309. Q&A With The Audience

In Episode 309, the hosts turn over the reigns for a round of listener questions. They reached out to the Signal to Noise Community on Facebook and Discord to invite listeners to submit questions that they’re afraid to ask, or were afraid to ask when they were starting out in their career, and this week the hosts set out to answer the first handful of them. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

No topic was off-limits, from technical to interpersonal… Questions include strategies for overcoming introversion to excel in networking and finding more gigs, the importance of owning your mistakes (and not playing the blame game), practical advice for whether or not to bring personal equipment to jobs, improving mix confidence, virtual sound checks, balancing technical and soft/people skills, and more.

They also address broader issues such as effective sales strategies for project managers (and the technicians who love them), and the significance of value over price in client relations. The episode is filled with practical tips, industry insights, and personal anecdotes aimed at helping audio professionals succeed in their careers.

The hosts received plenty of questions; in fact, enough for another round in a future episode, but they’re still asking for more! If you’ve got a question you’ve always wanted to ask, email it to the at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com or send a voice memo at http://speakpipe.com/s2n, and we may feature it in a future episode!)

Episode Links:
Download Sean’s “Cheatsheet”
Signal To Noise Facebook Group
Signal To Noise Discord Server
Episode 309 Transcript

Connect with the community on the Signal To Noise Facebook Group and Discord Server. Both are spaces for listeners to create to generate conversations around the people and topics covered in the podcast — we want your questions and comments!

Also please check out and support The Roadie Clinic, Their mission is simple. “We exist to empower & heal roadies and their families by providing resources & services tailored to the struggles of the touring lifestyle.”

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

Want to be a part of the show? If you have a quick tip to share, or a question for the hosts, past or future guests, or listeners at home, we’d love to include it in a future episode. You can send it to us one of two ways:

1) If you want to send it in as text and have us read it, or record your own short audio file, send it to signal2noise@prosoundweb.com with the subject “Tips” or “Questions”

2) If you want a quick easy way to do a short (90s or less) audio recording, go to https://www.speakpipe.com/S2N and leave us a voicemail there.

Transcript

Episode 309 - Questions We're Afraid to Ask

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 for the latest news and product information.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green

[00:00:58] Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss. With me as always, the Q to my A Mr. Sean Walker. What's up?

[00:01:07] Sean Walker: What's up, dude?

[00:01:08] Andy Leviss: You know, not too much. Just hanging out, catching up. Uh, it is full on winter here. I was not ready for that so fast.

[00:01:16] Sean Walker: You guys got snow yet?

[00:01:17] Andy Leviss: we got a little bit, nothing sticking, but we got a, we got flurries now and then,

[00:01:20] Sean Walker: right, dude. Looking like a winter wonderland. I like it,

[00:01:23] Andy Leviss: yeah, I know.

We got those and we just, like, two weekends ago was like 65 on Saturday, and then that the next day it was like 30, which is not okay.

[00:01:33] Sean Walker: man. We don't get swings like that here in, in the Pacific Northwest. That,

[00:01:36] Andy Leviss: Yeah. You just get like gray and crappy all the time.

[00:01:38] Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

totally. A hundred percent. Yeah, And then every once in a while we get a break of sun and then every other one's a while, uh, break of snow and then it's like back to just gray.

[00:01:48] Andy Leviss: yeah. Just, just that, just enough of a tease.

[00:01:51] Sean Walker: Right.

Totally.

[00:01:52] Andy Leviss: well, so you had, um, credit where it's due. We, we have an episode idea That was your idea this time. 'cause what folks don't know is like, we often, everybody assumes I'm the smart one with all the good ideas. The

[00:02:02] Sean Walker: You are.

[00:02:04] Andy Leviss: Yeah. But the secret behind the scene is, some of the best episode ideas are ones that Sean like, just text me in at like weird hours.

Like, yo dude, I had a great idea for an episode topic. And then

[00:02:12] Sean Walker: I mean, tell the truth. Tell the truth. What did I actually say? I was like, yo, man, I was thinking about you in the shower, and uh, here's this idea I got. He was like, what the fuck did you just say to me? And I was like, you know how you're in the shower, your shampoo and your brainstorming? You're like, oh man, this and that, and this and that.

And he was like, all right, that's better,

[00:02:30] Andy Leviss: yeah. I was like, I'm not gonna kink shame, but I'm just gonna kink ask why.

[00:02:35] Sean Walker: Yeah.

[00:02:36] Andy Leviss: Like, I'm glad somebody's thinking about me in the shower. I just, it, I never, I never expected it.

[00:02:41] Sean Walker: Not like that. Not like that. You just know it's that it's that time of day where you're not fully fired up, fully caffeinated, and you're just kinda like

minds wandering. You know what I mean?

[00:02:49] Andy Leviss: Yeah, so, so I dunno, do you wanna, do you wanna tell folks what, what your pitch was for, uh, what we're gonna, what we're gonna blatter on about for this hour?

[00:02:56] Sean Walker: No, you can do that.

[00:02:58] Andy Leviss: Awesome. Uh, so basically Sean's idea was that like, we often get like, questions or like when we do some of these like random topical episodes, a lot of the feedback we get from you all is like, oh man, you answered a question that I was like, I've been afraid of asking.

I'm so glad you talked about it. Or like, we all get in the business and like I, when we're all chatting on the Discord, there's always those questions that everybody has, but nobody wants to be the person to ask. So we threw it out to both the Discord and the Facebook group and basically said, look, let's take the whole approach of, the only stupid question is the question that you don't ask.

So either if you've got a question you've been afraid to ask, 'cause you know, you just don't wanna feel silly and assume that everybody else knows the answer. Or if you've got a question that earlier in your career you were afraid to ask and now you wish you had or you wanna like, encourage other people to ask, throw it at us.

We're gonna kind of put together a whole list. We'll put 'em in the little salad spinner, you know, flip 'em around, pull out a card, virtually speaking, and answer just a pile of random questions on audio tech, business, uh, the psychology of sound in business. Yeah,

[00:04:04] Sean Walker: all kinds of stuff.

[00:04:05] Andy Leviss: So we gotta, and we got, apparently I learned the trick with y'all is if I just say, Hey, if you've got questions, send them in.

Everybody says like, oh, I'll send something in later. But if I actually tag y'all and say, don't think about it, just ask a question quick and send it to us, then we get awesome questions. So I appreciate y'all sending these in. And if you've got more, you know, drop what you're doing right now, hit pause, email it to us, uh, uh, signal to noise at ProSoundWeb dot com, uh, or you know, you can go to speakpipe.com/s twon and leave a voice memo with one and we can cut that into the episode.

And we will, as long as questions keep coming in on this, we'll do this periodically 'cause.

We had some awesome questions and sometimes you don't want to hear us slather on, on what we want to talk about. So let us know what you want us to talk about.

[00:04:49] Sean Walker: totally. I,

I got the idea because I, I, don't know if you guys have, I dunno if we've met or not. I've met a lot of you, but I'm the guy that asked all the stupid questions, right? Like fearlessly just, Hey man, tell me about that nonsense. And, you know, they gave me half a podcast for that shit. So don't be afraid to ask the stupid questions. I also came to find that when I chatted with, let's say, the people that I thought I would've been embarrassed to ask the stupid questions, they were like, fuck, man, me too. I was thinking the same thing. And so I was like, oh man. I bet this isn't just a me, I bet this is everybody in our whole, maybe the whole world, maybe it's not even just our industry.

Maybe it's the whole world feels like this. But, so I thought, you know, let's just, let's just go, let's just get to rip it and some get some answers done. Um, also got a killer episode. I haven't talked about Andy yet or talked about with Andy yet, but I'm gonna start talking about money. I'm gonna start talking about how to make everybody more money.

I'm on, I'm on this, I'm on this business flop. I'm gonna start talking about how to make all of you guys more fricking money.

[00:05:56] Andy Leviss: I, I

dig

[00:05:57] Sean Walker: the overall theme of every fricking question we got was ultimately, how do I make more money? How do I get hired?

How do I get better? How do I get better with people?

Like how do I make more money?

