Back in 2018, when I started my business I really had no idea what I was doing. I had a bit of cash, and I had a vague idea of running a commercial recording studio in my city, but my estimation of the market and its pain points were completely off. My main target market at the time - and I say this with love - was complicated to say the least. Musicians are incredibly hard to work with. They’ll often be strapped for cash, which means they’ll often ask for discounts, “free beats” lol, they’ll ask if they can pay you at the end of the month ‘cause they’ve got a gig coming up, etc. When it comes to being on time, let me put it this way: Because of my musician clients I had to implement some processes in my business:
- 50% upfront booking fee paid via direct deposit or credit card on the website.
- Your recording session starts exactly at the time you booked your session whether you’re present or not.
- No refunds for no show.
- 50% payment of the session due before starting the session. Not after, not when they finish the gig at Jessy’s Tavern and not in band merch.
And don’t get me started on hurt feelings! Divas! Divas everywhere!
Like I said, I say this with love.
I learned a lot! in the process. And one of the key takeaways of dealing with difficult clients was setting and fine tuning our business processes and policies. With all our policies in order (payment policy, hours of operation, booking policy, cancelation policy, deliverable policy, etc) we significantly reduced no shows, late payments and many other key aspects of our business. Running a tight ship also started attracting different types of clients.
Ad agencies
We started doing ad campaigns for ad agencies. Voiceovers, jingles, and that sort of thing. I’m not a voice actor my any stretch of the imagination, but I auditioned for a character called El Doce and I got the part! So I was the official correspondent for the World Cup in Qatar.
!
Here’s a children’s song we did for a hamburger restaurant chain with a clown:
creative work for web3 companies
We also started doing other type of creative work for businesses that use bitcoin and web3 technology. A lot of this work involved creating tutorials, explainer videos as well as promotional content for web3 businesses and companies.
I started managing design teams and campaign schedules.
Graphic design:
Tutorial video on claiming an airdrop
Because of all of this, I started really gaining experience in being an entrepreneur in the creative industry. If I had to niche it down, I’d say my business evolved into a content marketing agency who does recording, mixing, design, walkthroughs, explainers and promo videos for clients.
At the same time, I’ve kind of organically started developing my avatar as well as the whole look and feel of my thumbnails and covers. You’ve probably seen it in a lot of my work on any of the HIVE front ends.
Magenta and yellow and the way I wear my man bun and beard. It all has a similar vibe to it, although you can tell I'm still experimenting.
My latest step is to start using the same name, avatar and color scheme on both my Twitter and YouTube pages:
So for this year, 2025, I’d like to develop my personal brand further and ramp up the amount of content I create in web2 that my audience might find valuable and will want to learn about
- Self custody
- Value for value philosophy
- Decentralization
- Peer to peer value transfer
- Business
- Music
- Sound recording & mixing
It would be awesome if you'd join me in this journey and let me know what you like, dislike and what you think I could do more of.
