How To Level-Up From Small Gigs To Massive Projects – With Brandon Rike of TNSN DVSN

This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode one Oh six

you're listening to the six figure home studio podcast, the number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio. Now your host, Brian Hood and Chris Graham. Welcome back

to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood and I'm here with my bald, beautiful, amazing purple shirted cohost, Christopher J. Graham, who is pleasurably here. Oh man, thanks for having me on the show. Brian know you see every time you do that we lose at least 37 listeners when you do that stupid voice.

Well they can go uh, produce music or something.

I don't know what you were going to say. How are you doing man? Dude, I'm fantastic. Um, uh, hanging out here with one of my, one of my homeboys. So one of my, don't talk about that yet. Not to him yet. We're talking about you right now. No, we're talking about you're in a, how are you doing Chris?

I'm great. I started going to a chiropractor and that's been fun.

Is that where they like crack your back and do all sorts of weird adjustments and it's like, yeah, I went to one once cause I had like a, an issue with primary exertional headaches. So when I go to the gym and try to like squat 315 pounds, I would just get headache. It would last three days. So when you exert yourself, you get headaches and then he'd, he did some stuff and then I was cured. So that was, that's amazing. Great. Yeah. Yeah, it's been fun. Facts.

My wife and I are both going and, yeah, it's making me feel younger. So far so good. I'll report back later. Great. The show

brought to you by chiropractic doctors. Stop. I awkwardly pause there to see if you'd ask how I'm doing, but you didn't. So we're going to move on in this interview. Hey, I was going to move. I want to make a joke. It's going to get Brian, how are you doing? No, no, no, no, no. You, you lost that chance today. I actually am. I'm doing okay. But my coffee roasters going out right now, it's on the way out. The heating elements go in. I can't roast any more coffee. Really. That's terrible. And so this is the one area that I am a gear sled. Like when it comes to coffee roasting gear, me and you are on Marco, like dreaming about and like drooling over specific coffee roasters, like at home drum roasters that are like $1,500. And I'm thinking about pulling the trigger on a really expensive home roaster.

Our fantasy is to get a fancy coffee roasting company to send us free coffee roasters. Possibly several.

Yeah. A sponsor this podcast please. Yeah, let's move on today. Today. Chris, who do we have on the podcast today? This is the more important thing.

My brother from another mother fellow Westerville, Ian Westerville, Ohio and Brandon Reich. Westerville Ian Westerville. Ian, that's good. Western doesn't sound very good. Westerville villi and it's like a bad guy. The word villain and it's fine. Yeah, I think we're fine with that. But yeah, we live in Westerville. It's weird that Brandon lives here. Brandon is far too successful, talented and brilliant. Uh, to live in Westerville, but for some reason a lot of like ballers live here in Westerville. And let me tell you about Brandon. Brandon's worked for every band you've ever heard of. When I was doing my research before

this, like, I knew some of the bands you worked with Brandon, but I'm like looking this up, I'm like, Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. What the fuck? I'm like, every single band. I'm like, it's bigger and bigger and bigger. And so when you say every band you've ever heard, I'm pretty sure he's worked with every band anyone has ever heard of. And that's not an exaggeration.

Totally. And so I'm going to tell a little bit of nice things about you. But Brandon was a rock star and uh, decided he wanted to do merge design for bands and that went really well. He has, like I said, worked with every band you've ever heard of. Brandon Lee asks you a question, how many Grammy award winning artists do you think you've collected

braided with? I don't know. I've never thought of it in terms of Grammy. I mean, I guess I would want to go through a list of the ones I didn't work with. I mean like it and when you're in the merchandise industry you get to kind of like touch almost every entity from the Beatles to led Zepplin to Carrie Underwood to rascal flats and then into rock and roll with Slipknot and my chemical romance. And I mean there is very, you know, very few times will I watch any music thing and not feel some type of connection to some project that I worked on at some point in time. I think one thing that's really cool about designing merges that your client list gets to like build really huge and you get to use all those names when really you're not working directly with those artists all the time.

