not offered to do it,

[00:50:59] Sean Walker: right? Yeah. Sweet. Okay. Freelancers. If you don't, if you don't own a sound company and you're just doing freelancing, exactly the same thing. Find out who your client is and solve their fucking problems. Are you a corporate freelancer? Are you a concert freelancer? Are you a theater freelancer?

Right? Like if theater people call me and they're like, yo, man, I'm the best theater mixer ever. I'm a fricking mix everything and I'm, I'm the best. That's cool, man. I don't have any theater shows. Sorry, I can't hire you. Right? Like I don't do theater, I don't nothing against it. I just don't do it. Right? So like that doesn't help me.

Uh, but if you're like, Hey dude, I see that you're corporate sound company. I got tons of corporate sound experience at the highest possible level and at the lowest level. So nothing's beneath me, but I can deal with the stress, I can do the calm, I can do the rf, I can do this, and blah, blah, blah. Now we're talking the same language.

Right? Or if you call me and said, Hey man, I see you do corporate audio. Like what are some of your biggest challenges with finding a ones for a a ones and a twos, like finding a crew for your shows. That's a better way to do it. Like, Hey, what are your biggest challenges? Finding a crew for your shows? And then I could go, oh, well my biggest challenges are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Right? And tell you what the challenges are. Cool, man. Well, I. I have experience in all those things and I would love to be added to your call list. Brother, you're at the top of my call list if you call me like that, you know what I mean?

[00:52:15] Andy Leviss: So que question off that, which I

[00:52:17] Sean Walker: Minute 24, Andy. Not even two minutes minute 24. Done. Mic drop, I'm out.

No.

[00:52:22] Andy Leviss: Um, I'll pick up the mic. Um, I freeze solder it. Um, I feel like we touched on this a little bit before. In fact, I feel like, I'm trying to remember. This came up when, if we had, when we had a, like a couple of, like when we had Matt and, um, was it Kyle?

Yeah. Matt and Kyle on it at one point. Maybe we touched on this, but the, I'm marketing myself to you as a freelancer. You're a business

[00:52:45] Sean Walker: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:47] Andy Leviss: specialist, generalist, multi-specialist. Do you have a preference? Do you like to hear from all of them?

[00:52:53] Sean Walker: I absolutely have a preference. I like to hear from all of them, but I hire specialists, right? Uh, and that doesn't mean you can't have multiple specialties. Right. But, uh, when I see people on, you know, online that are like a one, A two V one ld, rigor extraordinaire, blah, blah, blah, you're like, okay, man, you're a jack of all trades and a master and none.

And maybe that's not the case. Maybe they're, maybe they're absolutely stunning at every one of those positions, but that's not what that communicates to me as a business owner that doesn't communicate to me, Hey man, I can put this person anywhere that communicates to me. This person is bored outta their freaking mind at whatever it's they're doing.

And they have just been dabbling with everything, and I don't know what to call them for. I don't know, like, do I call 'em for an A one if they've got all these other things? Are they good enough as an A one for what I'm looking for? Because I'm, in our particular case, I'm not just looking for like whoever will show up for the lowest day rate, right?

I, I'm looking for specialty right specialists. So if you called and said, Hey man, I've got a ton of experiences in a one and A two comms and rf. And systems tuning or you know, se work or whatever. My, my preference or what I really focus on is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right now that makes sense to me.

Now I understand what to hire you for. Like, okay, Andy, we'll, we'll use, use your example, 'cause you're right here and you can talk back. Great. A one, great. A two tons of common RF experience, se work, right? You can do all those things, you're good at all those things, but like, what's the thing that drives you?

What's the one of those positions where you're like, this gets my blood boiling. I love this one thing, right? Is it, yeah, yeah, totally. But like one of those you're particularly gifted at and the other ones you're just really good at, right?

[00:54:45] Andy Leviss: I mean, I'd say if I had to rank an order, probably like I. Lately, I feel like I've specialized more on like the RF and comms and not necessarily because I necessarily think I'm better at that than mixing, but because there are fewer folks who are better at that.