[00:06:07] Andy Leviss: because even at the end of the day, how do I make my mix sound better eventually translates down to so that I make more money.

[00:06:13] Sean Walker: Yeah, Yeah, yeah,

Yeah.

I didn't see one question that was like, yo, man, I'm making too much money. I don't know what to do with all this money and I'm going on vacation. Right.

[00:06:24] Andy Leviss: Yeah. There, there's a, there's a couple questions along the lines of like, where the answer is. You should probably go on vacation, but, uh, we'll, we'll get to that in due time. Uh, I do you wanna, you've got the list there too. Do you wanna pick, uh, one to start with?

[00:06:36] Sean Walker: Oh, don't threaten

[00:06:37] Andy Leviss: And I will, one thing I'll say is we gave people the option to be anonymous or not everybody did sign names, but I think for the sake of just keeping it clean, we're not gonna give like names with the questions.

'cause that's not, that's not important. And some of these are people asking the questions. Some of these are people asking questions they used to have that they want to suggest other folks. So I said, let's just keep 'em all anonymous, if that works for you, Sean.

[00:06:59] Sean Walker: Yeah, man. Absolutely. Alright, so actually the first three on here I think are, are killer. And I will, I will, I'll go with these guys. So the first one was, I'm terrible at interpersonal networking. What's the best way to find work? Or does being an introvert just mean I'm doomed? what an awesome fricking

[00:07:24] Andy Leviss: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:25] Sean Walker: question. So I would say that if you're an introvert, the best way to find work is to get outta your comfort zone. Like I, I, I don't know how to sit any easier. You're gonna have to put on your big girl or big boy pants and go meet people. 'cause that's how work is done in this industry. You don't have to be a number one outgoing sunshine bubble, but like, you gotta be cool, whatever that means to you. And you gotta go meet people, whether that's virtually or in person or whatever. Like there's a ton of websites right now. There are some great ones, you know what I mean? Like gigs and other things where you can go get work, sign up, but. Dude, I was, you know, talking with Nikki at Gig, it's like they're even doing the same thing.

They got a vibe check thing they're doing where you can record a little video, right?

Because it fricking matters, dude. It's not what you know, it's who you are. Also that matters, right? I I, I will speak for myself and I bet Andy's not far off. Almost all of my work that I've had over the last several decades is 'cause people like me,

[00:08:42] Andy Leviss: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:43] Sean Walker: there are fucking way better engineers than me on the planet way.

Most of you li, most of you listening to this, are probably better engineers than I am. But I will out nice you every day to the client and they will hire me over you because of that. And I do a good job. I'm not saying I'm not a bad in shit, right? I'm just saying like, I, I'm not thinking I'm the hottest shit since sliced bread, dude.

I'm just like, I will out nice you and out customer service you every day. And you need to keep up with that because you know what, the top 1% of engineers that now, because I've been blessed to be a part of this podcast, they all have in common. They're nice as shit, man. Every one of them. Every single one of them. And I don't, I don't know them all. Right. Like, I, I'm

not saying I know 'em all. I'm saying like, like, let's take for example, uh, at Nam I rolled up to Pooch, don't know, the guy doesn't know anything about me, just a stranger walking up to him at front of house while he was trying to do the thing. I was like, Hey man, tell me about this rig that got you freaking mixed on.

He was like, oh dude, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? He

was super nice and super cool. He wasn't like, you know, snooty or whatever. Right. Same with a bunch of people in our, in our Discord server, right. Ryan Aram, Brian. Right. They're all a-list fricking superstar technicians and super cool and happy to share their information. So like take take the note dude. Be super cool. Uh, anything else to add to that, Andy?

[00:10:10] Andy Leviss: No, that's pretty much it. Like that's the one thing I was gonna say is that it, if you're in an area where you can't do in person like that, networking online is great. Like, I mean, we've all gotten gigs and like found gigs and seen people get gigs like through our discord or like you said, through gigs and like other websites like that.

Um, I think those are all awesome. Uh, yeah, and I mean, I think like, there's actually another question in here that I wanna, that is, is kind of an offshoot of this to go a little more in detail on other things, which is that we had somebody ask if we wanted to like. Or if we could talk about anything, soft skills, like how to manage your boss, how to quickly become friendly with new, uh, new crew and clients.

Like just how to send emails like for business. Like how to ask for feedback, um, and how to ask for help, especially when you're worried it's gonna make you look dumb. And I feel like those are like, you know, four or five different related questions. I think all spin off of that same subject while we're on it.

[00:11:07] Sean Walker: I'm trying to find that question so I can, I can read it. Is it, what page is it on?

[00:11:11] Andy Leviss: Uh, it starts out also anything soft skills

[00:11:14] Sean Walker: Oh, yeah. How to manage your boss. How to quickly become

friendly with

new crew or clients. How to send an

email, uh, what to do when you screw up and how to ask for help, especially when it makes you look dumb. Okay. So I would say, I'm gonna start in the middle of that question. What to do when you screw up? Own it.

[00:11:32] Andy Leviss: Yep.

[00:11:33] Sean Walker: own it. Like own it. Like it's your fucking bank account, dude. Hey man, I'll fucked that up. Or I screwed that up, or whatever, like, excuse my language. But we're all, we're all adults here, right?

Like, Hey, I screwed that up, blah, blah, blah, blah. How do we fix it? What's going on? Like, go to the person that knows how to fix it, or whoever's in charge, or who, you know, like you know on the team who needs to help you fix this thing, right?

But like, own it. Own it quickly and go directly to who can help you solve this problem. And it may not be your manager or crew lead. It may be the other. Audio person on the staff or whatever, like, go get it done quickly,

man. I will tell you what, a hundred times out of a hundred people will be like, oh, let's go fix it right now.

Boom. And they'll do thanks for, thanks for getting that sorted. I've never, ever, ever had a case where I screwed something up, owned it, and went to somebody to say, Hey man, I need you to help me fix this. Where they were pissed and I was in big trouble. I may have gotten a sideways look. You, you know what I mean?

There's, there's definitely a, like, really bud, but

like, nobody thinks you're a dumbass. Nobody. Right. We've all made mistakes and we're literally, I hate to use a Microsoft term 'cause I sit in corporate so much, but like, we're failing upwards, bro. We're just like screwing it up until we do a good job.

Right? So own it. Because if you don't own it, if you try to sneak away, you try to like, oh, I, that wasn't me. Or I don't know. Then something catastrophic will happen on the show. It will be your fault.

Nobody will know. And then they'll know they can't trust you. 'cause they'll be like, dude, when this other guy's on the show, things get fucked up when he's not there. They don't. Or gal, right. I, I'm

not, you know what I mean? But like that, just own it. And then you'll learn, you'll know you won't make the mistake again. They will know, they can trust you. They'll know like, Hey man, every once in a while, he'll b something up. But he but she owns it. Right? It's like, boom, he owns it, she owns it, whatever.

Like they own it. They, we

fix it. We move on. I'm glad to have them on my crew. I'll take a person like that on my crew all day, dude.

You know what I mean? Nobody's perfect.

[00:13:27] Andy Leviss: I'm gonna throw in one other question that somebody gave us that ties right into this before we get back to the rest of this, which is, how do you know when it's your fault or someone else's? And how do you approach the subject when you're pretty sure it's not you, but you're not a hundred percent?

Which I think my answer for that is, first of all, it doesn't fucking matter. I

[00:13:45] Sean Walker: A hundred percent.

[00:13:46] Andy Leviss: think, I think that's the key. Is it? It doesn't matter whose fault it's,

[00:13:49] Sean Walker: I will, I will. Charge forward on that with the same intensity I just did in the last question. it's it's fricking personal responsibility, man. It's, it's integrity, it's honesty. Just be honest man. Be candid with people. Don't try to hide behind things. Be transparent and candid. Just go, Hey man, I'm not sure who's fault this is.

Right. Go again. You're going back to whoever can fix this, right? Or

needs to know about it. Hey, I don't know whose fault or whatever, but that doesn't matter. Here's the situation we need to solve. Let's get it solved so we can move on. We can, we can play the blame game at the bar after the show, but right now we gotta get this sorted.

