JOEY STURGIS: Why he quit producing, the psychology of haters, building a plugin company

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. And now your host, Eyal Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. I am Eyal Levi, and I just want to tell you that this show is brought to you by URM Academy, the world's best education for rock and metal producers. Every month on Nail the Mix, we bring you one of the world's best producers to mix a song from scratch, from artists like Lama God, Shuga, periphery A Day To Remember, bring me the Horizon, Opeth many, many more, and we give you the raw multi-track so you can mix along. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of bite-sized mixing tutorials and Portfolio Builder, which are pro quality multitracks that are cleared for use in your portfolio. You can find out more at nailthemix.com. Joey, welcome. Hi, welcome back. I guess I don't even know. Yeah, I don't know how to greet you. You started this podcast with me, so it's like, hi, welcome home.

Speaker 2 (00:01:00):

Well, you know what they say, you can't come back unless you go away.

Speaker 1 (00:01:04):

It's true,

Speaker 2 (00:01:04):

True. You got to go away sometimes

Speaker 1 (00:01:07):

If he really loves you set him go type of thing.

Speaker 2 (00:01:10):

Well, it's like I feel like every 3, 4, 5 years you hear about some sort of kiss, tour her again. It's like the final tour.

Speaker 1 (00:01:20):

Well, okay, well then, yeah, I think Ozzy had the no More Tours thing at least four different times. I remember in high school, Ozzy, I remember him saying in 95 that it was his last tour, five last tour. That last tour happened so many times.

Speaker 2 (00:01:44):

But I don't know, the disappearance is natural because I think a lot of times the episodes used to have way too many people on them. That was my opinion. I agree. But it's nicer to have more tight-knit conversations, I

Speaker 1 (00:01:59):

Think. Well, I think that everything needs to evolve the way it's going to evolve naturally, especially when it comes to content. You can't keep doing the same thing over and over and over again or it is just going to get old. And I think that what we did like a hundred or 120 episodes in the original format with the three of us, which is a hell of a lot of episodes, and I kind of feel like to degree it ran its course. And I know we all started getting kind of bored. I was getting bored. I know you guys were getting bored, and so the format had to change a little bit. And then I went on for a while doing that format, but on my own. But it started driving me nuts to where I actually thought of just not doing the podcast anymore. And I was like, no, why don't I just make it interesting to myself? Right, right. Yeah. Not that there was anything wrong with our original format or it was great, just we did over a hundred shows like that.

Speaker 2 (00:03:04):

And I mean, it's like you could kind of relate it to production or even music. It's like there's only so many chords. And then after a certain number of chord combinations and things like that, you sort of run your course of how many different chord combinations that work together that sound good, but that you also like them and also fit your style. So it's kind of like the same thing with the podcast after a hundred or so episodes. You've heard all the stories, all the things that we talk about, all of our thoughts on different parts of this industry, so it makes sense, but I figured I would come back on here. I know there's always a demand to pick my brain to some degree.

Speaker 1 (00:03:51):

Well, it's been a while too. It's been over a year, so I know that lots has happened since the last time you were on, so there's plenty to talk about. I'm just curious, I haven't talked to you much recently, just personally, do you miss production at all? I can tell you I don't at all. Well, there's times

Speaker 2 (00:04:16):

When it definitely comes up. For example, my wife's band is working on some music right now, and we've been flying around and working with different people and I'm sort of the armchair, or what would you call that? The armchair producer or the backseat producer,

Speaker 1 (00:04:33):

So to speak, backseat producer is in they go places and you go with them and they're working and you're like, well actually, actually use that.

Speaker 2 (00:04:50):

Yeah, no, I mean that's kind of the deal. But this is the thing that I've always preached is I really believe in the idea that there isn't one ultimate great producer in the world other than the closest person would maybe be Mutt L, but even him, even he's going to struggle with something like, yeah, it'd be something I'll struggle with. So I'm just like, yeah, let's work with different people. Definitely go find stuff. Go find people that do stuff that you love or that interests you because you never know what kind of cool stuff can come out of those collaborations. At the end of the day, that's the greatest thing about recording is that you're capturing and creating a piece of art. You can change it if it sounds like crap, you can go change it. So there's no harm, I think in experimenting. So in those sessions, sometimes I'm kind of like, Ooh, the spark comes in, but then I just never want to do any of the work. That's the hard part, but I like talking about it.

Speaker 1 (00:05:54):

So you still have, it is weird. I kind of feel the same way in a way when we're doing Nail the Mix and I'm at a session and something sick is happening, I mean, we work with sick people and so on every session there's at least three or four moments where there's something I haven't seen before or something I've never thought of, or they just get that mix puzzle to fit together and it's just like, Ooh. Yeah, right. Yeah. It gets the spark going and I'm like, fuck, this is awesome. I love this. This is amazing. This is what it's all about. But then I realize what it's all about for me is doing nail the mix. I don't actually want to go home and do that, which is different. It's weird. I used to want to go home and do that, but it doesn't translate to, wow, that was sick. How do I do it? It's more just like, wow, that was sick. I love that.

Speaker 2 (00:06:58):

And I mean, there's different roles mean, for example, I enjoy watching a band play, but it doesn't mean I want to go up on stage and create that music.

Speaker 1 (00:07:06):

Yeah. But when you watch a band play, are you enjoying it from the standpoint of a consumer who's not into music other than enjoying it? Or are you watching it from the perspective of Joey Sturgis, the producer? Because when I watch Nail the Mix, I'm watching it from the standpoint of me as someone who used to do this for a living, who's got the knowledge I've got, whereas it doesn't then translate to I want to go do it. But I feel like with a band that might be a little, it might be a little different, not something you used to really do or I guess,

Speaker 2 (00:07:44):

Well, I mean did when I was a lot younger.

Speaker 1 (00:07:48):

Okay, then you did.

Speaker 2 (00:07:49):

Yeah. But I will say, I don't know, I've always got, I have the dual perspective. That's the thing you can't get away from in this industry. It's like you know how audio works, you know how people make recordings, how live sound works. So it's like when you watch a show, you can't help but notice, oh, he's got the EQ cranked on that mic and it's just bad or something like that. But you're still sort of also enjoying the song, fucking Killed that 4K, bro, what the hell? But yeah, I think production is such a vast universe, and so it's cool. It's a cool thing to live with inside of watching now the mix and being a part of that community and playing around with plugins and things like that. I feel like we all sort of relate on that level, whether you like production or not. I think you still, if you're in this community, you understand the nature of it. I think there's some people who, for example, with racing, there's some people who like to race the cars, and there's some people who like to be the mechanic that works on the car. So there's all the different roles, you know what I

Speaker 1 (00:09:01):

Mean? I've always had this feeling where when something really, really sick happened, and not just in recording, I've had this in other things when I was playing in the band and the other guitar player was just a phenom. I wanted everyone to understand what a phenom he was, but not in a listen to our band sort of way in a, you need to understand how sick this player is. Look at that technique. This is insane. You don't meet people like this every day and just share that with people so that they could understand how great it's possible to be or something. And I feel like the same way with recording, I get a spark when I hear an amazing production or am around a great mix or something that spark, it excites me, but it excites this part of me that wants to share that with people, not actually go and do it, which is weird.

