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Get Booked Solid in Pro Audio

By Nathan Lively

sound-design-live-get-booked-solid-in-pro-audio-purple-cow

sound-design-live-get-booked-solid-in-pro-audio-studioHere’s how it’s done. The process is simple.

Step 1 – Build relationships (aka networking)

“I need to get myself out there.”

People say this all the time, but many of those same people stop short of taking action. Maybe they don’t know who to talk to or what to say. They might not even know how to talk about what they do.

Don’t be like them. Develop a system to regularly and systematically build relationships. Learn how to talk about your work in ways that people will understand.

"Act like a human and talk to people"@NathanDoFrango on getting jobs in the production industry

— Bob Prenger (@bobprenger) February 2, 2018

Step 2 – Get referrals

Turn those relationships into referrals.

I think we can all agree that if everyone in the world knew who you were and what you were good at, you’d be booked solid. If you had a million bucks you could afford a media buy-out, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Building your network slowly and intentionally will give you much needed insight into your place in the industry.

Every time I become more clear on who my ideal client is, I’m able to get more of the work that I really love. –Kai Davis

Most sound engineers are just waiting for the phone to ring. Don’t do that. By building relationships and asking for referrals you are generating an unlimited supply of opportunities.

Step 3 – Get the gig

If you are doing the first two steps well then you are staying top of mind with potential cleints and referral sources. But if they are not hiring you and referring you, that’s a problem. New audio professionals on the scene have so much optimism and enthusiasm, but that can quickly turn to panic, fear, frustration, and burnout when they begin to understand the realities of running their own business.

Get to bottom of this problem as soon as possible. Here are some common mistakes:

  1. You are not following up. Sending out your resume once a year is not good enough!
  2. You don’t know how to talk about what you do. “I’m up for anything” is the quickest way to nothing.
  3. You are unclear about audio industry demand in your city. There is always a need for audio. Find it.

Step 4 – Deliver awesome service and be remarkable

If you are great at your job, but people forget about you immediately, you’ll have a hard time moving forward. Even if one client hires you again, they won’t remark about you to other people, which is what you really need to grow your business.

One of the keys to being a successful freelancer is finding an abundance of opportunities to distinguish yourself. This can be difficult in audio when we are the ones in the control room, backstage, and in the dark at FOH. In fact, having a successful event usually means that nobody knows we are there at all. But there are ways that you can be remarkable and still do a great job.

sound-design-live-get-booked-solid-in-pro-audio-purple-cowWhat does a remarkable sound engineer look like to you? Is it mixing naked or adding sound effects or making the sound check really fun or lifting weights before the show? What’s unique about you that you can use to add value to your service? Your skills, your sense of humor, your values?

Focus on being remarkable instead of great. What are your personal super powers? How can you bring surprise, delight, shock, and awe to your work in an authentic way that would make it impossible for people not to talk about you afterward?

Most of my personal examples are subtle. A Portuguese band started hiring me because I was the first engineer to let them do crazy things with microphones. I said Yes where others said No. A San Francisco sound designer referred me for great gigs because I was the only one who asked for them. A concert producer hired me because he liked my wireless mix system.

The first one was a coincidence, but the second two were planned. Try to get an outside opinion to help you generate some ideas. For the price of lunch you can set up a market research interview with someone who is in charge of hiring people exactly like you.

If you’d like to get my opinion on your business and what you can do to be remarkable, sign up for my 30-minute Get Booked Solid in Pro Audio one-on-one strategy session.

Sign up now

During this powerful one-on-one session, we’ll work together to:

  • Identify the key relationships that you need to get the best gigs.
  • Uncover the communication breakdown that is sabotaging your success.
  • Create a next-step action plan.

If you’d like to take advantage of this very special 30-minute Get Booked Solid in Pro Audio private workshop, sign up now.

How Much Do Live Sound Engineers Make?

By Nathan Lively

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So, how much money do live sound engineers make?

As you can imagine, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Instead, I’d like to show you a few profiles that represent a cross-section of the industry. Keep in mind that the numbers included below are very specific to one location and person.

Before we get started, please take 30 seconds to fill out an anonymous salary survey and I’ll share all the results with you at the end.

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PROFILE 1: San Francisco Bay Area

Nathan Lively – Sound Engineer/Designer (That’s me!)

Presently I split my time like this: 90% education through Sound Design Live (that’s this site!), 10% corporate events. I have lived in 8 different cities across 3 different countries over the last 20 years, though, so these numbers have evolved over time. For most jobs, I’m paid as follows:

  • $550/day working on corporate events. These are mostly subcontracting situations where I receive a percentage of the total labor charges.
  • $180/day working on concerts. I was usually hired directly by the venue.
  • $80,000/year touring with the Ringling Bros. Circus. This is the most I ever made.