'cause I don't know if you guys know, this shows at eight and they're not holding doors because you care who's fricking fault it was. Right.

[00:14:30] Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's in, in theater. Honestly, it doesn't always happen in professional theater. 'cause at the end of the day, in a lot of professional, like, particularly commercial theater, once the show's done, it's done and everybody's scattered to the winds. But a thing they teach in a lot of college theater programs especially, is what they call the postmortem.

Where after the show closes all the, all the creatives, all the design teams and directors and like the technical director and all that get together and just go through like, Hey, what did we learn from that one? And, you know, what worked, what didn't? And it's, that's a helpful time and that's a helpful place to go back and figure out, okay, we dealt with the mistake.

How do we make sure that goes smoother? That doesn't happen next time. And that's when to do it.

When, when you're raising, raising head speed to doors, not the time to, to worry about, like, you want to find the what or the why to fix the problem, but not to a fixed blame.

[00:15:25] Sean Walker: A hundred percent dude. When we started doing, uh, postmortems at my company, and we do it for every single show that we do. And they don't have to be super long, dude, just, you know, a few minutes depending on the show, right? Or, or sometimes longer. We grew our company 74% year over year. When we started doing that, most people are stoked to have 10% growth. But when we were like, how do we mess this up? How can we do it better? And we started crushing for our

clients compared to like, oh yeah, we did fine. Or, yeah, okay. It was okay, but like, no man fanatically. How do we do better than last time? It was, it's transformational. I, I implore you to do the same thing in your own work, right?

We're just talking about business at different scales, right? If you're a freelancer, you're a business. And if you're not thinking about your career like a business, you're already fucked beyond belief,

right? If you're just thinking, I'm gonna go to do a couple of gigs and I'm, I'm doing that gig worker life, like, that's cool, but then don't be bummed out when you don't have any money, right?

Like, you're a business man, you got profit, you got loss, you got expenses, you got, you know. A bank account at the end that's either full or not full. And you gotta go pay attention to those things, man. And think about like, if you're getting a bunch of calls, why, what am I doing different right now that's got me a bunch of calls?

Or is it just the season or is it just the time? And if you're not getting a bunch of calls, what changed? Right? If you were getting calls and not getting calls, what changed? What did I do differently? Did I, am I burnt out? Like do I need a fricking break? Am I just crabby 'cause I'm burnt to the ground and try not to, you know, try not to just lose my noodle, you know what I mean?

[00:17:02] Andy Leviss: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:03] Sean Walker: Um, so, you know, take a, take a break when you need to too. Uh, all right, back to the middle of this question. How to quickly become friendly with new crew or clients? Dude, I'm gonna go back to my old mantra. Don't be a dick.

Don't be a dick. Like in this business. And, and it happens to a lot of, a lot of technicians that are in technical trades that is not unique to audio or, or av, right? But you get to know so much about what we're doing. Like most of us listening, I bet have forgotten more about audio in the last five fricking minutes than most people on the planet will ever know in their entire lives, right? Like candidly, the amount of stuff we have to know to go to work every day is mind numbing. Just to go do an average job, right? To do a great job. You're like an encyclopedia of audio knowledge, right? Guess what, man? Nobody cares. They just want the job done. And because they don't care, meaning the clients and that kinda stuff, typically speaking, like they don't care. You know what? What your low variance, blah, blah, blah.

I did this nerd thing. Like they don't care. Just make it good for them, right? can feel like they don't care, but that's on you, man. Like be fricking cool. Don't be prickly. It's not their job to make you feel good. It's not their job to hold your hand and tell you what an awesome job you did. Like you're going to work to get paid to go do a service. Go do a great service. Be kind, be thoughtful, like go above and beyond. Anybody that's listening that has not read the book, unreasonable Hospitality needs to go do that, right? Freaking now. Hit pause, read the book, resume when you're done. Unreasonable hospitality, that's all we're doing, man. You can rent black or brown boxes at hundreds of thousands of locations around the world. Why you? Because you, that's why you, right? So you're building trust, you're building rapport, and you're doing it with kindness and customer service, and you're doing it quickly. And, and that's, that's it, man. How to send an email is the same thing. Be professional, be kind, be courteous. Same applies to the the next part, which is ask for feedback.

Go ask for it. You know what I mean? Go to your, go to your manager and say, Hey man, just wanna check in. See how I did, you know, make sure everything was up to you, up to what you were hoping for, and, and see if there's anything I can change for next time.

[00:19:26] Andy Leviss: Is there anything you wish I had done different

[00:19:28] Sean Walker: Yeah, dude, what could I do better for you next time?

There's not a single boss, manager, employer, company owner, crew, lead in the planet. That's like, oh, this guy's always asking for feedback, blah, blah, blah. Every one of us is like, oh yeah, that guy's always asking for feedback. I know that I can always keep him or her or whatever, totally ripping, get 'em, do what I want to do, how I want it done, right?

Every company's got their own vibe on what they want done, how they want it done, right? Anybody that's worked for, you know what I mean? Any, any multitude of different companies, they're not the same. They're all very different, and, and, and that's okay, but like you gotta know how to work for each company, what they want, what they expect, what the standards are. The only way to know is ask nobody. Nobody will be bummed out that you asked, you know?

[00:20:10] Andy Leviss: Yeah, and I'll throw something out there that can help in both directions of both getting useful feedback and how to ask for it and, and or, or asking for feedback and making sure that the feedback you're getting is useful is sometimes it can be a bit much and a bit too open-ended to say, Hey, do you have any feedback for me?

But if you go to somebody and say, Hey, are there like one or two things that like I could have done different that would've made it better for you or for your

[00:20:34] Sean Walker: Totally.

Yes. Be

[00:20:35] Andy Leviss: a, I mean, yeah. I mean that's actually funnily enough that that's a, a trick that a friend gave me when I was having a kid. Was he came up and said, Hey, can I give you one piece of advice before your kid gets here?

And I said, sure. And she said, everybody is gonna come up to you asking if they can offer you advice. Give them one. 'cause if you ask them for one thing, it'll be concrete, concrete, concise, and they'll give you the most important thing. He's like, and that was my one. And I find that helps in so many aspects other than being parents.

But for the folks who are parents of like, new parents,

[00:21:09] Sean Walker: Oh my God. Totally, dude. 'cause everybody, everybody's giving you advice, right? Like blah,

blah,

[00:21:14] Andy Leviss: and it makes them, it makes them think about what's, what's actually the most important one. That way they don't give you the laundry list of all the silly things.

[00:21:20] Sean Walker: Totally.

[00:21:20] Andy Leviss: They're like, if there was one thing that I wish everybody had told me,

[00:21:24] Sean Walker: Yep.

[00:21:25] Andy Leviss: you know it's sleep. When they sleep. Yeah.

[00:21:28] Sean Walker: Oh my God, dude. The sleep. Jeez Louise.

[00:21:31] Andy Leviss: tells you that you know it. You never do it and you

[00:21:33] Sean Walker: Yeah, right. A hundred percent. 'cause you're like, finally it's something to

myself, I need five fricking minutes to myself. You know what I mean?

[00:21:39] Andy Leviss: The other thing I wanted to flag on here in all of this is that there is a key difference, particularly when it comes to clients, but with other crew too. Between being friendly and being friends

[00:21:51] Sean Walker: Oh yeah. A hundred percent.

[00:21:53] Andy Leviss: and friendly is good. You want to be the friendly, helpful person, but like, you're not looking to be besties.

And often that's gonna be inappropriate. Now, look, you, you may end up having a client that you become besties with. Totally cool. But that's not the goal. That's not what you're going for. And you need to be careful not to cross that line, inappropriate in the wrong situation. Where then, then when stuff goes wrong, stuff gets weird.

[00:22:15] Sean Walker: Correct. Yeah. Yeah. You're a hundred percent correct and I, I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear. I wasn't

[00:22:20] Andy Leviss: No, not not,

[00:22:21] Sean Walker: barbecue together. I just meant like,

[00:22:22] Andy Leviss: no, not at all. I just, I just wanted to say that for, for other folks and because the person who asked this questions phrased it exactly the right way and me being the nerd about language precision, I am, I wanted to put that out there for folks.