Speaker 2 (00:10:06):

Yeah. So I think that's what I'm talking about with the roles is if everyone wanted to be a producer but nobody wanted to talk about the methods, then that would suck. Or if everyone wanted to only talk about the methods, but no one wanted to do the work, that would also suck. So it's kind of like you got to have that blend of roles and for anything to work in the world. If you think about any kind of activity, industry, market, whatever, those things don't work without the givers and the takers and you know what I mean, the people who have different interests within that. So that's why I always, it's funny to me, and I don't know why we're here, but whatever. It's funny to me, when you see things on Facebook, you have one guy who's trying to deliver some sort of value, some sort of product, it is an ad or whatever, and then you have other people who are beating that person up or discounting that person's role in the market. And I know a lot of people don't think of it this way, but it's like if all the hecklers won, then you wouldn't have a market. So if you like racing or you like recording and you beat up all the people who try to make that industry or that market better, then you suck. That sucks.

Speaker 1 (00:11:23):

I agree. I think it's an interesting topic because I do think that it's a very vocal minority. And the reason I think that is because if you look at just stats from running a Facebook group for instance, because very community-minded, and so I'm into every aspect, and our community's on Facebook. So one thing I look at a lot is the difference between the engaged and the non-engaged users, like who's lurking and how many people are lurking, how many people are actively involved. And while we don't have trolls in our group still, there's a huge ratio of, or huge amount always of people who don't actively participate. And I get it because that's me. For instance, back in the nineties, I would listen to talk radio on the way to school, but I would never call in fuck that. I would never call in. And along the lines, there's been several groups I've been a part of on Facebook or in forums over the years, whatever, where I would just go in and read, but I wouldn't want to really get my hands dirty and get involved personally with any of it. And I've noticed that there's a lot of people like that, that there's always this vocal minority, and I do think it's a minority of people who are just the loudest and who have this drive, this negative drive, this negativity in them in that moment is so strong that they got to share it. And it makes it seem like there's a lot more of them than there really are because emotionally I think we see seven shitty comments or 10 shitty comments and it's like, wow, people hate this. But it's like, well, but there's another thousand

Speaker 2 (00:13:23):

People who just aren't saying

Speaker 1 (00:13:25):

Anything. Yeah, there's a bunch of people like me who just see the ad and either click on it or don't, but aren't like, oh, this motherfucker, I'm going to take him down.

Speaker 2 (00:13:38):

And I think everyone has to understand that, but it's the problem with I guess to some degree marketing because the other consumers that aren't saying anything could be potentially influenced by the person that is the loudest. So you're going into it just with face value. You're looking at the ad and you're seeing the response below. And I mean we're all guilty of it. There's ads that I see all the time, and the very first thing I do is I go to that comment section, I want to know is there somebody in there that actually tried this product and likes it, or is there somebody who actually tried this product and says, no, this thing sucks.

Speaker 1 (00:14:16):

So I go and I look, but I take it with a grain of salt. And

Speaker 2 (00:14:21):

Same,

Speaker 1 (00:14:22):

The thing is that I believe I heard Gary V talking about this once recently about how Yelp for instance, was doing great. I mean, it's still doing all right, but it was doing a lot better before people figured out that there were fake reviews on there. And so people as a whole started to pay less attention to Yelp than before because they just don't trust it as much. And I think that the public trusts reviews less. Same thing with Amazon reviews. There's been big stories about that and big deals made out of the fake reviews. And so you do have to take it with a grain of salt. And I think a good number of people, obviously not everybody, but a good number of people do take it with a grain of salt because you never know these days, if it's the founder's girlfriend posting or the founder's girlfriend's cousin posting that they bought it and they think it's amazing, or one person bought a product and it didn't work for them because they didn't even use it or it's like a workout program and they used it once or twice and then made a conclusion that it's a scam or something, or they bought one of our products, A URM and it's 12 week course with it's like speed mixing.

(00:15:48):

It's like a 12 week course where you have to do every single bit of it or you're going to get way diminished results. And we tell you that the whole time you have to do every bit of this the way we prescribe it, then you'll get the results. And they don't do that and they're like, it doesn't work. It's like, well, you don't work. I mean really, I do believe that you're right, that it does influence people who's purchasing to a degree, but I do think that people pay less attention to that than they used to. The public's becoming wiser to it, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (00:16:27):

Absolutely. So the important lesson, or I guess point here is if you love something like you love recording whatever, you should try and find some institution or at least service company, product, brand, whatever, that's trying to improve that and support them. Because if you don't do that, there's other people that aren't doing it too.

Speaker 1 (00:16:50):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:16:50):

Yeah. It's like the thing where if no one ever had a urge to teach another person how to speak or teach another person a language, then nobody would, we wouldn't have a language, no one would be talking. So it takes a person who wants to fulfill that role and then all the demand that comes from all the people that need people that fulfill that role. And so that's I think in a loose way, going back to where we started with the product, do you miss production? Yes and no. And the big answer really I think is all about fulfillment. And I think there's way more fulfillment from my perspective in being that role, providing that role of can we progress this? Can we make this easier? It's the same thing with the software and the plugins and make all those tools to say, Hey, maybe there's an easier way that we can approach this problem within the production process or whatever, and maybe we can solve this problem and make things better.

(00:17:50):

I get so much more out of that than I did from making a song. But the one thing I'll say that I miss from making songs is there's definitely an emotional element. There's an emotional impact that comes along with creating such a moving piece of art such as some kind of special song that you were a part of that you helped bring to life. And sometimes that can bring tears, sometimes that can make you feel adrenaline. Those are things that I'm not really sure you can get from being the role that we are playing in this industry being and nail the mix. I know there's other things like if you're a coach of a football team and you guys win whatever it is, the Super Bowl, there's going to be a rush. There's going to be an emotional thing there, but I don't know where those come in with what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (00:18:42):

I mean, I've played shows with 25,000 people in the crowd where you get them all chanting at once and it's just like, wow, that's powerful. Yeah, you don't get that. But that's okay because I've already experienced it and since I have already experienced it, I don't need to keep re-experiencing it. But I want to key in on two things you said. So first of all, I totally agree with you about people who do have something good to say should say it on the internet, because I think that people are going about cleaning up the internet the wrong way. Too many people are focused on taking things away, like banning people or blocking or basically taking away. Rather than that, you should add good stuff because Well, I like that. Yeah, add good stuff. That's a lot easier. And with the way that the internet works anyways is that it lasts forever if you want it to, but really shit gets forgotten really, really fast.