A lot of times you work with merchandising companies and you know, they're just like, you know, having, you do a few things for whatever gigantic artists. So it looks a lot more impressive than it feels on a daily basis. I mean, don't get me wrong, I can pinch myself and think about how cool it is that I get to have anything to do with any of these bands or artists or whatever. Um, but that's kind of, you know, that's actually a really great point that we'll talk about later on. How that was really great, but it wasn't where I wanted to be ultimately. And I wanted to move on from that.

Look at you building suspense for the podcast and people are like, I was going to press pause, but now I'm going to listen because he's intrigued me. So some of you might be thinking, why is Brandon on? What does emerge designer have to say to us in the audio arts field? Here's the thing, man. One Brandon has been in bands, Brandon has worked with producers, Brandon has had hits songs, but more importantly, Brandon works with all the people that all of us want to work with, providing this slightly different service. He provides creative services to the best bands in the world, the best artists in the world, the biggest labels in the world. And as a result of that, he's going to be able to bring home a lot of that wisdom and help us learn how we can run our businesses better and to think about the mindset of the ideal customers that we're going after anyways.

Right. I mean, I think you and I as friends, we, you know, we'll have lunch quite a bit and we'll constantly draw the parallels between what it is that I'm doing, what it is that you're doing. A, I mean, essentially we're an artist and trying to figure out how to make the best choices for that artist that applies to both design, branding and audio. Totally, man. So can you give our listeners a 30,000 foot view over you, your agency, how big your team is and kind of what you guys do from on a day to day basis as far as your projects? Right. So today I have an agency called tension division. I founded it with my business partner, Joel cook back in fall of 2017. Um, we essentially partner with a band, um, throughout the course of the album cycle. And we build a story.

We get in at the ground level, ideally we're getting in while they're writing the record. Ideally we're in there in the studio and we get to hear songs. So we get to, we get to hear stuff before it's finished. Um, when it's kind of malleable enough that we can still apply some type of opinion or creative direction or something like that. And from there we're able to find the story extract kind of the truth of the whole entire thing, extract the real core elements of who this band is, how this band wants to be perceived, what their actual unique point of view is. All of these things are kind of driving forces for the decisions that we're going to make creatively throughout the whole course. So, um, you know, I'm sure there's plenty of graphic designers out there who just design an album cover and that's that whatever album cover looks coolest in that wins.

We don't really take that approach. Our approach is, no, why do you exist? Why should anyone care about you? Why does this record that you're making matter? And what is it about? And, um, how can we most effectively translate that meaning with visuals? But the visual, you know, it, it really bleeds outside of just visual because we're, we're definitely making a lot of like creative decisions that are more about video, more about tour visuals, more about all this other stuff, but also like, yeah, but why do you do it? Is this a, is this the right decision to make? We kind of bleed into a lot of record label type decisions or management type of decisions or all these are PR type of decisions. So when you start realizing that like, here's the service that we offer, the mini, the list of services that we offer, it's still bleeds outside of those confines quite a bit.

And what's cool for us is that there's not really an agency that's doing all of this. Um, I think a lot of agencies, it makes a lot of sense for most agencies a specialize in one thing and hand it off to the next cog in the machine. Right. But for us, you know, me specifically after being one of those cogs, I understood that. Yeah, but if we're not able to take this creative vision out to completion, then the brand is going to get scattered. And if the brain gets scattered, there is no, there's no reason to really see a movement and want to take part in that movement. And the reason it's more important than now than it used to be is that we can scroll through Spotify and hear a song that we kind of like, but if we lose attention at all, we're on to the next hundred songs that we might like.

So the battle for your eyeballs and the battle for your attention is much more severe and cut throat than it was 20 years ago when it was like, if you like Pearl jam and Nirvana and all of the other bands that went along with that. So it was more like, I love this group of artists and that is enough for me. That's not the way it is today. Today it is, you know, take like my chemical romance, you know, 10 years ago or whatever. My chemical romance that defined everything about a kid's life is I am a fan of my chemical romance. That is who I am. You know today it is. I am a fan of 21 pilots. That's who I am. I am a fan of Billie Eilish. I am a fan of whoever. So there's an opportunity for a band to not only build this big fan base but also on the consumer side, on the kids side.