[00:22:35] Sean Walker: totally dude.

[00:22:36] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And it's funny, I'm actually kind of real proud of everybody who put qu 'cause a lot of the questions were along these lines are like, um, uh, where we had one here who was basically like, Hey, why don't we spend equal time and effort focusing on the human interactions and psychologies we do on the tech stuff.

We all love the nerd speak. I'm no different. But if you can't interact with human beings, you know, what, what is it all for? So,

[00:23:00] Sean Walker: That's a another like kind of right on the same thing we're talking about.

We are in the people business. We're in the people business. Alright? Like forget the gear, forget the nerd shit. We're in the people business and ultimately in the customer service business. Right? That, that's it, that's all there is to it. Like I said, just a minute ago, you can rent fricking pa from thousands of places. Why would they rent from you? And it ain't your price, right? It ain't your price. Oh, oh. It was just, oh, it found some place cheaper. No, they didn't. They found somebody that would service the shit out of them for the same, more or less price.

Like, price is not always the first option. And anybody that's like saying price is the only option or the only differentiator is not like differentiating themselves enough. You know what I mean? Like if I, if I need somebody to do RF coordination. I got somebody that wants to bill me here, here in America, the day rates are skewed.

We got a day rate question. I'll go into that a little

more detail, but like, if I got somebody that's, you know, trying to bill me five bucks and somebody that's trying to bill me 500 bucks, man, I know that the person trying to bill me 500 bucks is better at this job than the person billing me $5. I know.

Because of their confidence, they're gonna have more experience and you can talk to somebody in, in five fricking minutes, figure it out, right? So every corporate show we do needs RF coordination. Sometimes the level of coordination needed, we can just do with an A two. And you know, you got like 4, 8, 12 channels of wireless and a five pack of free speak. I don't know what everybody else's thoughts are, but all my A twos can rip through that in a few minutes. Flat, no big deal. Like they're laughing at it while they're also doing a two shit. You know what I mean? If you had 40 channels of fricking RF and you know, a hundred channels of calm and blah, blah, blah, like that's somebody's whole ass job and I'm calling. Andy or somebody else that can do it, and I'm paying for it and I know what I know I'm paying for it, right? Like what's the scope, what's the scale of things that you need and, and you know, price accordingly. 'cause great talent is not the same price as crappy talent, right?

Just like we're, uh, you know, a lot of us are into cars and stuff, so that's pretty easy.

But like Kia and Bentley are not the same price, but they are both four wheels an engine, A

transmission doors, seats drive A to B, right? It's not the same experience, it's not the same price, it's not the same customer base, right? So just figure out, like, the first thing I would do if I were starting again is figure out what I want to do, right?

What do I want to do? And who are the people that are doing that? Who are my customers, right? What does this person need? What do they value? What do they desire? What are the outcomes they're looking for? And, and we all know that, right? If you go to something simple like concerts, man, you know, local concerts.

Let's say you're starting out as a concert tech and you're like, okay man, I'm trying to go from bars or clubs to working for a regional company doing concerts or whatever. Like, what do these people need, man? They need somebody that can be on time. Somebody that can freaking take a shower in the morning and not stink out the truck when you get in there.

Somebody that can like be responsible and reliable, that does a good job at audio. It doesn't even have to be a stunning job, just good enough. Everything's just fricking fine. Just fine is the bar with responsibility, right? But if your, if your goal is top 1% corporate work for presidents and popes just fine.

Is not the bar just fine, is not okay. Right? You have to be

un flipping believable while also being super fricking cool, right? So figure out how hard do you wanna work at this man? Because it's a job, right?

Like it seemed cool to just get into it. This is a fricking job, man.

Treat it like a job. Get up in the morning. Get your head right, go to work. Quit fricking drinking so much. Nobody wants to be the drunk on the crew. Nobody wants you hung over and smelling like booze when you show up. Like get to fricking work and treat it like an adult and like a job. And your income will five x in the next 12 to

18 months.

[00:27:02] Andy Leviss: Like I throw at his name jokingly, that if you want that, you gotta be Brian. But like seriously, look at Brian like he's a cool dude to hang around. He is a fun dude to talk to. He's incredibly good at his job, like. If there's somebody to like, shape yourself after, like in the mold, like don't start like growing the beard in the ponytail.

Like Brian, don't, don't cln that, but like, like aspirationally I think doing what Brian does is, is the way to do it. And like, but, and some of that comes naturally. Some of that is stuff he's learned and, you know, and, and worked on over the years, but,

[00:27:35] Sean Walker: Totally man.

Totally. And

I've never met Brian o other than on the, you know, doing

the, doing the podcast thing, but I don't, I don't know him in person. I have no idea what he charges, but you know what, I do know if I needed a top 1%, the fricking Pope is in town. I need that guy. I'm calling Brian,

dude, or, or you know, Pete, or, you know, I gotta,

there's other people who call, but like, I'm not like, man, I wonder if Brian would do a good job.

Like I know he'll do a good

job, right? You're a brand. He's created a brand for himself. Same with Ryan, same with Aram, right? All those

guys have created a brand for themselves, whether they realize it or not. You need to do the same thing for you. You are a brand and you're a company, whether you want to admit it or not. The sooner you admit it to yourself, the sooner you can get to be making lots of money. Consistently and lots is relative, right? Lots for you. Wherever you are in the

world, whatever you're doing, right? I'm not, I'm not saying that the actual number is the most important part, I just mean whatever, whatever's in it for you.

And this is like, this is something to figure. Personally, like, dude, sit for a few minutes in silence and and figure it out. What do you want? What do you need? Where do you want to go in life, man? Like, other than just, I wanna mix great rock

shows or corporate shows or theater shows or whatever. Like, are you a workaholic?

Are you willing to do what it takes to get there? Or do you want some balance? Because let me tell you guys, let me just be real honest. There's no fucking work life balance. If you want to be ripping successful. All of us that are ripping successful gave up a whole bunch of stuff and left a whole bunch of balance in the wake, and that was the obsession and focus that we had to get there. There's no such thing as work-life balance and mega success. You can have work-life balance once you've got mega success, but you don't have it while you're getting there. You're not, you're not going to the pub, you're not freaking, you know what I mean? Going on a hundred thousand dates and doing all this stuff and like. You are just laser focused on getting better at your job, figuring out how to market yourself and get in front of the right people going and meeting people, like you're just obsessive about it. And that's how you, that's how you get there. That's how you go from like, oh man, I got a few gigs and I, one of the questions we got was, why does everyone have two jobs?

There's an audio. You know, why do few people feel the need to give their unsolicited opinions? Not everybody does have two jobs, man. Those are either people that have a job they like and dabble in audio on the side because they like audio and they think it's neat or they have not committed or, or they wanna do audio full-time and they have not committed the intensity and give of shits it takes to go win.

At this. The people, we have a lot of questions about how to go on tour. Fucking get better, be obsessed. Get in front of the right people and do not leave them alone until they put you on tour. Call 'em or text 'em or email 'em every other day. Hey, man, I'm ready to go. Hey man, when can I go? Hey man, blah, blah, blah.

You know what I mean? Like, this is not a passive, this is not passive, man. This is active. You gotta get up in the morning and get ready to go and get to ripping. You know what I mean? And if you don't wanna do that, if you want to like spend more time at the pub than you do this, like, that's cool. I'm not, I'm not judging you, but you gotta understand that's a trade off.

And you're, you're saying, I don't want go work that hard and I'm cool to, could just kind of do whatever I'm gonna do and that's okay. But you gotta know that's a trade off. Right? My point is not to give people a hard time about gonna the pub. My point is no, that's a trade off. And don't wonder why you're not on a top one world tour, uh, because you didn't try to go get there and you're just wondering how to get there, right?

Like go get in front of the people that do tours, right? That's solo tech. That's Claire, that's SES, it's a couple other smaller shops, but like. You know, we, we probably have an entire page of people asking how to get on tour and, you know, we can hire somebody we, we not hire, we can have somebody come on like,

you know, Ryan or whatever that does tours.