(00:19:52):

And so the same amount of effort you would spend on getting something taken down or whatever you could put into creating something very, very compelling that helps your point of view, whether that point of view is just this person that I got off of Handy who came and cleaned my house, did an amazing job and takes pride in their work, and I would hire them anytime, and you should hire them too. Whether it's that or some long blog about some political or health issue or something that really means a lot to you. I think that you're going to do more good in the world by bringing in something positive than spending your energy trying to remove something negative. Obviously there's limits to that. There are some things that need to be removed, but I do think that the internet would be a better place if the lurkers would just put in their 2 cents.

(00:20:55):

They're usually going to be positive. I totally agree with you on that. And then the other thing about what you said is that I really do think that I agree with you also about the different roles and to people on the outside. I think there's a misunderstanding about these roles. I think that people think that every guitar tech wants to be a rock star or something, or every engineer wants to be the producer or for instance, or every gear builder is only doing that because they're not mixing for a living or us doing URM is because we can't, this is not true at all. We can't do recording for a living. I have heard that said, which is really, really funny. A funny thing to say about us of all people, but I don't see things that way. I know a lot of people who are professional Luie airs, who that's their calling in life, people who build gear, that's their calling.

Speaker 2 (00:22:11):

So to me, it's kind of the same thing as going back to the race car analogy. You got to have one guy who's good at racing and you got to have one guy who's the mechanic who works on the engine and stuff like that. And I don't think, I mean, there's definitely people who do both, but there's no way you could be the best in both. So yeah, once again, takes roles. And so this is one of the hardest things to get bands and labels and managers to understand, which is interesting. I think they should understand it already since the manager knows he has a role. He's not the guy singing a song on stage, but I used to get pushback when I would want to do an album and I'd be like, we're going to have this guy do the guitars and this guy do this and I'm the producer and blah, blah, blah.

(00:23:01):

I can remember some freak out moments when people would be like, or not people, sorry, but the powers that be would get angry and be like, what the hell? Why aren't you there? I'm like, because they're recording guitars. It's like yelling at the guy, why aren't you driving your car? It's like, well, because the motor's messed up. It's with the guy that's good with the motors, he's good at that, so let's let him do it and then we'll continue. So I definitely fought with that and I kind of got sick of that whole thing where just nobody understood what was going on in my brain, but I think at the same time, maybe I didn't have, wasn't good at expressing what was going on in my brain.

Speaker 1 (00:23:42):

Do you think you might have been subconsciously getting over it, maybe not getting over it, but subconsciously ready to move on? Because I can tell you that when I was subconsciously ready to move on before I totally understood I was ready to move on, and this happened both in the band and in production, when something inside me kind of clicked where starting to go towards I need something new in my life. I didn't care as much about, I guess finessing my point of view. I didn't care the way I used to about that part. And so with these conflicts that you're describing, not being trusted or people who aren't experts trying to do your job for you, it would actually start to rub me the wrong way a lot more than before and it would affect me a lot more. Whereas before when my head was totally in the game, I would just deal with that stuff. It was no big deal. I'm curious, do you think maybe you were already checked out or in the process of checking out?

Speaker 2 (00:24:52):

Yeah, and I think also when you deal with a certain type of conflict repetitively, you definitely are searching for a way to combat that conflict, resolve the conflict, whatever, and then you try this and you try that, you try that and it keeps happening. I think he just sort of gets sick of it and it's like, I don't really know how to fix this other than just get away from it. So that was definitely part of it, for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:25:21):

Well, the thing is that any industry is going to have its bullshit. I think that grass is definitely always greener. You just talk to some people who work in any other field. I have a friend who's a lawyer and works at a successful firm, and you should hear the shit this guy has to deal with and he makes a ton of money and has the quote unquote life. The amount of shit that this guy has to deal with is unbelievable. But unlike most lawyers, he loves what he does, and so he doesn't care. It doesn't really bother him that much to have to deal with that stuff. He just sees that as part of the gig. These types of conflicts are part of the job description, and so dealing with it is part of the job description, and I'm perfectly okay with that, but I feel like if he didn't like it, I also know some people by contrast who have good jobs, who don't like their job or wish they were doing something else or are over it, maybe they liked it for a while, but it's been 15 years and they're over it, and then shit that comes with the job part of the job description, whatever the bullshit is from their profession, it really starts to grind them a lot more and they have a much harder time finding solutions for it because they're not a hundred percent committed.

(00:27:00):

You know what I mean? Even if it's just 15%, 15% of their brain is already onto the next thing, and so that 15% of energy they could have spent on conflict resolution is now gone, and it just makes it harder and harder and harder. That's what happened to me at least, I think. Sounds like that was what happened to you a bit too.

Speaker 2 (00:27:22):

Yeah, definitely a little bit. I mean, I think the other part of it that I often talk about too is under utilization of my skillset, just sitting in a room with five dudes and trying to come up with some chords wasn't exhilarating on a brain power level for me.

Speaker 1 (00:27:41):

Yeah, dude, you're capable of so much, and this is not in any way shape or form a dog on producers because God bless you guys, especially the really good ones is such amazing amount of skills involved with that. But I know that you have a bunch of other skills outside of production and a lot of interests outside of production. You always have and just abilities with things that Yeah, wouldn't even be touched upon in the production process.

Speaker 2 (00:28:14):

Exactly. Yeah, it just meant to be because it organically started happening. I mean, I would literally drive to the studio, listen to a few tracks that they worked on and be like, you need to change these 12 things. So basically did my job, jump back in my car, drive back to my house, I had a separation between the studio and my living space. Finally it got to a point and then jump into my computer and start working on software or my website or something. So it just happened naturally.