[00:54:59] Sean Walker: Sure. Which is fine.

[00:55:00] Andy Leviss: so it's a marketing choice and I've, that's as I'm also thinking through companies I work with or even different bookers within companies I work with, they're often ones where they know me as one thing and somebody else may know me as another.

And it's, it's sometimes a point of frustration as a freelancer that, like some of the corporate people think of me as a theater or music person. Sometimes the music people are like, wait, but he only does corporate and that's the catch 22. You sometimes end up in two where like none of them start going 'cause they think you only do the other thing.

But there also is something to be said for having that specialty with each and with this particular company, I'm an A one for them. And I've even had that, in fact, I had, I had a conversation with a company I freelance for a lot, uh, recently them doing a gig for in a couple weeks where they called me for a job.

They mentioned what client it was. The they. This is a company that hires me and also they hire me for RF and comms. They hire me as a mixer. They hire me as a tech. They know they can trust me in anything. So at this point they'll throw me where they can. 'cause they know if they throw me out as just the system tech in a two, I'm not gonna be offended, but they can trust me to mix it or do whatever.

And on this gig they called me as a system tech. They told me who the client was. It happens, this is a client that I have freelance doing in-house stuff for as an A one for 15 years. So I was like, I need to know a little bit more about the situation. Depending on what it is, I may need to say no only 'cause they know me as an A one.

And if I show up as like the third system tech down with an A one, they don't know. And like it gets a little weird 'cause both what they know me as and then they are like, well why isn't he showing up at that this time? Like, is there something we should know? Or some companies are just the, whatever we've seen you as last is what we think of you

[00:56:43] Sean Walker: Sure, totally.

[00:56:44] Andy Leviss: as soon as I mentioned that they were like, oh well yeah, you know what? No problem. Like, we'll just if they're used to you mixing, then. It's our benefit to send you to them as a mixer. So they put me on as the mixer instead, so,

[00:56:54] Sean Walker: you go. And you don't really have a, necessarily have a preference, like you said, as long as the day rates. At the day rate, like does it matter if you're tuning the PA or mixing the show? Like it's not that big of a deal, but like, I need to know what I'm hiring you for. Right. If you do everything, like I'm not excited, what do you like, you do nothing.

Right? But if you've got two or three things that you do well, and one of 'em is a focus, I get it right, but like it's, I guess maybe like a one, a two systems was not really a great example, but like ld, video

[00:57:28] Andy Leviss: I'll, like I have people ask me if I can SC and I'm like, as an or a system designer, I am a front of house mixer who can design a system that he will be happy with and make it sound okay if there's nobody else. So I can do that for somebody else on a pinch. I am not gonna sell myself for like a tour's worth of se work where I'm just doing that 'cause that's not my strong point.

[00:57:48] Sean Walker: exactly. And, and saying that

[00:57:50] Andy Leviss: I do it for a one-off event? Absolutely. And it'll be fine. But understand that I'm coming to that as,

[00:57:57] Sean Walker: And saying that to people is, is the important part, right? Like, you know, hey, do you se and you're like, well, I own a smart rig. I can operate smart or open sound meter. It doesn't have to be smart, right? But like I, I operate a measurement rig. I know what all those squiggly lines mean, and I can get a PA to a point where it sounds good, but there's so much more to being an se than just those things.

Like, like you said, to like sell myself as an se is maybe selling the position short. And if you, depending on what level you're talking about, if you're talking about community events where they're like, Hey man, can you hang six boxes aside and time some tops and subs and make it doesn't suck? Yeah. Hell yes I can.

If you're talking about like 200 boxes of something in a stadium, yo man, that's somebody else's whole ass job that knows a lot more about this than I do, that's not a good fit for me. Right? So like each of these positions, like at what level can you do these things, right? Where like, hey man, maybe you're like, dude, I operate a one at the highest possible level, and then comms and then a two.