But I'll tell you, just from a business standpoint, go get in front of the people that are doing tours. Show up, call, email, text, show up, go to their websites, show up at the shop. Hey man, I'm so and so. I'm doing, I do, I, my, my best clients use me for this, this, and this, but I can figure out pretty much anything.

How can I help you?

You know what I mean? And, and that, that would like, do not give up. Be relentless. Alright.

Soapbox off. Go ahead

[00:32:07] Andy Leviss: cool. I've two, two points I just wanted to make before we go onto the next question. One that occurred to me as we were talking about like price and all that is that the thing to remember in all of this, and really in any business is that price is part of the equation, but price isn't what anybody's actually looking at.

It's value. Any price can be a good price. Any fee can be a good fee. If the value I'm getting for that price I'm paying is worth it to me. So I may need, I may need like, you know, something mid, a mid-level, a mid price point piece of gear or a midday rate kind of person for a job, and that's what I need.

So that's valuable to me in that gig. I may need like that super top tier. Like five figure day rate, you know, person for a specific job. And in that case, that's what's valuable to me. And it's about figuring out where you can be of value or what's of value to you and making that worth it. It's not just about the dollar figure in isolation.

Yep.

[00:33:05] Sean Walker: A hundred percent right, because without that dollar figure attached to something, it's got no value. It's just a figure, right? Like back to the car example. If somebody tried to bill you a hundred grand for a Kia, you'd be pissed. If you got a Bentley for a hundred grand, you'd think you won the fucking lottery.

[00:33:22] Andy Leviss: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:24] Sean Walker: So it's like, it's value, like you said, you know what I mean? You

[00:33:27] Andy Leviss: Yeah. But, but on, on the other hand, like if I'm doing something that really needs a Kia and isn't gonna work in that Bentley, then I'm gonna be a little cranky If I've spent the money on the Bentley, that doesn't do me any good.

[00:33:37] Sean Walker: A hundred percent. A hundred percent, dude.

[00:33:40] Andy Leviss: And then the other thing I want to do just before he blows me up, 'cause I know the person who asked that two jobs question and I know where he is coming from, so. Your answer was valid, but that was not actually the question he was asking. The question he was asking was the old, was about the old joke of everybody on a production site, on a theater show, on a concert, whatever, always has two jobs, their job and audio.

Why does everybody think they're an audio expert,

[00:34:04] Sean Walker: Ah, got it. Thanks

[00:34:07] Andy Leviss: is not invalidate you? The question you answered was also a very important question to answer, but, and,

[00:34:12] Sean Walker: got thick skin. You don't, you don't gotta sugar

coat at me. I, I fucked it up. It's okay.

My bad. My bad, dude. My

[00:34:17] Andy Leviss: and I mean, I've, I mean, I, I, I think that's one of those questions that just like the Tootsie, the Tootsie Pop Owl is, the world will never know.

I, I think everybody thinks they know audio. Everybody's got an opinion. I the most I can think of is that just we all listen to music. We all listen to audio. We all know what we like and don't like, and it's all very, it's a very subjective field that we're in. So everybody's got opinions, everybody. Knows what they want, like end of the day, like you can think lighting is good or bad, but if you can see everybody on stage that you need to see at the right time, the lighting was fine.

People tend not to have strong, as strong an opinion about that as they do about audio. 'cause everybody knows whether something sounds good to them or not.

[00:35:04] Sean Walker: Yep. Exactly,

[00:35:06] Andy Leviss: Um,

[00:35:08] Sean Walker: Alright,

what's the next one, man? Your turn.

[00:35:09] Andy Leviss: Uh, spin a little spinner. Uh, do we wanna keep going like philosophical or do you wanna go a little more technical?

[00:35:18] Sean Walker: I don't care, man. Whatever you wanna do. Whatever you, whatever you feeling.

[00:35:20] Andy Leviss: Let's, let's, let's pivot a little technical for a bit. Um, and 'cause I feel like this is one that you'll enjoy answering. Uh, how do I feel confident in my mix and not second guess my way into a sloppy sound? And then we had a couple other, other similar questions along the lines of how do I practice and improve my mix without having to do it all on a show or when I'm not getting enough shows because I need to work on my chops.

[00:35:45] Sean Walker: Virtual sound check. Uh, okay. So did you want to answer those questions or were you asking me to answer those questions?

[00:35:52] Andy Leviss: I'm happy to ask questions and let you talk. I talk so much.

[00:35:55] Sean Walker: All right. Uh,

how do

I feel confident in my mix and not second guess my way into a sloppy sound? Man, I hate to tell you this, but we all have a little imposter syndrome running for our mixes.

All of us, all of us have a little imposter syndrome for our mixes. The cha, the, the challenge is don't let that overtake you, right? Don't let that drive you. Be humble enough to ask questions and try to always get better, but realize that if you got hired to do it, they already think you're good, man. Right? If you, by and large, if you got hired to go mix for somebody, they already heard your work and they already think it's good. So don't second guess yourself. But when you're talking to your peers, don't be a dick. Right? When you're a, when you ask for help, right? Call people and go, Hey man, here's this board tip of this last show.

What do you think? How can I do it? What can I do better? Give, like Andy just said about advice. What are the three things or two things or whatever, like what are the two or three things that really stand out that I could level up right now, and how do I fix those? And all of us would be like, oh yeah, man, this, that, and this, right? Done? Or, ah, sounds great. Okay, cool. You know what I mean? Uh, and the other thing to do to answer the other question would be virtual soundcheck. How do I practice my mixes? Not on a show, virtual soundcheck, record one of your shows, and then virtual soundcheck it or. Use a DAW Man, Reaper Pro Tools, whatever you got. It's not your console of choice,

but the theories and the practices still apply,

[00:37:27] Andy Leviss: Yep. And pretty much all of them you can lay out to look and feel like a console,

you know?

[00:37:31] Sean Walker: totally. And, and I do things different in pro tools than I do on a live sound console, but that's only because I can, right? Because I've got more flexibility in pro tools. But if you gave yourself the same constraints, let's say you're, let's say you spent a lot of time on an X 32, right? That's a pretty, pretty bare bones desk, but it's got enough to make a mix sound just fricking fine, right? Uh, lay out your DAW session with the same constraints that an X 32 would have,

right? I've got this many buses, I got one stereo output, I got this, that, the other thing. And just practice getting it, getting it going right. What you will find. Is that, and Andy, I will send this document to you so that you can post it to this episode. What you'll find is that you will notice some similarities about where things start to sound good. Right? And if we're talking about music, 'cause that's pretty easy. I would say a lot of, a lot of our audience probably does music instead of corporate. So I won't nerd about lav mics too much. But the

recordings,

[00:38:39] Andy Leviss: that one's harder to practice.

[00:38:40] Sean Walker: sure is dude.

Sure is. But you'll notice like the levels of instruments in the mix will all start to like, when it sounds good, they'll all kind of vibe in a similar place. Right? So for example, what I noticed, and because I'm fucking old, I use a vu meter instead of the peak meters, but you'll find 'em on the peak meters too. On my stereo bus. I prefer my kick drum at a minus three vu. To the stereo bus snare minus five vu to the stereo bus, right? You start making these things where you're like, consistently, when I think this sounds good, this is approximately where it is, right? This is like pies of the Caribbean. The more guidelines than actual rules.

You know what I mean? Like I'm not saying this is where a kick drum goes. Like, that's bullshit. Nobody could tell you that, right? But by and large, when I listen back and go, oh, that mix sounded good, and I start soloing things, I find that to be the case, right? I find that I prefer the bass to be at zero vu vocals, zero vu guitars, minus one to plus one vu someplace.

These are all the stereo bus, right? Toms plus three, like boom, boom, boom. These are personal choices. Try 'em out. Maybe you think it sucks. I don't care. Fucking throw it in the bin. Don't listen to a thing. I say, I don't care. But like, you'll find these things that work for you or don't work for you, right?

Or you'll go, oh man, I listened to this ding dong on this podcast. Try talk about Vu meters. He know what he's talking about. Except, man, I'll tell you what, vocals at zero vu, that's the fucking jam right there. 'cause as soon as I got that going, everything else kind of fell in place. Like you'll find one nugget of this that makes sense for you.