Speaker 1 (00:28:48):

That's exactly what I'm saying. That's time that if you were a hundred percent into the production world, still a hundred percent there as a producer, that time would probably could or could have gone towards things like dealing with this one asshole or any of the stuff, or not even that, or just thinking about different things to do to make it not just awesome, but really, really awesome what you're thinking about all day every day, but instead you're coming home or going to the other room and your mind's on the next step, this plugin you have an idea for that might change things for your life. This weird little plugin called gain reduction, did that come about when you were working on a production? I don't mean, so we've talked about the actual what the plugin does and all that stuff. I don't want to get into that. What I'm curious about more so is when you knew you wanted to make a plugin, what else were you doing at the time and did that what we've been talking about start happening? Did you start to get distracted from what you were doing or just little by little less and less interested and then this gain reduction plugin is just becoming more and more of where you found your brain going?

Speaker 2 (00:30:18):

So I was definitely pretty busy in the studio at the time, but I had a pretty big team. I had basically two full-time engineers and a couple of people, actually I want to say two other people remote. So I had four people plus me. So five team of five. So two full-time in-house engineers working around the clock recording bass guitars and vocals, another engineer working full-time around the clock editing drums. And another our lovely friend Jeff Dune are done is a done, I think

Speaker 3 (00:30:55):

It's done.

Speaker 2 (00:30:57):

It's funny how you see people's names online for years and you're not sure how to say 'em. And then another guy that was editing, he was basically doing pitch editing, but with long-winded version, we approached to how we did production was very microscope, so I needed someone to help me edit because it was just so many tracks. Every single vocal was doubled if not tripled, every single harmony doubled or something. So a lot of editing, and I don't know if we ever had one of those my tracks that were like that

Speaker 1 (00:31:30):

On nailed. No, and I would love to,

Speaker 2 (00:31:32):

Yes, someday.

Speaker 1 (00:31:33):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:31:34):

While we're

Speaker 1 (00:31:34):

Young, bro,

Speaker 2 (00:31:37):

I can't remember how to mix some of the songs anymore.

Speaker 1 (00:31:39):

I mean, that's okay. A lot of the dudes who have come on are bringing on stuff from 10 years ago that, I mean, I just went through that this month with Nordstrom. He opened up that bring me the Horizon session and was like, dude, none of these plugins work. Are you sure you want me to do this? And my answer was, yes, we want you to do this because we kind of don't care how you used to mix it. We want to see what you do now. Anyways.

Speaker 2 (00:32:07):

Yeah, that's the one thing, A little side tangent. One of the things I always say that differentiates nail the mix from anything else in terms of learning how to get into audio is that we provide, you get inside the mind of whoever it is. And I haven't seen that anywhere else. I haven't seen any educational platform that allows you to get inside the mindset. But anyway, back to the story, I was essentially underutilized in a heavy way because a lot of what was going on in those records and those recording processes was that people just, they were unprepared. So they would come in, we'd have five or six finished songs, but maybe they'd be missing vocal parts. And so I'm under the school of thought that you want me to come in here and produce this song, but you don't even know what you're going to say. So what do you want me to do? I mean, I guess I can kind of tell you what to say, but I'm not your therapist and I don't know what you've been through. And I know some producers are good at that. Ross Robinson comes to mind, but that's not me. I'm more of not necessarily an organizer, but I take thoughts that are almost good. They're like 80% good, and I make them

Speaker 1 (00:33:25):

120% good. You make them become fully formed.

Speaker 2 (00:33:28):

And so that's kind of where that, it kind got to that thing where it's like I needed to be doing something. I'm just sitting around because I'm waiting on this guy to finish his guitar riff and I'm waiting on this guy to finish his lyrics. I'm waiting on this guy to finish the song writing the songs and whatever. So there was just a lot of empty space. And so that empty space naturally became, what else can I do? And there was a demand online. People wanted to know how I got my vocal sounds. They wanted to know how I got my guitar sounds. And so I started to share that with people. I can remember the pod farm preset tone store or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 3 (00:34:14):

I remember that.

Speaker 2 (00:34:17):

And so that was fun. But then I think that it's kind of the thing that we talk about sometimes a feature creep, it's like you'll have an idea, but then that leads to a new idea and then another idea, and then sooner or later you're climbing a really big ladder. So it's like I started with drum samples and then I went into presets, and then that was like, what if I could do a plugin? So I started playing around with that, and then it just got out of hand. It went down a rabbit hole. But that's essentially how it came about is that I was literally just bored. My job was so easy for me and there was no challenge. I was being underutilized and I needed to scratch a creative itch that wasn't being scratched otherwise.

Speaker 1 (00:35:02):

Let's talk about demand for a second. I'm curious how you knew there was a demand. I feel like I also know when there is one, or sometimes, I mean, I've been wrong about certain things, but I've been pretty right about certain things too. And I knew, for instance, that I was making a really good calculated risk quitting production before URM was making any money at all. It was like I had about as close to a hundred percent confidence that there was a demand and that the market just didn't know that there was a market for it, that they just didn't know how bad they wanted, what we were about to do. And I was just sure of it, and it was based on a bunch of different things. It was not something that I did in some algorithm or some technical analysis or anything like that.

(00:36:07):

It was just a bunch of different things that I thought about that I had noticed. My creative lives do really, really, really well whenever I post about this and this and that. It does really, really, really well. The creative lives could be way better if we did this and this and this and this other thing I'm doing has done this well, considering this much effort went into it. It was all these different things put together that kind of form a picture of I think that this is a smart move. How do you know there was a demand for the plugins? What was your evidence

Speaker 2 (00:36:45):

Maybe? Well, there's evidence on different levels, and I think it's kind of interesting to think about this because the initial demand or interest came from just conversations online, Facebook groups, Twitter, people replying to me on Twitter or DMing me or whatever. Just people asking those questions and people showing their curiosity, I think gave me an inkling, maybe I should do something about this. Thinking back to that time and thinking back to two or three people hitting me up and asking me a question about something that would drive me to create a product. And what's interesting about that is if I tried to do that today, it would be chaos.

Speaker 1 (00:37:37):

What do you mean by chaos?

Speaker 2 (00:37:39):

I'll post about something. I'm trying to think of a specific example, but let's just say I post tone forge minutes, and then you get seven different comments. I think you should do this with it, and I think you should change this, and I think you should do that. If I went with every single suggestion of what people wanted me to do with my software, it doesn't mean it would be the right thing to do, if that makes any sense.

