Is Your Music Production Stuck In The Cheese Aisle?

Watch the video version of this blog, if you'd prefer!

Hello!

Mark here, with the first of our new, regular Sunday emails designed to help you, our music-making friend, further your production skills and - if you're looking to make a living from it - your career.

Why? Well, at PDP, we love helping people. But for full transparency, we also want to help as many people as possible get to a place where they can easily afford our products. It’s as simple as that, and a true win-win!

We're cleaning up our email list over the next few weeks. If you don't want to receive these emails, you can simply click the unsubscribe link at the bottom. Or, just don't open one for a few weeks, and you'll be automatically removed.

Anyway, on with this week’s email.

Last weekend was my birthday (no need to congratulate me; I've reached an age where I'm starting to ignore them more and more each year!). A good friend called me and said, "Hey, I've got some of that cheese you like!"

Recently, I had been on a trip to Somerset with James to spend a day with our good friend, audio geek and super-successful producer George Lever. We popped into nearby Cheddar to pick up some tasty cheese for our families and ourselves. I'm no foodie, but I do like good-quality, simple food, and the cheddar from Cheddar Gorge is hard to beat. The extra-strong variety I brought back barely saw the inside of the fridge.

While cheddar cheese is easy to find at pretty much any food retailer in the UK and around the world, it's just not the same as genuine cheddar from Cheddar, matured in the local caves of the gorge at the perfect temperature. So, to be able to pop over to my friend's house and enjoy some on a tasty cracker or three was just the kind of birthday treat I like.

But what the heck does this have to do with pro audio, you may ask?

Well, it got me thinking. If I were as obsessed with cheddar from Cheddar as I am with pro audio and just had to have a little bit every day, I'd move to Cheddar! That way, it’s never more than a couple of hundred yards away, and sourcing it becomes as easy as picking some up with my morning papers. I'd never have to eat the rubbery supermarket version again - I’d be surrounded by an abundance of the best cheddar in the world.

And it’s that somewhat dubious analogy that has really helped us grow our business from pretty much zero revenue during the pandemic to over half a million pounds in our last financial year.

Rather than spending most of our time servicing relatively low-value clients and struggling musicians, we’ve placed ourselves right in the middle of people who are at the very top of their game. We've moved away from the everyday value supermarket cheese, and our new partners are high-quality, cave-matured genuine cheddar - we’ve metaphorically moved to Cheddar Gorge.

They say you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Over the past few years, we have naturally started to distance ourselves from people who are stuck and content in the cheap cheese aisle (and that's fine for them if that's what they want), to surrounding ourselves with people who are incredibly successful at what they do.

The top five people I now have on speed dial:

• one is a serial entrepreneur whose hugely successful career has seen him build and sell multiple production companies in both radio and television for millions of pounds.

• one has grown one of the most successful library music labels in history to a valuation of hundreds of millions of pounds.

• one runs a £60 million music and entertainment empire, having started out as a homeless solo performer busking around Essex.

• another left school and was kicked out of home at fifteen, started cutting people’s lawns (using their own mowers because he couldn’t afford to buy or transport one), and now runs a production company that generates well into eight figures of revenue every year.

• and the other is James - who himself has been populating his world with top producers and engineers in both music and loudspeaker design, and has grown his skills and knowledge exponentially.

These people have become my Cheddar Gorge and my cave-matured cheese. They're high quality - they’ve been there, done it, and have hugely successful, proven track records. And guess what? Not one of them is an unapproachable "business tycoon" type who achieved success by being ruthless. They're all genuinely lovely people who love to share their knowledge and help the less experienced grow their careers, businesses, and lives.

Oh, and they’re also using some of the money and knowledge they’ve gained to do wonderful work in their communities.

These people are the finest of the fine cheese, and surrounding myself with them has already helped propel our business forward beyond anything I could ever have imagined.

So, here’s the take-home message from all of this:

To achieve your dreams, whatever they may be, the most valuable thing you can do is surround yourself with good people who are doing it or have already done it. And if you are a good person with the willingness to try and the drive to succeed, they will want to help.

The first step is to put yourself in situations where you can get that help and gain that support and knowledge. 

The second is to not be afraid to ask for it.

Take our upcoming production masterclass with Phil Harding, for example. Immersing yourself in an event like this isn’t just about the technical aspects; the community aspect can be more valuable than you’ll ever know. Not only are you part of a group of people who are likely both less and more experienced than you, but you’re sitting down and engaging in a room full of experts - people with decades of experience and proven track records to learn from. You're entering their world, and they want to share their knowledge with you.

But if you can't get there and feel like you’re surrounded by cheap supermarket cheddar and you want to move into the cave-matured league, then stay subscribed. 

We’ve assembled an incredible team of people, oozing with experience, and will be launching a highly disruptive online educational platform tailored to your specific needs. The world doesn't need another video content library behind a paywall, and we are developing a revolutionary platform that will also place your work in front of people that matter.

If you’re just starting out or you’re stuck in the rubbery cheese aisle, you’ll probably have more time than money. The first stage of this platform will be designed to get you out of that aisle and among the more mature cheddar, and it will be entirely free.

As your skills progress and you start to earn, your time will become more valuable, and you can afford to spend a little money to get some of that time back. That’s what the second tier of the platform will be about: elevating you to the next level - whether you’re an artist wanting more reach, or a producer or engineer wanting more (and better-paying!) work.

If you want to be a part of that, we’d love to have you along for the ride. Stay subscribed.

If you’re quite happy with the pre-grated tasteless cheddar, the link to unsubscribe is at the bottom!

How can we help you? Let us know by replying to this email!

See you next week. Be kind.

Lots of love,

Mark