Right? But I hear a lot of, you know, I spent decades in the recording studio trying to figure it out, man, that nobody told me this stuff when I was starting. You know, I had a great mentor, but he wasn't thinking about stuff like this. Like, where do I start in my mix? Right? You know, a lot of us right now have not only a live mix to make front, let's say front of house, right?

You got a front of house mix to make. We've also got a streaming mix to make. Or a record mix to make or a camera mix to make or whatever it is, right? Like you got other places to send this thing. And often when we have to compensate for the pa, we butcher the recording, right? So figure out in virtual sound check what you recording needs to look like, right?

That's a good place to figure out your recording. And these, these numbers that I've been talking about in VU on the stereo bus and work really well for recordings, oftentimes I find I cannot get a live sound desk quite there, right? Like minus three vu kick on a live sound on a QL five or something.

We're on all that that is smashing kick drum, right? But that's what it takes to get the recording to sound dope. So often you've gotta record matrix or something with your groups or buses being sent to it. And they are very different mixes than your live sound mix, right? Because you need very different things in a recording than you do in a live sound mix.

Typically speaking, unless you're blessed enough to have been able to tune the PA and know what you're doing, or have somebody that knows what they're doing to tune it to your mix. So when we start talking about target curves or different things like that, those are super important. If your mix is set specifically right, if you have mixed this into some kind of a curve, it needs to have that on the outputs too, to make it make sense, right? Whereas often recordings don't have that, right, or recordings are pretty flat on the way and the out right digital's pretty fricking boring. So like you gotta make your mix exciting going out to the thing, right? When your clients are like, Hey man, here, here's a, here's a cheater trick for you guys. All right?

Which all you top 10% guys are gonna laugh at me when I say this 'cause duh. But the other ones that are learning, like, you know, bear with me here. Do not send your clients your left right mix. Send them a record mix, right? Get this set up. Send up a set of matrices that you send all your buses to your groups, right?

Your drums group, your kicks group, whatever, and make a specific mix for the recording because the client has no idea what you had to battle through live

to get this done. They have no idea how reverberate the room is, so there's no reverb in the fricking drums or whatever, right? Because it sounded awesome in the room, but that doesn't make it sound awesome on the recording necessarily if the room is horrible.

Right? Or specifically those of you in small rooms

[00:43:06] Andy Leviss: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:06] Sean Walker: where the room is itty bitty and you're like, yeah, man, kick drum and vocal. Got it. Everything else is too loud coming off the stage. Right? Kick drum. Just so somebody can wiggle their ass while they're dancing around, right? But I don't actually need the kick drum. That's not gonna make a good recording.

You know what I mean?

[00:43:22] Andy Leviss: That's, in fact, I was, I was just gonna say that that's kind of one of the conundrums is that the larger venues you play, the more your PA mix and record mix start to come together. They're never gonna be exactly the same.

But, 'cause the bigger the room, the less the stage sound comes into play for the majority of the venue.

[00:43:39] Sean Walker: Yep,

[00:43:40] Andy Leviss: You know, like what, what on an arena show might be your front fill mix might be your whole mix for, you know, for

[00:43:48] Sean Walker: for a 500 cat club. or 200 cat club or something. Yeah, yeah,

[00:43:50] Andy Leviss: Yeah.

[00:43:52] Sean Walker: But that, that's what I would say about practicing your mixing man. And, and, you know, hit, hit me up in the Discord if you wanna nerd about recording and, and how to get those record mixes banging. You know what I mean? With the right tools, man, with the right tools, I can pretty much get a record matrix sounding like a smashing Live record. And, and I'm happy to share those with anybody else that wants to nerd about how to do that. You know what I

mean? Let, let's move on. This isn't the freaking me show today, dude.

[00:44:18] Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, so,

[00:44:19] Sean Walker: question.

[00:44:20] Andy Leviss: well, I was gonna say, the, the other question that's sort of the flip side or the lead into this that we got was, why am I just content with the results I get now and don't do much in my off time to improve? And I think that's a motivation that, like, I, I think part of the answer to that is that we get burnout.

It's, it's like, particularly when, as Sean said, you're like busting yourself and like, you know, you know, grinding the mixed metaphors to, to build a career, it's really easy to have very little time off and in that time off, not want to do anything related to audio. And that's valid too. That's one of the questions that we might save, I think for another episode is.

How to decompress when you're off shows and, and how to, you know, rejoin real life, which we've talked about a bit before in past episodes, but I think we should dive into again at some point. But there, there's that balance to be had and I, I, I mean, you, you need to motivate yourself to, to want to always get better.

And I think, at least for me, I think just the broad, like, well, I just need to improve my mixing can be overwhelming. I know for me, with any project I've had to tackle, whether it's improving my mixing, whether it's working on that, whether it's organizing my office at home. If I look at the big picture, it just becomes that massive overwhelming and like you just don't know where to start, so you just shut down and don't start anywhere.

I think it's helpful to like come off a show and say like, Hey, what was one thing that I got really frustrated that I couldn't figure out at that last show? And let me spend a little time on that one thing. And I think when you parcel stuff out into specific goals or specific projects like that, it both makes it easier to manage and also makes it easier to find time.

Like I can find time to set aside an hour, you know, tomorrow night, you know, before I go to bed and just like, you know, poke it, like, you know, making sure my Toms are, you know, feeling right, vibing write together. But like, if it's like, ah, my, my entire like, you know, rhythm, second mix sucked, that's a little more little harder to, to motivate myself to do.

[00:46:19] Sean Walker: Totally dude. And when you do those like little do sessions or virtual sound check, man, you are going to learn so much. You know what I mean? And you'll figure out, it'll give you like breadcrumbs, I've talked about this way back in the past, but like mixing is all about little breadcrumbs. And when you're trying to like run around the country or the state or the cities and fly around the world or whatever, like what sounds good today?

How do I make it sound good tomorrow? How do I have consistency? Dude, your DAW sessions, you know, like what a kick drum or snare should sound like. If it doesn't sound like that, figure out why,

right? But you can also now visually see for the first time, why does this kick sound like shit, man? Oh, in and out, are polarity reversed, right? Or snare top and bottom. Like, oh, so-and-so said I should do this. Great. Try that. Man, that sounds awesome, man. That sounds like garbage man. That would work for so-and-so in their mix. But that doesn't work for me in my mix, right? Like some of this is very technical. Some of it's just hella objective art, right?

There's a

balance of art and technical, and there's, I'm not gonna say there's no right way, because that's not quite true, but like there's a big sliding scale of what sounds good based on what you needed to do, right? What its purpose is. So, you know, figure out what makes sense for you. And you can do that by yourself with headphones. And for God's sake, go get yourself some good fricking headphones. Like,

[00:47:50] Andy Leviss: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:51] Sean Walker: of the best things I did early in my career is go buy a pair of Sennheiser HD six fifties, right? 600, six fifties. Don't let the fricking internet. It doesn't matter. Buy one, go buy one. Now, uh, the other set that I got recently that was equally as good or better are the, uh, dark matter audio labs, sixes that we got.

Holy shit, bro. Holy shit. But the reason I say that is if you don't know what good sounds like or what things should sound like, you don't know how to make them sound good later. Right? If you've got a pair of HD six fifties, right? They're a couple hundred bucks, two, 300 bucks or whatever, listen to a ton of music, all your favorite music, your podcasts, your everything.

Just live in those things for weeks or months. Tons of different kinds of music. Rock, EDM, jazz, country, whatever, right? Spoken word. Listen to podcasts, listen to fricking books on tape. Whatever. Suddenly you will, you will gear yourself towards, this is what music sounds like. This is what voices sound like, right?

This is what good sounds like. Like first thing is have the end in mind. What does good sound like to you? Right? Those headphones are surprisingly excellent at surprisingly everything right, except a ton of bass. But that's okay. And then when you go to mix a show and shit's too bright, 'cause you know. Three inch horns blasting at you. You'll know like, oh man, PA's too bright today. You're like, you'll hit your track and go, ah, high shelf down. Just let's get it closer to these headphones that I'm used to. Right. Those headphones aren't good live, by the way. 'cause they're open back, so you can't really take 'em to compare like Dave Rat would've said years ago.