Speaker 1 (00:38:03):

I think I have a theory on why. So back in the day when you're creating something that didn't exist yet at all, the ideas were much more big picture, I think, and less

(00:38:17):

About, well, I really think that when you re-release Tone Forge Menace, I need this and this kind of pedal on it because that's what I prefer. I think that a lot of these comments now are people's very specific personal preferences, and it's because these products have been around for a while now that people feel like everything should be personalized to them and that would be the next step forward. Whereas if you're creating these products kind of for the first time ever, I think you're coming from a much more neutral but also impersonal place with them. They're just talking about problems they have in production, not related to a particular plugin, just problems they have in production. And then you take those posts and you're like, Hmm, I can create something that will solve that problem as opposed to I'm going to update this thing that already exists that you already own. And then they're like, well, I want it to be purple not red. And another person's like, well, green, fuck you green.

Speaker 2 (00:39:29):

Everyone thinks they have the right

(00:39:31):

Answer as well. So the demand is several fold. I mean, the first part of it is that, right? So you have the community sort of chattering and making comments and saying things, and that's almost like an invisible force field where they're talking and you're seeing what they're saying, but you're looking beneath the surface and figuring out how like, oh, okay, I understand what the actual problem is. This is what they think the problem is. Here's the actual problem. So there's demand in that way. Then there's direct demand where you have people hitting you up saying, how did you do this? I listen to song number seven at two minutes and 30 seconds and you did this thing, and how did you do that? So that was a level of demand. And then I think the final thing was just me being so deep in the production process and doing it so many times and working on so many songs and working with the tools that were at my disposal and being like, ah, it's missing this one thing.

(00:40:33):

If it just did this thing this way, my life would be so much better. And I think a lot of people shared the, I think I knew that a lot of people shared the same thing. You could see when a product would come out and maybe Pod Farm is a pretty decent example. You kind of come across the same topic of conversation like, well, the EQ does this and it's weird and I don't like that. And you see somebody else say it and then another person say it, then another person say it, and you're like, oh, I could, if I could just make Pod Farm a little better and improve the EQ and then do this thing a little differently, maybe that would be really awesome. Or maybe if I could make something similar to Pod Farm, but it could also load impulse responses and those kinds of things. So yeah, that's basically

Speaker 1 (00:41:17):

How, Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast and you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you remember, you already know how amazing it is. At the beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multitracks to a new song by artists like Lama, God, Opeth, Shuga, bring Me The Horizon Gaira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song of the album and takes your questions live on the air.

(00:42:07):

You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics and Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use of your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those who really, really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhanced, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain staging, mastering loan, and so forth. It's over 50 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed. Enhanced members also get access to one-on-one office hours sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes on a live video stream, fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step.

(00:43:06):

If any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills and your audio career, head over to URM Academy slash enhanced to find out more. I think that's a really, really important thing. You just said the fact that you were working in the field a lot, so you had a personal connection to what was missing. And that's parallel to where the way I saw URM going and there's now the mix thing and all that was based on having done a lot of work in the field and having a feel for what's missing. You could see the next step, and the reason I'm pointing this out is because I'm sure you get hit up all the time with people's ideas or they, and I don't mean your business partners, I mean online, you probably get solicited a lot to go in on somebody's venture or hear out somebody's venture and give them advice, or you just see people trying things.

(00:44:15):

And in general, it's all bullshit. And in general, people are just copying other people usually badly. And I think that it's because they're not doing those things that we just talked about. They're not actually sitting there working their ass off in the field and really thinking, what's missing? What could really help me do my job better? What is it that's not ideal about how this works? And then providing that more so they're just seeing, well, that person was successful with that, I want to do that too, which is not necessarily the most innovative way to go about doing things. So I think that that's also a way to not really understand the demands the market, because by the time that you figure out how to copy somebody else, the market will probably have shifted some. And so you're trying to do what they were doing two years ago, whereas if you're in the field actually busting ass all the time and organically learning what doesn't work and what could make your life better, it makes so much more sense that you're going to arrive to that conclusion sooner and then create something that actually will solve problems for people.

(00:45:40):

You've got to get dirty, and I think,

Speaker 2 (00:45:42):

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think the people who try to solve all your non-existent problems from afar are just simply making commentary, and it's not necessarily something that you always should listen to. Now, I do believe that the customer's feedback and critique is very important, of course. So you always pay attention to that, and you definitely listen, but it doesn't mean that you should always act on that. But again, roles. So it's like I need that. I need people, not only do I need to know about the demand and need to know what other people are struggling with in the production process, I also need those critical customers that look at the software objectively or even subjectively and make commentary about how it can be better. And those kinds of things also drive the company forward. So as long as they're not being haters, I think we established it's not

Speaker 1 (00:46:48):

Fruitful. Where do you draw the line? And I think that this relates to mixers too, because mixers have to deal with mixed notes. Where do you draw the line? Where is it a productive, helpful thing versus just some narcissistic requests that's not actually going to make anything better, just make it different. Where do you draw the line?

Speaker 2 (00:47:11):

That's tough. I mean, I think you need discretion and you need to,

Speaker 1 (00:47:16):

You said discretion.

Speaker 2 (00:47:17):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:47:18):

Okay. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:47:19):

You need to put a little bit of thought into that because you could be hearing, someone could be very loud and they could be very hateful, but they could actually be saying something important. And so you have to, that's the interesting thing too, about starting this business with you and how over the years we've had certain customers, they would say things like, maybe they're upset about something, and I get it, you're upset right now. But underneath that anger there is a problem. If everything was perfect, you wouldn't be upset.

Speaker 1 (00:47:54):

Sometimes they're right.

Speaker 2 (00:47:56):

So even if you're being hateful, you're right about something. And so I want to get to that. I want to get to that place. So I think that's where, I don't know if I necessarily draw the line, but I think it's all about presentation. There's a nice way to say something is broken or that you're mad about something, and so that's an interesting thing. But if you're levelheaded and you're down to earth and you look at conflict as a problem that just needs solving, it's a puzzle and you got to figure out how to put it together, then you get along pretty well. And I think that's where no one's perfect. I definitely have my moments where I lose it, but I try to keep that and maintain that composure when I'm approaching at least people online, the easiest place to get heated

Speaker 1 (00:48:49):

And the stupidest place,

Speaker 2 (00:48:50):

Right? But I'm looking at it very pragmatically, and from an objective standpoint, I want to create the puzzle or solve the puzzle. I want to create the solution and not be talking and meddling in the surface level of the conflict or the situation.

Speaker 1 (00:49:11):

Well, what you just said is true for mixed notes too.

Speaker 2 (00:49:13):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:49:14):

I know that a lot of producers have their blood pressure spike when they get mixed notes back and shipman, I know that I'm guilty of it too at times. Sometimes I loved it, but there were other times where my blood pressure would spike, and I know that this happens to every mixer producer. I feel like any mixer who says that they never get annoyed by mixed notes is full of shit that, or they're a psychopath

Speaker 2 (00:49:39):

Or they have some way of dealing with that stress.