I have also worked as a theatrical sound designer and contracts ranged from $500 to $2,500. It was fun and could potentially have resulted in more money, but it was hard to put together a workable schedule. Rehearsals and meetings would conflict and I would have months of down time. On my first theatrical tour mixing FOH I earned $550/week ($2,200/month).

In Slovakia I made €75/day ($93) subcontracting. In Portugal I earned €150/day ($186) working for the band O’QueStrada. The first sound engineering job I ever had in Portugal paid €35/day ($44), and I was just happy to be able to stay in the country. After that first show I went to the bar down the street that was so small that you could only squeeze in, order your drink, and walk back into the street. I spent half my money on two caipirinhas and felt great.

Here’s an overview of my business income and expenses in 2015:

2015 Income

how-much-do-live-sound-engineers-make-income-2015

2015 Deductions

how-much-do-live-sound-engineers-make-deductions-2015

Here’s an overview of my business income and expenses in 2013:

sound-design-live-nathan-lively-Income-expense-2013

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PROFILE 2: Prague (Czech Republic)

Steve Smith – Sound Engineer & Musician

Prague rates look like this:

  • 50€ to do live sound for one concert in a small club using their gear.
  • 75€ to be soundman for one night at a club with two stages, two bands, and one DJ crew.
  • 250€ to do sound for a show where you bring mics and an FX rack.
  • 200-400€ for a wedding gig where you bring the sound system and DJ.
  • 50€ per musician for a band.

For a more in-depth look at Steve’s work experience, check out Making A Living As A Sound Engineer, Part One: How To Get Paid and Make A Living As A Sound Engineer, Part Two: How To Get Played.

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PROFILE 3: Bratislava (Slovakia)

Michal – Sound Engineer & Musician

  • 60€ as a helper for local gigs, but €100 for a corporate party.
  • 700€/month as a broadcast sound engineer (rate has held steady for the past 15 years).
  • 100€ for composing and recording 72 different sounds for an iPad app.
  • I also do technical support for the most famous band in our country. For one gig I get 180€,  but it takes three days of my life: one day to pick up all of the equipment, one day for the gig, and one day to return it all.

Bonus: Download this article as a PDF.

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PROFILE 4: Athens (Greece)

Dimitris Sotiropoulos – Sound Engineer/Designer

The live work I take offers anywhere from 100€ το 400€ depending on how large the “pie” is to cut. For the past three summers I have been doing monitors for a well known Greek duo, which pays 300€/event at the moment. Most live gigs during the winter take place in bars or small cafes, which involves more work setting up, running cables, and doing both FOH and Monitors for 3-4 people. Negotiated fees can range anywhere from 100-250€/event.

I try to take any audio related project at present, since we’ve been in free fall — the economy that is — these past years. Here are some examples of summer projects and their negotiated fees:

  • 1,500€ for renting out some of my studio equipment to set up a remote recording location in a country house for an album’s pre-production sessions.
  • 150€/day to rewire a studio, which reminded me how challenging it can be to get the normaling right on the patchbays, keeping cable lengths to a minimum, and satisfying my OCD with regard to having everything as neat as possible. It took me ten days to get it up and running to minimum prerequisites; then again, it was only me and a soldering iron. Need a week or so to wrap it up with no more downtime.
  • 600€ for a sound design project for a cosmetics company’s social media video campaign.
  • 350€/day (negotiated) as a backup recording engineer at a three-day festival in Athens (suntan lotion was not provided).
  • 300€ plus expenses for the following: organizing and assembling a complex stage plot and rider for a concert on an island in the Ionian Sea, with limited resources other than those packed and shipped on time by the rental company; programming four shows for both Avid Venue Consoles (FOH-Monitors) for the two acts that night on the boat trip there and the night before into the early morning; and recording the first act via direct outs from the monitors console to my HD Rig (32ch). A nightmare of timing and organization.
  • 1,500€ for booking a lockout recording session next month for a week.

Read more about Dimitris’ work experience at The State Of Sound Engineering In Greece.

sound-design-live-how-much-do-live-sound-engineers-make-sweden

PROFILE 5: Stockholm (Sweden)

Unne Liljeblad – Music Producer & Mix Engineer

My income comes from a lot of different activities.