Right. But the Sure eat forties are better for that, but like, know what good sounds like so that then you can start twiddling the knobs in front of you to make it what you're, what you remember. Good sounding like from listening to music years ago. Right. Or days ago, minutes ago, hours ago, whatever. Right. Alright. I lost my train of thought. Your turn

[00:49:52] Andy Leviss: Okay. Uh,

[00:49:54] Sean Walker: squirrel.

[00:49:56] Andy Leviss: no. I mean, that's what we do.

I'll, I'll claim that's what we do when we're at our best and folks will tell us in this score that, you know, that's the worst. That's the worst.

[00:50:04] Sean Walker: next

[00:50:04] Andy Leviss: Uh,

[00:50:05] Sean Walker: I buy more audio gear without my wife knowing of it? Uh, and this is a two part question.

[00:50:11] Andy Leviss: Yeah. There, there's the joke, intro, and then the serious part of the question.

[00:50:14] Sean Walker: The joke intro, fuck no, man. Not if you wanna stay on that divorce prevention program, right? Hell no. I, I, I am in absolutely no position to be giving anybody marital and relationship advice, but my thoughts on it are, you're a team man,

and you can't be, you can't be shaft in half the team and think she's gonna be stoked. You know what I mean?

[00:50:38] Andy Leviss: Yeah.

And honestly, if you can't go back with an answer to explain why you bought this and why you, why you needed it, you probably don't need it.

[00:50:46] Sean Walker: Totally. Dude.

Uh, next part of the

[00:50:48] Andy Leviss: you, even if you don't have a husband or wife, pretend you do. If I had to justify this purchase to somebody else, can I, and would I believe myself?

[00:50:57] Sean Walker: If I can't sell it to my wife, how am I gonna sell it to my clients?

[00:51:00] Andy Leviss: Yep.

[00:51:01] Sean Walker: Which brings me to the second part of the question. Should I or shouldn't I bring my own equipment, mixer, mic, et cetera, to a front house job? Uh, I would say by and large, nope. Uh, when you are getting the call for that job, you are absolutely welcome to ask your client, Hey man, are you guys short on anything?

Because I got consoles, mics, you know, wireless, whatever you got. Like, I got a bunch of stuff that's that's available. If you guys are already having to sub rent things or if you're short of anything, I'd be happy to bring it with me and make it way easier so you don't have to run all over town in a truck and pick it up. a super fair, helpful question. A way to approach that, and all of us will appreciate that. Nobody's gonna be pissed about that. But if I call you for a gig and you're like, Hey man, I have to bring my own console. Eat a dick, come and call the next guy. Move on. Like, you have to have your own console to show up.

Nope, not doing it right. We rent gear, that's how we make money. You're not going to, you know what I mean? Unless you're gonna like, Hey, this is a thousand dollars a day console rental, and I'll give it to you for a hundred bucks. Well, maybe let's talk about it. You know what I mean? But like. Be cool dude. Get rid of friction to hire you and figure out how to use more than one console platform. You know what I mean? That's why they don't let me do shows for my own company anymore. 'cause I, you know, I'm fucking too old. Can't do that shit. But, but like, no, you probably should not bring your own equipment, mixer, mic, et cetera, to a front house job. If you have a few things where you're like, man, I just, I just fricking love this thing and it helps so much bring it, but you're not gonna get to bill anybody for it. Right? And it cannot slow down the job. It cannot hold up the process. It cannot be pivotal to you being able to do your job. You know what I mean?

If you're like, Hey, I got this dope compressor I wanna bring for the lead vocal, that's cool, man. Bring it. I don't care.

But

don't, don't fuck, don't fuck up the flow.

[00:52:52] Andy Leviss: Yeah. If you take three hours outta line check, trying to troubleshoot, getting it patched in.

[00:52:55] Sean Walker: Yep. Nope. No. Know the settings, know what you need, know how to get it patched in, get it all done. Nobody, nobody. Needs to know that you had to deal with that. Like it should just be done, right? If you've gotta fuss with it for a while, leave it at home. Nobody's, no, nobody got the time for

[00:53:08] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And like I have, and I mean, as I'm doing fewer, you know, being. Choosier about what gigs I do because I've got, you know, a, a weekday gig now, uh, during tech support. Like I'm going through my closet of stuff I have for gigs, like microphones and stuff and trying to decide what makes sense to hold onto what doesn't.

And like say like, I've got my selection of like drum mics and my like guitar and mic that I like that I will bring on gigs. But it is always, generally when I'm in a, on a gig where I'm in a position to spec mics, I will always ask for those mics from the provider first so that it's all on the up and up.

And then if they can have it, sometimes I'll take subs. Sometimes I'll say, okay, well I have those mics. Would you like, is there room in the budget to sub rent them from me instead? Or if I just bring him along? Is that cool? You know, I'm

[00:53:55] Sean Walker: hundred percent.

[00:53:55] Andy Leviss: you for it. And generally, like in, like in the corporate world, it's more common to get a kit fee for certain things.

It's not often gonna be stuff like that, but for like computers and stuff. And I think it's, that's the thing we'll dive into, I think, on another one of these episodes of like kit fees and, and, and valuing that and when to ask for it and when not to, and why you should, because it, it otherwise undervalues blah, blah, blah subject for a much deeper dive.

But broadly speaking, it's stuff that I want that's gonna make my job easier. I will bring it if it's not gonna detract from the show to make my life easier on myself, but I don't need to have it. It's a nice to have. Same thing with like, like if you've got a little fly rack, you know, like everybody's got their like 500 racks nowadays and again, like often on like a one-off show, nobody's got time to deal with it.

You don't have time to deal with that. You know, if it's like a quick run and gun, don't bother. But yeah, if you're doing like a week or two run or you're doing like a very like, you know, high profile event that you really want that dialed in. Then there's value to having that and bringing it. And again, there's, I know it's a not very satisfying answer.

There's some situations where you can get the client to pay for it and they'll be happy to. There's some situations where you just basically treat it as, it's built into my fee. It's part of what makes me able to do my job a little more efficiently. So I'm bringing it as part of just what I bring, and that's what you get when you hire me.

And there's value to process approaches. Um, but yeah, at the end of the day, you, you never need to, and you should not usually feel obligated to.

[00:55:24] Sean Walker: and I'll say it will depend on what it is you're talking about trying to bring, right? Nobody is going to pay you for your smart rig, just bring that shit and do a better job, but they might pay you for four channels of accident, right? Like no, nobody's gonna be like, oh yeah man, I'll give you another a hundred bucks to bring your smart rig.

Like just put it in your pelican and do a great job and then raise your A rate when once you've done a

great job.

[00:55:48] Andy Leviss: I was gonna say with the footnote, that's often in the high dollar corporate world where they are expecting to pay a kit fee that can be included and, and is often expected to be included in the kit fee. But that is a very specific case, which like I said, we should dig into in another episode on like corporate rates and roles and all of that stuff.

[00:56:04] Sean Walker: totally. Dude,

the last part of this question is how much can I charge for renting my stuff to bands? Like somewhere between one and X percent. Uh, that is going to be, it depends answer. Uh, so I would say the most common, and this is not gonna be that helpful, but a range is helpful. The most common things I see are the bigger the show, the less the percentage. So oftentimes when I get other quotes across my desk and we get 'em, so don't think that you just send 'em your clients without sending 'em onto your competition. I get a lot of quotes that are 1% per week for gear rental, plus labor for tours. Right. And then I, I'll share for us, in corporate world, we are often getting. or 30 or 45% per week for gear for shows, right? So it depends on what you're doing. Renting to bands absolutely gonna be one to, you know, one to 5% for the week, probably, right? In corporate or other types of things. Brand activations, right? Private events. The scale is different, the budget is different. The intensity is different. And the, the money that's on the line is different. If you're doing a concert for a couple hundred people, for a band that you know, only those couple hundred people have heard of, they don't have any money, man. Like you're lucky to get your day rate in a couple of bucks for some gear to bring, and you gotta go to work. If you're doing a co, a corporate show for a Fortune five company, they've got a budget for this show and it can fail. You're flying people in from all over the world to make sure this happens. Or maybe you got 'em on staff, maybe you're, you know, you're blessed like that, but like it's a different level of intensity and you gotta figure out where you wanna roll.

