The One Thing I Wish I'd Done FAR Sooner...

Watch the video version of this email here.

This week’s email is for anyone in the audio world—whether you’re a sound engineer, a producer, or a freelance musician—who wants to build a business that can grow beyond just you.

Here’s the single most important thing I didn't understand: there’s a massive difference between having a profitable job and running a scalable business.

Most freelancers have a profitable job. They’re self-employed, working for themselves, and their income is directly tied to the hours they put in. It's time-for-money. I was there for years, rebuilding and repairing vintage Hammond organs and doing session work. My income was capped by the amount of time I had.

But when I opened my first commercial studio, everything changed. I was no longer the only person doing the work. With other engineers and assistants, the business could run without me. That’s when you can truly scale.

So, what's the secret to scaling? The truth is, it’s not easy, and that’s a good thing—if it were, everyone would be doing it. To scale, you have to stop doing all the work yourself. When you're constantly servicing clients, you have no time to promote your business, leading to unpredictable income and making meaningful time off nearly impossible.

The sensible thing to do is hire someone to handle the repeatable tasks, leaving you to do the high-leverage tasks that can actually grow your business.

This is a lesson I wish I’d learned far sooner.

The Equation for Growth

But how do you know when you’re ready to take the leap and hire someone?

The short answer: much sooner than you think.

This year, I’ve used a simple equation to guide my decisions, and it's worked incredibly well for us. In our last financial year, our business generated half a million pounds in revenue with just James and I working in it. We want to double that over the next couple of years.

When we break that down, it means each of us brought in £250,000 in revenue. Divided by 50 work weeks, that’s roughly £5,000 per week, or £125 per hour, assuming a 40-hour work week.

So, every hour I spend working, I need to be generating at least £125 for the business to keep it at the same level of revenue.

To grow the business we need to look at every task that generates less than £125 per hour and do one of three things with it: automate, delegate, or delete.

When I’m sanding a speaker cabinet, building an amplifier module, or doing the bookkeeping, I’m working in the business, not on it. To double our revenue to a million pounds, I need to be generating £250 per hour. Sanding cabinets won't achieve that.

By offloading these lower-value tasks, James and I are free to focus on what matters most: improving existing products, creating new ones, building relationships, and finding new sales opportunities—the £250-an-hour tasks.

Meet Callum: The Ultimate Example

But here’s an equally important part: you have to reinvest your profits.

When we hired our latest team member, Callum, we knew he was an immediate asset. He’s already freed up an enormous amount of our time, sailed through his 12 week induction, and is now a valuable part of our team. But here’s the thing… Callum gets paid more than we do!

This is a sacrifice many business owners have to make. We want to grow, so we are ploughing profits back into the business to improve lead times and develop new products. We pay ourselves just enough to cover our basic needs because we believe in the future of the company. You have to be willing to put the business before your own personal gains.

Your Path to Scaling

So, what does this mean for you, or a freelance mixer or sound engineer who wants to scale?

1. Get so busy you have to raise your rates. This will naturally cause some clients to drop off, but you'll be working less for the same or more income.

2. Decide if you’re happy where you are. If not, it's time to hire someone to help with the low-value tasks (the £15-an-hour work) so you can focus on building your business.

   
   

Remember, a successful business thrives on revenue and strong cash flow. You need to get as good at building your business as you are at the core skill set within it.

How to Find Your "Callum"

Building a team is crucial, and it’s about more than just skills. It's about finding people with the right mindset.

Callum, for example, knew nothing about speaker design when he joined us, but he's passionate and eager to learn. He was a recommendation from a local college where he was studying mechanical engineering and music production. A perfect fit for our business but, more importantly, he has the right mindset.

Remember my email from two weeks ago about surrounding yourself with the right people?

Building relationships with local colleges and universities has become one of my core £250-an-hour tasks because we know we're going to need more "Callums" as we grow. And I can't do that if I'm sanding cabinets...

So here is where we are on our journey now.

Music Production, Mixing, Mastering and Dolby Atmos

I'm not really doing much of that anymore! Sam started taking on a lot of the mastering work earlier in the year and, to be honest, he's doing a far better job than I can now. And he's also deep in the weeds with Dolby Atmos and has strengthened our relationship with Dolby. Now, I'm still involved, but only at the final stage - validation, really. That frees me up to find more clients and grow that side of the business using the relationships that I've built over the past few decades. If I can get a label on board that gives us a handful of Atmos projects every month, then that's a £250 an hour task.

Physical Products

Nige is doing a far better job of speaker cabinet construction than I was, because he's put the hours in. Callum is building the amplifiers for the MUM range, and assembling the finished product. James then loads the DSP and we both check quality control and fully test the speakers before they leave the building. That frees James and I up for the £250 an hour tasks, but Callum will soon have the knowledge to be uploading the DSP and testing everything himself. So that frees up even more of our time to improve the products, develop new ones, and explore new sales channels. And if we have Callum building our new speaker stands, for example, it makes it incredibly easy to properly cost that out, and save our customers money - if it takes him 10 hours to build a pair then that's a £150 labour cost rather than a £2500 labour cost if James or I were to do it.

Workshops & Events

Again, building an incredible team has been the enabler for this. I've spent very little time working on content for our upcoming workshop with Phil Harding because it's Phil's workshop! He has far more experience, and far more hits than I do, and so he's very much leading the content for that. Alongside Stefano and our partners at School Farm Studios, this makes for a far better event - and we'll learn a lot too! 

(We have a small number of places remaining by the way, so get in touch now if you want to nab one!).

James is managing the filming and technical aspect, and Katie and I at School Farm have been working on organisation and logistics. This means we're already planning a schedule of events with top-tier talent for next year - the £250 tasks.

Online Mentorship Platform

Once again, my main role with this is to lead it. I need to be the metaphorical conductor of the orchestra, not learn how to play every instrument in it. I'm responsible for building the team that will enable this to be the very best we can make it; Sam is managing the whole project, James is leading the technical team, and we're all responsible for ideation and actual content. We do this once, but leave the repeatable tasks to people who can do them far better than we can, freeing us up for the £250 an hour tasks.

The Future

This means we can scale. And I'm loving it. I'm extremely happy with how we've grown our business since the pandemic, haven't had a holiday for 8 years, but I don't want one. A trip down to Somerset to spend the day with George Lever is enough of a break for me, and that kind of 'work' isn't actually work at all.

When building relationships with educational establishments I've been booking myself into a hotel for the night and packing the diary with meetings, many in coffee shops or restaurants which, again, is work, but framed like a mini holiday. I come back from those trips refreshed and ready to improve the existing thing and work on the next one. These are all £250 an hour tasks.

We've grown the team from just James and I to 2 full-time and 3 part-time employees, which will expand to 5 full-time in October, and may need to grow to 7 full-time by the end of this year.

This all means that we can offer the best service and the best value to our customers, whilst constantly seeking out ways to improve - to improve lead times on physical products whilst developing new ones, to create some truly memorable and educational physical workshops and events, and to work on a highly disruptive new online mentorship platform that will really help our existing clients and attract a whole bunch of new ones.

It's an exciting time for Present Day Production, and if you've read or watched this far, you're a very important part of that, and we really appreciate you!

But where are you on your journey, and how can we help? Hit reply and let me know, it will help us shape future content!

See you next week.

Lots of love,

Mark