  • 3,200-10,000 SEK ($390-1,200)/song for mixing: That includes everything from start to finish: revisions, adjustments, instrumental/a-cappella/TV-Mix versions, and so on, as well as basic mastering. The client gets both the 16-bit “mastered” mix and the 24-bit mix without limiting on the stereo bus so that they have the option of mastering elsewhere.
  • 4,000 SEK ($500) for vocal recording with a professional coach: I do this together with my business partner who is a song coach. We spend about four hours recording vocals (that’s how long a singer lasts when performing at the top of their capabilities) as well as the many hours it takes us to comp all the best pieces, use melodyne to manually tweak timing and pitch as well all the FX processing needed. Usually this takes another five or six hours. Since it’s split between two people it’s not very profitable, but we have had many great singers as clients and have been working to build up our vocalist casting service, so we’re hoping for some return on that investment in the future.
  • 25,000-200,000 SEK ($3,000-25,000) for music production for commercials: The cost can vary quite a lot. We’re two people working on these projects and we often have to pay musicians and singers out of that same budget. Most of the songs are between half a minute and one minute ten seconds long. We write and produce everything from scratch. Since we license our work and don’t sell it outright, we have the potential to make more money from the same music in the future. We’re currently in the process of getting our music included in many licensing companies’ catalogs.
  • 6,000-7,000 SEK per month ($900-1,000) for vocal classes: We run a small vocalist program out of our studio. For this we hire two additional vocal coaches and someone who helps us administrate everything. After all the expenses and with with our employees, this basically covers our expenses for the studio.
  • Finally, we also run a small record label with three signed acts, one of which we are both a part of. This currently only costs us money, but we have high hopes for the future.

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PROFILE 6: London (England)

Darryn de la Soul – Found of Soul Sound

Having last done a live mix in 2010, these are the wages I received. To my knowledge, nothing has changed since then! Wages have been pretty much static for the 15 years I’ve been involved in audio.

  • £150-200 ($232-309) for a nightClub.
  • £180 ($278) as the house engineer for live bands.
  • Anywhere between 2 beers and £200 ($309) as a the band engineer for a live band depending on how much I liked the band and their financial means.
  • £150-250 ($232-386) for up to 12 hours for Corporate events.
  • £160-230 ($247-355) on festivals for whatever length day.

Learn more about Darryn’s work in my interview with her: Learn from the Sound Engineers for Tori Amos, Prodigy, and The White Stripes Online.

As musicians and audio professionals, there can never be enough sources of income.

Get Started Today!

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Is IATSE worthwhile for sound engineers?

By Nathan Lively

sound-design-live-iatse-opera-sound-engineer-nat-koren-featured

Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Stitcher.

Support Sound Design Live on Patreon.

In this episode of the Sound Design Live podcast, I talk to Nat Koren about his audio career with the San Francisco Opera. We answer these questions:

  • What are the pros and cons of working with the union?
  • How do you mix an opera?
  • What does a sound designer do for an opera?
  • What specialized gear do they use at the opera house?
  • How do they mix the show and operate 12 cameras without any humans in the room?

sound-design-live-iatse-opera-sound-engineer-nat-koren-park

Show notes:

  1. All music in this episode by The Nagual Orchestra
  2. IATSE = International Alliance of Stage Employees
  3. BAFTA = British Academy of Film and Television Arts
  4. Meyer Sound CQ-1, CAL96 column array
  5. Pyramix, Horus
  6. Dante, AVB, CobraNet
  7. Quotes
    1. The benefit of working with the union is that I am able to make a living and have healthcare.
    2. I could be here from 8am to 11pm. I often am.

What your parents never taught you about money

By Nathan Lively

sound-design-live-money-parents-magnifying-glassDo you wish you had more control over your money? (Yes!)

Do you wish you knew where all of your money was going? (Double yes!)

You Need A Budget (YNAB) is the smart software that lets me figure all of this out for myself. To make sure I was getting the most out of it, I talked to Todd Curtis, their Chief Knowledge Officer.

What is YNAB, exactly? I wrote about it in this article, The Minimalist Guide to Budgeting (for Sound Engineers). You don’t have to read the article to understand this interview; the first part is all about budgeting and applies to anyone and everyone. Then there’s a bit of fanboying at the end for the hard-core YNAB users out there (I love you guys!).

sound-design-live-nathan-lively-phone-moneyNATHAN LIVELY: Every time someone asks me if I like YNAB I give an enthusiastic “Yes!”, but then I always have to explain that there was a big learning curve that probably has more to do with the fact that I never learned to manage my money responsibly than the software being overly complex. Would you say that’s fairly common?

sound-design-live-money-ynab-todd-curtisTODD CURTIS: Absolutely. Almost anything significant that we learn new as adults has a learning curve. As adults, we’ve collected all these thoughts about the way things should be, and we have to unlearn those things as much as we need to learn new things.