Speaker 1 (00:49:42):

Well, that third option right there, I think, is that most mixers that are successful do have a way of dealing with it. Man, I've seen this in enough people to know that this is pretty widespread, that the initial reaction, if we weren't capable of controlling our emotions or channeling them or whatever, the initial reaction would be, fuck you to mixed notes a lot of the time, which is not good because even if the person has no technical knowledge of recording and deliver something real convoluted in the form of a mix note, oftentimes they're right. That's the thing. Oftentimes they are right. And sometimes the non-technical folk that have hired you, they know what sounds good and know what doesn't sound good. They may just not know how to communicate it in your language, or you might be coming off a 12 hour day and you don't want to hear about it. And you worked really hard on this one thing, and just the thought of then having to redo it when you're in a weakened tired state is not fun. And so that doesn't mean that they're wrong though. And just like you said, just with these hateful commenters sometimes, or some of the stranger things that we see are some of the more negative things we sometimes they aren't, so they're just pissed. It happens.

Speaker 2 (00:51:09):

Yeah. So for anyone who, if you're a mixing engineer and you're listening to this episode right now, and you're dealing with someone that is being maybe difficult to deal with, a band member is being sort of hateful to you, or maybe they're just being sort of loud about some kind of problem, just know that that comes from something from somewhere. It's not just, I mean, yeah, the dude's being a dick, but deep down there's something that triggered or sparked that guy being a dick,

Speaker 1 (00:51:44):

Or maybe they're just being annoying about something. They won't let it go. They're being nice, but they won't let it go. I remember I was the client once on a record, and I didn't like the snare, but I was nowhere near as good as the person mixing it. And so I wasn't about to tell him how to do his job way better than me, but I didn't like the snare at all. And so I didn't want to be, I start giving him technical advice or something. I felt like that would be disrespectful because I'm not trying to tell this guy how to do his job, but as the client dude paying for it, I do need to say, I really don't like this snare. I don't think it's right. It's not what we were going for. It sounds too mechanical. We're going for something roomier more natural, where you can really hear the inflections and the intricacies, and the ghost notes sound like ghost notes, and this sounds like a cannon and sounds like an awesome cannon, but it sounds like a cannon, and it's just not right. And I don't want to tell you how to fix it. And then the dude fixed it, and it still wasn't that good. So what am I supposed to do? It's weird. So I'm sure he thought I was being an asshole, and I'm sure he thought I was being annoying, and I'm sure he thought I was being a difficult client, but on my end, I just thought he wasn't getting a good sounding snare, and it was important.

Speaker 2 (00:53:22):

Yeah, and that's great though, because your presentation was good. That's my point is that if you're going to take the time to hate on something, put a presentation behind it, make your argument, make sense. Be logical, express why something is wrong, and tell me that. Don't just be like, no, that's dumb, or that doesn't work, or that doesn't make sense, or I don't like it. Why? Going back to roles and talking about contribution, that's how haters can actually contribute to the market and the industry. So if it's like talking about racing and you say, oh, this guy sucks. Well, why? What is it that makes him suck? What's your grand idea about it? Or going to recording that producer, his mixes are shitty. Well, you might think his mixes are shitty because all of his guitar tones are dark and you like bright guitar tones, but then there's a person who is the opposite of that. So if you don't present your position and perspective, then your comments are a waste of time

Speaker 1 (00:54:31):

Because you don't even know what's behind them. For instance, since we've got, bring me the Horizon on this month, July, 2019, because who knows when you're listening to this great listener, you could be listening to this in 2040. So July, 2019, we've got, bring Me The Horizon on, and of course, on the front facing side, meaning not in our private group, but on the ads, there's some people who talking shit like they always do, but they're talking about their haircuts from 2008. So it's like, well, okay, I'm not even going to bother to respond to that stupid because okay, that's what you're going to hate on a band's haircuts from a different era in time. That's all you got. Okay. I mean, we're here to teach you how to mix. So we're not a fashion school. So that common is kind of irrelevant to us.

Speaker 2 (00:55:29):

Well, yeah. And I wonder if that's because they don't have anything else to say. And I think about that a lot. If you're someone like us where we think about every time we do something like say we're doing an ad, we're creating a product, we're working on a webpage, whatever. We're approaching it from all these different angles and perspectives and thinking about all these different things, and it's like we've solved all the problems to the point where the only thing left is for you to come in and make fun of the dude's hair. The service is great. The price is great, the value is amazing. What we're doing is purposeful and important, so there's nothing else to complain about except for that. And I think that might be why sometimes there are those kinds of comments on those things. Nothing else to hate on.

Speaker 1 (00:56:21):

Well, also, it kind of goes back to what, and I think you're right, but it also goes back to what we were saying before, that a lot of people are just lurkers. So a lot of people with the best of intentions don't really post on this kind of stuff. And you have a certain vocal minority who just have this thing in them where they need to post things that hurt people online. And I don't know what it is in them that makes them this way, and it's kind of sad, but they just have this thing where there's nothing. Why are you talking about the dude's hair? Why the fuck do you care about a band's haircut in 2008? Seriously, dude, it's 2019. Why do you care about this for real? I mean, I get it. If you don't like their haircuts, actually, I was not a fan of seeing haircuts back in 2008, but I have not thought about it since 2008.

(00:57:21):

Why do you care about their haircuts and why do you care about it enough to comment on a mixing schools page? And once you find the answer to that, you may start improving your life to where you don't feel the need to waste your time leaving that kind of bullshit on people's pages. That's got to be coming from somewhere that doesn't just, I've never gotten the urge. I've never seen a commercial for something from the eighties or the nineties or the early two thousands left a comment like talking shit about the way they look or something. Who cares? And it's a different era.