You know what I mean? How you wanna do it.

[00:58:08] Andy Leviss: Yep. And then the, so the one other part of this question we skipped over, which I think is a real quick, easy one to, to wrap us up and bring us right around to an hour, is the, should I have backup batteries for like the guitarist acoustic guitar? Is it, let 'em Learn by Burn This Time? And th this is likewise a question that came up in the Discord recently of like figuring out.

Which size pelican addict to take. 'cause like it's starting to get too heavy and how much stuff should I bring? And I think a lot of, a lot of folks like me and Brian and a lot of us were, it's so weird to, to describe myself as getting older, but I am are, are get, like I used to have that point where I wanted to, I wanted to be able to save the day for anything.

Like if I, like, I would keep a couple of, you know, like not IL nineteens, but like a slightly better version of an IL 19 than the kid and I would, and batteries and a battery checker and all those things. So that like even if I was the A two on a gig, like if the A one needed something to save the day, I could be like, ta-da and pull it outta my magic bag.

And it's cool to be that guy. It can, or gal it can be valuable to be that person, but also you don't need to be that person. Like as long as you have the tools you need to do your job and save your own day. And even there if you're, if you're the hired hand and the company has forgotten something, like to a degree, yeah.

Like getting the gig done and having the thing to save the day is handy to have, but also there's a certain point where it's not your responsibility to like bail out the project manager who like didn't spec a very important piece of gear. Like at a certain point the company needs to know that happened and like Russia van to get there, it's, you know, you shouldn't be breaking your back to make up for the possibility if something else happened that said, yeah, throw a couple nine volts in, like help a guitar.

Like I've had top name, you know, guitarists like I'm not gonna name, but that you would recognize or some of you would recognize who've been like at soundcheck, oh fuck man, does anybody have a, anybody have a nine volt I can get? And if, if you've got one or two, like, I mean, I keep a couple spares in my case for the stuff that I have that needs it.

And if I don't need it that day and the guitars needs it and it's gonna let our lives go on faster. Yeah, help 'em out on the other end. If you're touring with a guitarist who always forgets it, either buy a brick of batteries and invoice 'em for it. You know, holiday season's coming up, put a little bow on it.

Say, here's a starter pack. Buy your own when this runs out and put it in their stocking. Um, yeah, it's, it's a, it's one of those things, you know, when, you know, like there's a situation when, yeah. Bail, bail 'em out is the way to go. And there's a situation when it's like, not my problem, not my monkey, not my circus.

And it, it's, I know it's not a very fulfilling answer to say, like, it depends and both answers are right. But it really does. Yeah.

[01:00:50] Sean Walker: Totally. Okay. We have about five seconds left and I'm gonna stuff one more question in, because it hits right to the core of my whole life, dude. It says, how can we empower sales teams to better quote and bill the audio of an event for its weight of importance to the production instead of being a loss leader in comparison to video and LED?

That's

[01:01:11] Andy Leviss: were gonna like that one.

[01:01:12] Sean Walker: that's, that's super duper easy man commission, right? Show them the commission they're giving away when they're discounting the audio down. Right, if everything has equal commission to them, right? Because we're talking about sales teams here, we're not talking about the client, right?

[01:01:29] Andy Leviss: Yep.

[01:01:30] Sean Walker: If everything has equal commission to them, then it's all of equal importance.

Or if they're slacking on the audio, bump up the commission on audio. So they start selling audio and show them how much money they're losing on each transaction when they're giving away the audio. But selling video and LED, that's a lazy sales team or a or bad management, right? Because a hungry sales team, man, this, this could be a whole hour by itself, but a hungry sales team needs to be sold on their product like fanatically sold on their product. They need to feel like if this customer does not buy from them, that they are doing them an injustice because there is no other product in the market that can do this for them, and they're losing sleep at night if they don't buy their stuff, right? So. They shouldn't be giving away the audio or the video or the LED, right? They should be selling the whole package to the customer and like telling them why they need the whole package. And if they're having a discount, the audio specifically, they're not doing a good job of selling audio. They need some training on why it's important, and they need some incentives as to, Hey man, here's how much money you're giving away outta your own pocket every time you discount the audio.

[01:02:51] Andy Leviss: If I had to boil that down into one sentence, I'd say speak their language.

[01:02:55] Sean Walker: totally, dude.

[01:02:55] Andy Leviss: Learn, learn how to translate what you are not seeing on the gig into the language that the, the project management and sales type speak and frame it from their point of view, not from our point of view. Yeah,

[01:03:09] Sean Walker: totally.

[01:03:10] Andy Leviss: like. I didn't have enough speakers and like I just, it sounded like shit.

Like they don't care about that. If you can explain to them why that costs them money, you know, whether it's in a of labor, whether it's in a client not coming back, that puts it into terms that the sales team understands and understands why they should think about it differently next time.

[01:03:31] Sean Walker: Totally. Yeah. Not, Hey, it doesn't sound good. Hey man, to do this job, I need twice this much audio gear and you just gave away a $5,000 commission because you didn't sell this audio gear or whatever, right?

And I was like, oh, they hit a budget. Well, man, you know what? They didn't need 500 extra panels of video wall.

They could have done it with whatever they did, like rebalance, dude. You know what I mean? And get 'em educated on audio and help them. They're never gonna, they're never gonna know what you know, right? That's not

their job, but get 'em like. Get 'em some packages, man. You know what I mean? Get 'em some packages.

So like medium ballroom, boom. Here's what it is, right? Like we all, we all kind of know what that's gonna look like, man. It's gonna be like four hangs of six or eight small line array boxes and some subs and sit comms, wireless, a console, front of house fiber snake. Like this is not like, we're not reinventing the wheel here, right?

Arena audio, 16 fricking boxes of some large format aside, flown subs. We're not, you know, we're not like every job's not a custom job. Get the sales guys some packages to sell that give you what you need. And same with video, same with lighting, so that they can go make big, you know, wins happen for your company, for you, for your clients, you know.

[01:04:35] Andy Leviss: Yeah. And like, and remind, it's, it's like we said before when we were talking about how like everybody has two jobs, that it's very easy to, for that same reason, take audio for granted because people, people in our side of the, and like in the, in the production side of the business, remember the flashy shit.

Like they remember the cool video wall that moved and the flashy lights and the amazing entrance. The CEO made attendees get excited about that shit in the moment, which is important, but that's not what brings the value to them in the show. So it's important to remind folks that like, at the end of the day.

Everybody in the entire room can understand what's being said. There's no point in any of this being here, and it's making, and it's important to, to frame that and to frame that in a non-combat way, not in a, you know, dude, you keep like fucking over audio and like nobody can hear anything. It's the, you know, it's reminding, reminding folks from their side why we're here, what we're doing, what the goal is.

[01:05:34] Sean Walker: Totally. Does your team have alignment, right? Like I would, I would. It sounds like they don't have alignment, right? So I'd go to the boss, the boss's boss, the boss's boss's boss. However far up the chain, you gotta go. Go to the freaking owner, the president, the ceo, figure how to get your whole team aligned.

What's your north star man? What are you guys all rowing towards? Right? If you're all rowing in different directions, this thing's a disaster. And then that will get down to the sales team so that they can sell boots on the ground where you're going, why you're going, why are you better, what, what makes your, what's your unique selling proposition man?

What makes your company better than anybody else's? Why am I renting from you rather than anybody else? You know what I mean? And it ain't that you got K two or KSL or whatever. Like, I don't care. I don't care. They're all great speakers. They'll all do a great job like we're buying you, man. Get, get, get to it, you know? Alright. That's a good place to leave everybody. They're already tired of us.

Thank you to Allen and Heath and RCF for letting us yap for another week about audio nerd shit. And uh, you know, a little bit of business. We'll keep on this until you guys are tired of it. Keep the questions coming. That's the pod y'all.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green