That fan has a tool to define who they are and give their life purpose and meaning and once you get that far and you realize how much this stuff actually matters, it is a pretty massive motivator for branding in the music industry. It's not just about making bands look cool, it's about making fans have a sense of purpose and making sure that the content that you're spitting out with along with these bands and and as a representative of this band has substance and matters. What I don't want is to work with an artist. And when I say why do you exist in whichever fancy way, I ask them that question, they have nothing for me because if that band doesn't care why they exist and I don't care and I don't really care about trying to promote and campaign for a band that doesn't have more to say than just cool songs.

Dude. So I have a couple of things I gotta say on this one. It's wild to me like sitting here talking to you about this and thinking back how long we've been friends. And number two, it's wild to me thinking about how many hours we've spent talking about tension division, but when you're on a podcast with somebody, like you're in presentation mode and that was like, Oh my gosh, like that mix. Like I've spent so much time talking about tension division, but I feel like I understand it more based on what you just said. And I would say the third thing is we talk a lot about the power of story on this podcast. We love Donald Miller's StoryBrand and we love encouraging people that when you're talking to a band or talking to an artist, asking them questions about their story and seeing them as the hero in the story and you as at best a guide that that's the path forward to getting to, finding ways to add value.

And I, it's like hitting me. I don't think I know anybody that's better at finding ways to not finding ways, but that's better at asking questions to an artist or band to figure out what is their story and then getting the big picture of the story that that band is in and that their place in the world. And this hilarious. I'm saying, wow, you're so articulate, but I'm not being very articulate in the way that I'm explaining this. So this is really cool. I think our audience is going to go nuts for your perspective on this stuff. You know, it's interesting because there's a lot of connections here, so we've probably been friends 13 1213 years, something like that. So when I moved to Columbus, Chris was one of them, one of my first friends. And first new friends, a person from a group that I hadn't previously been around or knew or whatever.

I knew a few friends before I moved to Columbus that lived here. But so what's interesting about what you're saying is that there was this commonality that I think I was always searching for when it came to making friends and friendships and then when I became friends with you, became friends with Collin, became friends with et cetera, et cetera. Let me hop over here real quick. We just interviewed Seth Mosley on the last episode and he's friends with all these guys too. This is a house of heroes guys. Well, the thing is that there's is this prerequisite, unsaid prerequisite with band guys or music guys because we've all lost, we've all sort of agreed to take a unconventional path to, you know, I think starting the band will will already say that you are opting for an unconventional path and whatever it is about the conformist route or the status quo is not interesting to you.

Right? So what I'm leading to is the fact that all of these bands that we now work with, I believe there is something pretty special and poignant and substantial inside of them whether they know it or not. So even you can take, let's just take AGA Babcock for example, right? Relatively quiet guy, whatever. But I know there is something very unique about him that amen that we would have to pull out because he does, just because you're in a band doesn't mean you're talkative or whatever, but there is something special and unique inside of you. So I feel like with most artists it is going to be very rare for me to go to an artist and try to start finding these answers to these questions that I have and not be able to dig something up. I think there's something in there, but I have to figure out a way to earn their trust and to create a safe space to share it because there's also a, usually a callous exterior that you have to get through with with a rock star or whatever.

I think of Caleb show Moe for example, like there was something re you know bear tooth being this amazing band that they are and just this heavy band that they are, there is something very vulnerable inside of Caleb that he was able to share with me. And Caleb's honesty allowed me to get some clarity on what it is bear tooth was and specifically what that record disease was about. Totally. And to kind of hop in here, you did all the work for that. You've worked with their tooth, like let's just sort of like right now, who are the bands you're working with? What are some projects that our audience are familiar with that you've done? So what I would put under the tension division umbrella, you know it was a big sea change around fall of 2017 where I just changed a lot. At that time I had already been working with 21 pilots doing everything, doing complete art direction, creative direction, all kinds of stuff.