Speaker 2 (00:58:02):

Yeah. I have to believe that some part of it is that they are on a mission to correct the universe. It's like So you're ascribing a nobility to it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's their own internal nobility because I mean, I don't think it's shared with society, but it's like, I'm on a mission. No, you should not be wearing pants that tight, and you should not be putting your hair this way. It doesn't look good because I think so. So I think, I don't know why people, well, I guess I kind of know why. Because kind of like when you're in high school, you really are trying so hard to express yourself. You want to wear clothes, you want to fit in with a certain crowd. I remember going to school with corn shirts and JCO jeans, and then you've got the people at school that don't dress that way, and they're making fun of you because you're dressing really weird, but you're trying to express yourself and you're trying to fit in. And so there's, I think some of these haters are on a mission to sort of correct the universe in a way that they see fit. We shouldn't have these baggy jeans or whatever. So

Speaker 1 (00:59:11):

You're saying that basic, because a lot of these people are not in high school, A lot of them are in their late twenties and thirties, sometimes forties. So you're saying that these are unresolved high school issues

Speaker 2 (00:59:24):

Somewhere. Maybe it didn't come from high school, but it started somewhere. And it

Speaker 1 (00:59:29):

Probably did come from high school,

Speaker 2 (00:59:31):

But it could, I mean, very well definitely what probably evolves too, comes, starts in high school, then evolves throughout through your age and whatnot. If you look at society with a chip on your shoulder, or you're paranoid all the time, or you think that everyone's out to get you, then you sort of formulate a perfect world in your own mind or a perfect universe. And then anything that goes against that, you feel like you have to speak out about it because you want to make the universe the way that you see it. And I think that part of what I've gone through is a maturity where realizing that I don't know all the answers to everything and my opinion only is my opinion. So sometimes I share it and sometimes I don't, and I try to share it when it's a positive situation. So I think that's part of the explanation for that, is that those people are just so desperate to fix stuff that's not really broken, but it is broken to them.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):

That could be either dangerous or really positive. What's interesting, where's the line? Because what we do as people who create things, especially business and more so in business than in art, because in art art's more about self-expression. But in business, I guess when I was writing music, I wasn't trying to solve a problem. I was trying to scratch a creative itch expression. But in business, I am trying to solve problems because of something I see that's either wrong in the world or not existing yet in the world that I feel needs to exist. And I feel strongly enough to where I would quit my job and put my faith into this thing because I feel that strongly. So where's the line? Because when you're saying that, it's like, yeah, I think you're right. But that sounds like us.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):

I know. And that's the beauty of this conversation, and I want people to realize that. That's why it's just so amazing. I don't know what else to say about it. It's a very amazing thing because the person that's on the other end of that hateful comment is doing the exact same thing that we are doing, except I think we're a little bit more constructive about it, but it's still coming from that same emotion. Something's wrong. I want to fix it, I want to change it. I'm going to take this problem and destroy it or make it, improve it, whatever. That's the same exact motive that's coming from that person who is making fun of the dude with the haircut.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):

This might sound a little controversial, but I've always thought that the people that are the most broken have the most potential broken in terms of things that they did to themselves. I think that, for instance, if someone has the ability to become a drug addict or gain a bunch of weight or gamble a huge fortune away, they actually have some of the most potential out of anybody because all of those things take a lot of work, like a lot of dedication. It sounds funny, I know, but I'm completely serious and I'm not trying to make light of bad things. But what I'm saying is that I think people are redeemable and that with things like that where you have this sense of justice and you want to fix something in the world, or you have this energy for doing something, but somehow you got fucked up and you turned it on yourself and you've done all negative things, well, you still are creating something in the world.

(01:03:12):

It just might not be a good thing. But that means you have the ability to create, which if you just step aside from the value judgment of this is good or this is bad, or you're hurting yourself or whatever, or you're hurting other people, if you just take that out of the equation and you realize you are actually doing something in this world, you're creating something, you have that ability. You feel something strongly enough to commit yourself and stick with it long enough to really fuck things up. Well, if you took that same amount of energy and put it towards something positive, you could probably do something amazing with yourself. And so maybe there is hope for all these haters.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):

So that's maybe not the line. But I guess the key difference is that if you take that energy and apply it towards something constructive, for example, creating a platform and a community where people can thrive in the audio production world, then I feel like you're doing something objectively positive. It's not subjective anymore. You created something that is inherently positive. And that's the cliche thing, right? Take your hate and turn it into positive energy or whatever people say all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):

It's a real thing though,

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):

But it's like if you learn how to harness that and do it properly, it's very, very powerful. And so I think sometimes that can come from, it can be driven by competitive nature, you see, I see. Obviously there's a plethora of software companies out there making audio plugins, so a lot of what they do can drive my competitive spirit and make me want to do something better or something a little different or solve a problem in a different way. And so that's a good thing. I think you need to have the balance. It's all about balance. I think this whole episode is about balance. It's like all the roles. You need a competitor. You need someone smarter than you need someone that's not as smart as you need people who are willing to teach. You need people who want to learn. You need all of these different roles to make all of this fucking stuff work.

(01:05:29):

And I think in audio, it's the same way, like a song. The chords play their role and the lead melody plays its role, and then the producer plays his role and the editor and the engineer play their role and the band has their role, and the manager has the role and the record label. And it's a wonderful thing when you start to understand how nothing is better than anything else, and everything is required in order for it to work, if there was any missing piece, there would be an imbalance. And that imbalance would either eventually destroy itself or be something not worthwhile.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):

Exactly. And it's funny that you brought up the competition aspect because I think that our caveman, DNA wants us to destroy, right? You see a competing tribe on the land, you want, they've got the watering hole, fucking kill them. So I think we have that destructive nature to us. It's in us, it's in the DNA. However, we are capable of taking that impulse and rather than being like, I'm going to destroy that motherfucker, I'm going to create something that's even better and build my own watering hole, the end, I'm going to build the best fucking water hole ever. And people will just come to me. And I think the key here is that we have finite time. So what are you going to spend your energy on? You going to spend it on

(01:07:03):

Destroying things or creating things? I mean, look, at the end of the day, you could try to do both, but destroying things takes a lot of energy. There isn't necessarily a net positive out of that usually. In fact, when you try to go destructive, you end up being the one that suffers the most, or at least you suffer so much that it wasn't worth it. Whereas that same amount of energy could go towards creation. And then you don't need to worry about what was causing you the grief anymore if you created something that solved the problem for you and for other people.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):

So it can be a beautiful thing. It is creation, positivity, that's impact. So you can have positive impact, you can have negative impact. And I think arguably that positive impact is the right thing to do or the better or the best thing. But the positivity doesn't exist without negativity either. It's like there's no gain without pain. So that's another interesting idea. But I think the time, the part about time is really, really important because time is the one thing that no one can do anything about. You can't reverse it. You can't slow it down, you can't speed it up, you can't change it. That's why you have to choose creation because destruction is a waste of your time due to how if you do something positive, the only thing that can come out of it is positivity. And at least you used your time to do something that has sort of a, maybe not necessarily a noble cause, but at least you did something that tried to improve or tried to, you contributed, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):

Well, it doesn't necessarily have to have noble origins. It can come from the origin of the, I want to kill that motherfucker who's competing against me. Like that impulse that we have, you can make the choice to stop that from going forward and redirect that energy because that energy's there. That's the thing that energy is there. We are wired a certain way, and it's not wrong. It's not wrong. We have that we want to survive.