On top of that, people’s financial lives are complicated. There are a lot of moving parts, and we have a lot of issues like security and personal goals wrapped up in money. That’s where the stress comes from, but keeping a budget can remove that stress. We like to think YNAB—both the method and the software—does that easily. It’s just easier if you can forget what you think you know!

Understanding how to use money is just as important as language in surviving modern life. Why is our personal knowledge so lacking?

I love that analogy to language. But language is something we learn naturally—our brains are actually wired for language acquisition! Managing our money isn’t something we’re surrounded by from birth. So we each kind of grope around and try to develop our own solutions, which is too bad because in the end, it isn’t especially difficult to learn some strategies that can make a real difference.

More than one person told me that they bought YNAB, got started, then at some point stopped entering transactions and gave up. I bet this happens fairly often and I’m curious if you have any good strategies for maintaining momentum?

I think a lot of people give up the first moment they discover what they actually spend turns out to be different than what they expected.

Because if people have learned anything about a budget, it is that it is a rigid system. Make your numbers or else! As though you get a grade at the end of the month. But that mode of thinking doesn’t recognize that life is unpredictable, even though we all know that it is. When your plans change, your budget – which is just a plan for your money – needs to change, too.

What do you wish your parents had taught you about money? Or, if you could leave behind a collection of values for your children, what would they be?

Be intentional about your money. Set (and change when necessary!) clear priorities and think about how money can help you reach them—or not.

sound-design-live-money-parents-dollar-honeyWhat are the most common mistakes you see people make with budgeting?

Forecasting—budgeting money that they don’t have yet. It’s easy to imagine any amount of future money when you do your budget, but then you don’t see the real need for change in your habits. You’ll go through the motions of what you think is budgeting without getting the positive benefits. Bottom line? Only work with the money you have now. The rest will come.

What are your responses to these two excuses? 1) I don’t make enough money to budget. 2) I make enough money to not worry about budgeting.

No matter how much money you do or don’t have, you have priorities. You’ll be happier and experience less stress if your money is aligned with them. That’s a budget.

How does YNAB compare to Quicken? Sometimes the best way to describe something can be through contrast.

The biggest difference, for me, is that other systems are retrospective. They look backward and give you reams of data. But sometimes, as one of our YNAB teachers likes to say, it’s just a glorious record of your overspending. A YNAB budget looks forward. It says, here’s how much money I have right now. What do I want it to do for me today? Next week? Next month? YNAB’s strategy aligns your money with your future aspirations rather than looking back.

For more information, YNAB has an entire article on the subject you can read here.

YNAB vs Mint? The great thing about Mint is that it’s free and it will connect to all of your accounts and automatically track transactions. The bad thing is that they have ads and you are not as in touch with your spending as when you have to put each item into YNAB. The whole idea is to get you to consult your budget before spending, and if transactions are recorded automatically you might never do that.

We’re really excited about a development we have just around the corner that will allow YNAB to connect directly with your bank. We shied away from this a bit in the past because we do believe, as you said, in being in close touch with your money. We never wanted automation to go so far that it put you out of touch with decision making. But by helping you stay organized with your transactions, we can keep you focused more on decision making. What do these dollars need to do for me right now? That’s an active process you need to be a part of. It’s what reduces your stress and allows you to take total control of your money.

sound-design-live-money-parents-minionMany sound engineers are independent contractors with irregular income. YNAB can work well for them because it has you wait until you have income before you budget any dollars, but what about the future? How much money should I have saved (buffered) so that I can take advantage of things like automatic transfers into my retirement account and automatic bill payments?

That is a decision that depends a lot on variables specific to your business. I mean, we tend to say that you should have at least a month’s worth of expenses in reserve. But what’s your risk tolerance? How even or uneven is your cash flow? How much do the cash needs of your business tend to vary? A lot of business owners would look at this and decide they need three, four, even six months of expenses saved.

What are some successful methods you have seen people use for budgeting with shared expenses? Colleagues, partners, spouses? Expenses that you don’t have complete control over (eg: you split grocery shopping with your girlfriend, but you do all of the shopping)?

I’d love to say there are tricks that will make it easy, but it really comes down to communication. Whether it is a business partner or a life partner, you’ve got to be clear about both your individual priorities and your shared priorities, especially at the places where they overlap or diverge. Have regular conversations about it. Have a budget date.

The other important thing in a shared budget is to leave some space for some autonomy. Hey, here’s money that is just for you or just for me, and we don’t have to report back to each other about it. That really helps things work smoothly.