So that was a very intimate project, continues to be an intimate project. So I came in at the end of 21 pilots of vessel album cycle, started doing some rich designs, redid their logo there at the end of that album cycle. And then I had complete creative control visually on blurry face. So that one was an interesting project where Tyler just kind of assumed I was going to do the layout, although I hadn't really done a ton of layouts at the time and he just kind of assumed I was going to design every single thing and I certainly could design every single thing. And that was this point of no return moment for me, where once I have this singular creative source for all of the stuff that we do, then you're able to create a very cohesive movement out of the whole thing. So we were able to look back at blurry face at the end of that album cycle and realize how cohesive and pronounced and bold brand that was.

Perfect. And that was the point of no return for me. So I remember they did this tour to Columbus. They did five shows here in Columbus. You know, I started with a smaller venue all the way to arenas here and I remember standing outside nationwide arena and seeing just the sea of fans all in black and red, right? Blurry face. Everybody's got like, you know, Tyler put this black paint on his hands and on his neck. I was actually at his house when he was like testing that for the first time. Be like, should I put it like on my neck and where you know, and it looks dope. It looked crazy. It was such a cool thing to watch. Like I was in Tyler's house when he was sitting here and messing with this black paint and now I see like 300 kids that have the black paint on their neck or on their watching little tiny brand elements.

If I don't know if chosen in a very, uh, thoughtful way could then blow up. It almost became this thing of like, you know, if you're looking at a burn pile full of gasoline and you have this match, you know the match is going to catch fire when you throw it in there. So you just need to make sure you're making the best decisions for something to get so amplified and so explosive. So anyway, blurry face worked really well. And when I was at that nationwide arena, seeing all those fans, I knew I was going to have to figure out a way to repaint this whole fan base. And at the time I didn't know what I was going to do, but I actually remember a time when, um, you know, at the very beginning Tyler was very into yellow. And then I remembered how I was sitting waiting for my wife outside of a grocery store and I watched a girl walk out with a army green jacket and a yellow beanie on.

And that was just like, yep, that's it. That's what it's going to be. So then Tyler added this tape element in all this stuff. Anyway, all that to say trench became this massive visual brand that we're currently in the middle of right now. And both of those blurry face and trench made it pretty black and white for me that I was no longer going to have the patience to just be a cog in the machine. I would have to get in on the ground level and control the creative direction internally and create a cohesive brand that will live throughout the duration of the album cycle. I believe if you're that thoughtful with it and if you're that intentional about it, you're just creating a much more robust movement for the fans to take part in. So after seeing that whole trench brand, it basically made it very clear that if you could create a brand with this much substance, it was going to become a movement that the fan base could participate in and would be kind of life changing.

So from there after having done blurry face after having done trench after kind of having this track record, I'm good friends with the guys and under oath and they were recording a new record in DC at the time and I got an email or a phone call from their manager saying, Hey the guys want you to design the packaging for their new album, which didn't have a title at the time and they kind of told me that it was going to be a stylistic shift. It was on a new label, all this stuff. It was going to be a somewhat of a reinvention of under oath and this was the first time I was going to have an opportunity to do a layup for under oath. So my business partner, Joel is also friends with under oath and this seemed like a really good time to say, yes, I want to do this layout and I want Joel involved because the other thing about tension division and its starting point is that it coincided with when my wife was pregnant with our twins and my twins are born and we were in the NICU for two months.

I got to this point where both hands were tied behind my back and if we were going to be working on a project as massive as this Underoath thing, then I was going to have to delegate this work and Joel and I at the time had been working on a few like offshoot projects, a few clothing lines for bands, a few little. We have basically established the fact that Joel and I work together really well, so it was a natural thing of I'm so glad I got the opportunity to design this layout. I do not have the time in the day to do all of this, so I get home at midnight, I'm going to design stuff after I get home at midnight. But Joel was going to have to take care of all of the other stuff. So then that forced me to delegate and it forced me to kind of open up my mind to essentially the delegation necessary to run an entire agency.