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):

Yeah, they call it the alligator brain if anyone ever wants to look into that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):

Yeah, it's ancient.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):

Yeah, it's the ancient brain, the alligator brain. But I guess the difference between someone who is a high achiever or someone who's very successful or whatever, and someone who hasn't done much, hasn't contributed much or tried to, but just didn't really do much, is the fact that they were able to channel all kinds of the different levels of energy, the sort of caveman thing you were talking about, but then also recognizing time as a very important variable and factor and doing something that either compresses time in the sense of perception or saves time or saves pain. So this is where you get into marketing because there's only five things that people want or that I guess people need or whatever. So it's like people want to escape pain or avoid pain. They want to, I can't remember how it goes. You know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):

Increased pleasure,

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):

Right? So in marketing, you learn when you learn about marketing, and the reason I like to talk about marketing, I want people listening to this episode to realize that they are a marketer when they're in the studio. You're trying to sell the band on either an idea, a way of doing the record. You're trying to get people to agree that they should work with this guy or that guy, whatever decisions you're making, and you need people to go along with those decisions. You're a marketer. You have to figure out how to escape pain and how to increase pleasure and how to do this and this and this. And so it's a very important skill. So I think people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, these mega rich people have taken a certain approach to solving the market's problems by looking at the time and using those different levels of energy and creating amazing platforms and communities and solutions and things like that. And so as a producer, you can do the same thing in your own market, in your own sort of world with your own relationships with your clients and things like that. And the thing that gets scary about it is that once you understand how it works psychologically, it can be used as a weapon. And so that's when you have to practice. You have to be ethical in your practice of utilizing that skill and utilizing your ability to,

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):

Yeah, we know of this one, I'm not going to mention names. This one producer who is mega famous actually, who's known for being this major manipulator, who understands, I'm sure you know who I'm talking about, who understands human psychology, but uses it to bit bans against each other in this weird way to get his agenda across. It's really

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):

Weird. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):

But people don't end up going back or the bands end up breaking up. It ends up really, really bad. But he's had a lot of success, so people put up with it, but that dude uses it as a weapon. And even though he's had some wins, I don't think he's winning in the end because everyone wants to get away from him, and everyone reports a bad time. They don't want to go back. They don't want to have anything to do with him. Had great people working for him who just jumped ship. And yeah, that's what happens when you use these things as a weapon. It might work. It might work in the moment. Tactically

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):

The weapon can be a good thing though.

(01:13:12):

And that's where I'm talking about the ethics and the nature of the ethical, the way you approach it ethically, because I wish I had a better analogy, but this is the one that comes to mind. So let's imagine you have a friend and they're a drug addict and they're addicted to drugs and it's killing 'em. If you're good at marketing, you can literally talk that person out of doing drugs because you will figure out how to psychologically manipulate them to not do it anymore. And that's when you're using it. You're using that manipulation and that psychology as a weapon for good because you're going to improve that person's life by taking them away from drugs. If you are a producer and the right thing to do for this album, you've got a band, they want to go heavy and from the bottom of your heart and from inside out that it's just the wrong fucking thing to do on the album because it's going to flop.

(01:14:04):

Or maybe it's vice versa that it's a super heavy band, and now they want to start singing all of a sudden and they want to do these happy courses and things, and you just know, Nope, that's not going to be the right thing. And if you're right, then I think it's ethical that you manipulate the band to understand, maybe manipulation is a strong word. Maybe we shouldn't be using that word, but you get the band to see the light and to come to the same conclusion as you, that the right thing to do is X. And you use your marketing and psychology skills to get to that point. So I think it's very tricky because you can definitely use it to do, let's say you have your own agenda like we were talking about, you could definitely use the same exact power to get people to do your agenda and thusly your motives could be whack.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):

Yeah. One comment about the drug thing. So I think that that's an interesting one because addiction is a physical dependency as much as it's a mental thing. And so even if you can't fix somebody for them, but if all you do is convince them to get help, then you've done an amazing thing. If you used your ability to convince to get your drug addicted friend to go to rehab and seek professional help, then you've used the powers for good. And manipulate is a word with a bad connotation. So I don't want to sit here and argue for why sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. People just associate it as bad. But the moral of the story is that sometimes people don't know what's better for them. Sometimes they don't know how to fix a situation, and sometimes they want to go about it the wrong way. Sometimes they're just plain wrong, and you have the foresight or you have the expertise, or you're just right. And so everyone's going to benefit from your rightness on this, and you are going to be doing everybody beyond a favor by having your idea be put into action, made real life.

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):

This is where I think the time comes in. You might also not have time to present it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:31):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):

The way that it needs to be presented to make everyone understand that your plan is the right plan. This is the same problem that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos ran into and Mark Zuckerberg, they had limited time to make people understand the problem or the solution, either one or both. And so all they could do is just drive as fast as possible towards the utopian universe that they saw on the other end of the tunnel with the work that they were going to do and what that was going to create. And so those are the people with vision, and that's what I think is so important about a producer, is that they have a vision and they not necessarily have enough time to get everyone to bask in the vision. And so they have to use marketing and psychology to break the time barrier, to get to that vision and make it a reality before anyone else realizes, oh my gosh, you're a genius.

(01:17:34):

You were right. This was exactly what we needed to do. And so that's where the savants come in, because there's some people who are very brilliant at that dance. They're very capable of making everyone around them see the light quick or they're very capable of dancing around that to the point where by the time we arrive at our destination, we look back and go, oh, wow, how did we get here? And so I think that's what makes, that's the difference between an amazing producer and just a workhorse producer, is that somebody that can come in and use a variety of skills, the psychology, the marketing and the vision and all those things, and create a work of art that is highly regarded and sells tons of copies and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):

I agree with you in that time compression, and this is a topic for another day, I'm going to have to end this, but the other time, compression tactic that they use very effectively, which you'll see why I'm going to say that this is a topic for another day, is delegation too. So they compress the time through strategies to, I guess, convince people quickly or to get their point across quickly and they delegate properly so that they're not wasting their time on things they don't need to be doing, and therefore they compress time. But Joey, I got to go. I got to say thank you so much for coming back on. It's been awesome having you on again.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):

It's been great to be back, and I hope people, I feel like this episode is going to be awesome for a lot of people, and I hope people appreciate it. So

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):

I think so too. I hope to have you back in less than a hundred episodes. Let's make it happen. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.