Then I can ce below their word. I don't know. I'm just, you know, I'm just saying. But like, tell people that we us.

[00:58:59] Andy Leviss: about and being honest about your, your limits in a situation like that is how you also get the trust of a company where they'll bring you in on something that they feel you're comfortable with and then they'll start stretching your boundaries once they see what you can do.

And that's how you become like a better se if that's what you want to do,

[00:59:15] Sean Walker: Yeah, dude,

[00:59:15] Andy Leviss: as opposed to selling yourself as something you're not. Same thing you were saying on like the business side. Don't sell yourself for something you can't

[00:59:21] Sean Walker: that's correct. I mean, a freelancer's basically just a little business dude. Whether you have a business license or not, you're a little, you're a little business, right? You're building a, a brand for yourself, right? And that's, that's all you're doing. Building trust in a brand for yourself, right? So, you know, back to the SE thing for a second, right?

So you call and say, Hey, you know, what are the problems? Blah, blah, blah. I can do this, this, and then this. Okay, great. And then maybe I go like, Hey man. I do have an SE gig for you. It's like I said, it's a little like, let's say SL 106 boxes of something and a couple subs and, but I just need an extra pair of hands and somebody that can operate a, operate a measurement rig and kind of bang this to a curve and then interface with people to make sure that it's all, everything's running peachy.

I just need one more hand on the crew. And you're like, yeah, I can, I can totally se in that capacity, right? What if I called and said, Hey man, I got 2 trillion boxes of something in a fricking arena or stadium in a stadium and blah, blah, blah. You're like, yo, man, I know, I know five dudes you need to call and I ain't one of them.

You know what I mean? Like, that's, that's not, that's not the level I'm at. Right? But maybe, maybe you could a one that show, maybe you could mix that show, but you're not gonna see that show. Right? And so delineating those for us when you're talking to us company owners is super important, right? Like, because we all have different things.

We're like, okay, man. Maybe this is my main, my main gal or my main dude for this, this, this, and this. But we all kind of tuck in the back of our minds. We know the other tips and tricks you got in your tool belt, right? Just like if we're talking about music front of house and monitors like us front of house guys can get through monitors.

It's not that we don't know how to operate a monitor console, it's just that for those of you that speak fucking monitor and live that, that's a different experience for the artist on stage. Right? So at what level does that become important? Right? Where like at your random community festival, like all of us run a house, engineers can get through it just fine.

There's no feedback. You got enough voice and everybody's fucking happy. It's all fine ish, dude. But for like, you know, one tier or a couple tiers up from that, the people that speak monitors really start to shine and that really becomes important to start putting people in the jobs where they are successful, right?

Or those ess that can also mix where it sounds just fine. But when you get people that like live to mix and that is what they're, that's what they do. Especially if they've got a great se, that's a different product that comes out of that than like, you know, of course the monitor guy can make a front of house mix.

It's only one mix to make instead of 15. Like of course they can, you know what I mean? But like it's maybe not gonna have the same ESIS or whatever as like the dude that's been out there with all his tools and toys and been slotting his plugins and 500 rack exactly the way he wants and getting it all game stage right.

You like, that's a different, they're just different positions and thought processes and the people that flop back and forth really effectively at the highest level are few and far between. So, you know, let us know where you are at each of those journeys so we can put you in the right spot so that we can all succeed.

Because the last thing that we want to do is put you in a spot to fail because then we fail to Right. You being the freelancer, not specifically you Andy, you, we had that talk already. I'm already sorry, but.

[01:02:36] Andy Leviss: And now Sean has a new text message tone for me.

[01:02:38] Sean Walker: Yeah, right. Wa

All right, dude, they're over us. Let's get outta here. It, it's been an hour. They're tired of listening to me

[01:02:48] Andy Leviss: no, that's, that's, yeah. We're, we're starting to unsell the podcast.

[01:02:52] Sean Walker: they're, they're over me, dude. All right. Thanks to Allen Heath, thanks to RCF. You guys rip. That's the pod y'all. See you next week!

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green