Cause at that point I had just been solo. So this is a very long winded answer to a list of clients. Anyway, so we got 21 pilots under oath that led into smashing pumpkin's shiny, no. So bright tour, which then led into the layout for shiny new. So bright. The album bear tooth disease, AFI, the missing man, EAP Weezer black album corn, the nothing angels and airwaves, the new music that they're doing. A band called too close to touch on epitaph records, star set, which is actually a band from here in Columbus who's pretty phenomenal. Massive love. That band concept. Massive story behind that band. They were one of the coolest things that I've seen come up in a while as far as like a concept for a band. Yeah, the concept for stars. That was massive. That was an interesting project because normally I come in and I have, I help them write the story.

This was like there are mountains of story here, so how are you going to clarify this story? How are you going to try to figure out how to articulate it in a way that a broader public can understand all while still catering to the fans that are fully into it. We basically divided the fan base into three groups and those were like the surface fans, the mid level fans and then the super deep fans that will consume anything you put out. So that's essentially the list that I, that's in my head. I have two bands that we're working on right now. I guess the good news is there's enough bands that I think I'm forgetting a few, but in the past two years that's essentially what the roster's been. So those have been very deep relationships with each one of those. So the roster is much more of an accurate title than just that list of artists that I used to have for my merchant design.

I think hearing some of your stories so far and hearing how you made the shift from a single person to kind of an agency model now and the vast list of major artists that you worked with. I think that our audience has a really good understanding of where you're at right now. I would actually love to hear a little bit of how you made this shift before we start this interview. You talked about how you are a specialist first, you are a cog in the machine first and that's where I'd see a lot of our audience isn't even there yet. They're trying to jump straight to where you are now, which I would almost say a Jack of all trades where you're doing the entire process and a lot of people can resonate with wanting to have so much control over the entire process, but they're not ready for it yet.

They're trying to jump ahead of everything and just go straight to the top like where you're at now. What can you say about what you did as a specialist beforehand and and how you knew it was time to make a shift to the all encompassing, like creative director? So I think that I was a specialist for a lot. Let's see, when I first started, when I'm, I don't know, 1617 years old, just kind of trying to figure out what graphic design is. You know, I'm, I have a band and I'm designing flyers and logos for my band. There's other bands in town and I'm designing t-shirt designs and stuff for them. At that point, you're kind of like, whatever the necessity is you'll do. And I think most people's obsession starts in that way where, you know, I have a nephew who just loves tractors.

He's not specialized in a specific part of tractors yet. Dude just knows he likes anything to do with farming and tractors. Right? So it starts off very broad and then the specialization happens after doing it and kind of like dipping your toe into all these different areas and trying to figure out the thing that you're at. And I think the thing that you're best at should be a very important guide most of the time because the thing that you're best that usually has this builtin motivation to get you out of bed in the morning, you just know you're good at it, you know that you're going to be able to do it and you're going to be able to impress yourself or be happy with what you make. It would be much harder to go out and do a thing that you're just not good at and the only reason you're doing it is to try to get better.

That isn't nearly as motivating as be like, man, I made that one thing that was really cool yesterday. Let me see if I can make something cool today. So I just, for whatever reason, t-shirt designs became this very modular need that every band that my band toured with needed. So it became a very simple thing of like, I will design this t-shirt graphic for you, I will send you the file and you will pay me money. And that was a very simple thing. At the time that money was like $40 or free or whatever. The exchange was very simple and it wasn't this ongoing complicated relationship. The stakes were very low. All it was was I'll do this, you pay me for that, onto the next one. And I also realize well if I could get paid that much for one thing, let me see if I can do more than one thing.

How many more of the things can I do and continue to have money. I just started doing the math and realizing if I could figure out a way to do X amount of T shirt designs every day, then I can make this much money. So that was a very simplistic assembly line introduction into how in the world to make money with graphic design. And real quick, how many bands would you say? How many artists have you worked with? Fall part it 500 600 I don't know. I think my website back when I had all the other work on my old website, I would assume that list was probably like 250 or something like that. And you know, if I looked through my hard drive, I have all the work I've ever done. If I look through my hard drive, it takes a long time to scroll from a to Z. And I think, I don't know, I mean there's probably 10 to 12,000 project photos in that projects archive hard drive.