TECHNICAL

How important is reconciliation? I haven’t done it, ever. Every day I spend about ten minutes checking all of my accounts for new transactions to make sure there was nothing I missed or entered wrong. Then once a month I “Adjust Balance” on each account because it is usually off a few dollars.

Reconciliation is important because you want to make sure the dollars in your budget truly exist in your accounts! If you don’t have an accurate record of transactions, you may be budgeting money you don’t have anymore. Having said that, making that adjustments you describe does the same job. You know you’re up to date.

I made some scary rookie mistakes when I first started using YNAB that I want to share with everyone. If you have any corrections or comments, that would be great.

TIP #1: It took me a while to wrap my brain around YNAB and credit cards (pre-YNAB I used debit cards only). For the first five months that I used it, I was budgeting all of my credit card expenses, but then I was also budgeting money to pay the credit card bill. That means I was budgeting twice as much as necessary and really stressing about the bill. When I finally realized what was happening I went back, corrected the problem, and realized that I had about $6,000 I had saved…on accident.

TIP #2: Since no one really taught me how to use a budget, traditional thinking told me that I should estimate my spending into categories for the coming month. It turns out Mark Butler calls that budgeting with Monopoly money. The way YNAB works is that you never budget a penny until you actually have it. So when you get paid, you apply those dollars to your budget. This is more like the envelope method that you may have heard about. One way to estimate into the future, which I have been using, is to use next month’s budget. So if we are in January, then you can go ahead and play with the budget in February and look at the summary at the top to see how much you have available.

Absolutely. That’s the sort of conventional wisdom about what a budget is – a plan based on what you think might happen if all your account balances follow a perfect path that happens to match exactly the last six or twelve months. But that is far less powerful than intentionally giving a job to every dollar you have right now. Want to look into the future? Set aside money for those future ambitions right now. When you have next month’s studio rental fee already set aside, there’s no need to forecast. You know you’re doing well.

Don’t sell services; sell solutions

By Nathan Lively

sound-design-live-dont-sell-services-sell-solutions-brennan-dunn-light-bulb

Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Stitcher.

Support Sound Design Live on Patreon.

In this episode of the Sound Design Live podcast, I talk with Brennan Dunn from The Business of Freelancing and Double Your Freelancing. Dunn tells the story of how he went from making $50/hour to $20,000/week by solving business problems for his clients instead of delivering services.

Download the Audio Contractor to Consultant workbook

Major points covered in this episode:

  • To be a successful freelancer, you have to understand both the business that your client is in and how they make money.
  • Stop thinking about yourself as merely a skilled artist and craftsman, and start also thinking of yourself as a consultant.
  • Being a consultant allows you to make more money and have more creative freedom.
  • How to use Socratic questioning to discover your client’s underlying business problem.
  • How to gather the information you need to package your services as a solution.
  • Strategies to build confidence and deal with imposter syndrome.
  • The importance of using case studies to show credibility.
  • How to start a conversation about your clients about RoI.
  • Make sure you only work with clients who respect and trust you.
  • Best habits for growing your business.
  • The biggest benefit of joining mastermind groups.

sound-design-live-dont-sell-services-sell-solutions-brennan-dunn-headshotNo one pays money for audio engineering. They pay money for the outcome they get.

Show notes:

  1. All music in this episode by Dynamo Team
  2. Charge what you’re worth
  3. Socratic Questioning Script
  4. Podcast motor
  5. Quotes
    1. If you are selling your technical services, you are selling a commodity. To the buyer, all commodities are equal.
    2. I started shifting toward the questions, what underlying business problem are they willing to spend money on and how does that need to be solved? When I started doing that, everything shifted.
    3. What is the number one problem behind the project and how does that affect you financially?
    4. If this project gets done, paint me a picture of what your business should look like tomorrow.
    5. No one pays money for audio engineering. They pay money for the outcome they get.
    6. If the client wants a solution and you are giving them technical information, then the client is responsile for translating that into the solution they are looking for.
    7. When you engage with a new lead, try to understand the problem they need to solve.
    8. Consulting is an equal exchange of value.
    9. Businesses pay money to either make more money or loose less money.
    10. The word client comes from the ancient French, to protect. So when you have a client, you are offering them protection.
    11. The way to [not be a commodity] is to not sell audio engineering.
    12. The one thing that we have that is limited is our availability. It’s a non-renewable resource. So you want to make sure that you kinds of projects that you work on are the kind that move you and your business forward.
    13. If you don’t have any data on how your business is doing, then it can be easy to second guess yourself.
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