Sure that some of it is like my chemical romance, 2003 Michael [inaudible] 2004 you know there are multiple folders. So I don't know, I've never counted it. But I would say it's probably, I don't know man, it might be five, 600 to a thousand to, I don't know, a lot as much as you could possibly imagine doing it. Cause I was never, there was nothing exclusive about it. You know what I mean? It was just whoever came through I could do, I was never, there was never a project I couldn't take. And for most times there was never a project I turned down. I just, a lot of it was this challenge, you know, with it being so modular was like someone would email me to do some stuff and I knew I didn't have time, but I took it on anyway. And then I figured out a way to be super efficient with my work and then I was able to figure out how to do it.

So I also became very fast at the work. So the speed at with at which I could this work, you know, coupled with never turning anyone down meant that I could just do tons and tons and tons, which allowed me to figure out a way to make an annual income that I could actually get married. You know, we moved to Columbus from Dayton and then, um, then I soon bought my first house a year after we got married and it was all like, I think I've heard the amount of money that adults are supposed to make in a year. And let me see if I can make enough money with these little t-shirt designs without a boss. Right. To see if I can get to that point. So this specialization, I think that's what a lot of our listeners are at in their career right now. They are just taking like nickel and dime projects wherever they can and putting it in an assembly line and that's kind of like they're in goal.

If I can make $32,000 a year, then I'm happy right now. That was my number. Was that the number? Actually 32,000 was the number it was. It was like, um, I think adults make $30,000. I didn't want to talk specific numbers, but I think adults make $30,000 right? I don't know. I'm from a small town. There's not a lot of money in my small town. Then I made $32,000 that first year of doing the first full time year when I wasn't touring. So when I got off the road touring, I was like, I'm gonna sit, I'm gonna stay here for a year and let's see how many of these t-shirt designs I can add up and make $30,000 I mean, $32,500 that first year. What year was that? 2005. Okay. And then that was me telling myself that, okay, that is you can go back to your girlfriend's parents and say you made that amount of money and then say, so can I ask her to marry her?

We've been together since we were 16. We're 23 at the time, 22 at the time. So that was it. I mean it was a very like mathematical equation for me of is this a viable occupation and can I make enough money in a year to do this? Like I said, so mathematical to be getting, but what it all taught me was, okay, so now I'm a specialist in t-shirt design. I'm like, I don't like doing the web design. Um, at the time album layout was just way too in depth. You know, you're going to be like changing thank you's for a band and all this stuff and like changing liner notes. I don't want to do that stuff. It just seems to scatter my focus and all that stuff. But these t-shirt designs, I can turn these things out, you know, I can do a few of them an hour.

You know what I'm saying? So like, let me, let me just focus on this. I remember when we first started hanging out, it's wild. Like this is helping me process how long we've been friends and that I've seen your journey from like not a whole lot after the start of it. And I remember going over your house and sitting in your studio that it must've been over 10 years ago was probably Oh six something like that. Oh seven I think maybe Oh eight was before we bought our house. Holy crap. Yeah. Yeah. I remember coming to your place and watching you do a design and it just being like from concept to finished in like minutes and me being like, Oh, that's mastery. Well, what was cool about it was that I was to do, doing so much. The byproduct was that you get really fast at everything, right?

So it's like I'm, I don't know the shortcuts that I'm hitting, I don't know all that stuff. I just know that whatever is in my head is getting onto the computer very quickly. The tools are not a barrier, a creative barrier. They're only helping me get my idea somewhere else. Right? So there's all these other things that are probably happening during that time. I'm getting really fast, you know, I am, I'm maybe like put a formula to it. What actually works when I do all this stuff, like what gets approved, all that stuff like your, you're, it's almost like a crash course trial by fire turbo boosted experience thing of like when most designers may juggle 10 projects a year. I'm learning how to juggle 10 projects a day and go through and get client feedback and try to try to anticipate and read their mind and do all that stuff.

So I think there's so many UN, I don't even know that I've listed what I was learning throughout that process, but the specialization kind of taught me so much more stuff because my concern wasn't on what are all the different tasks I could be doing. It was more about, let me just keep doing this one specific thing and then while I'm doing the one specific thing, I'm going to start learning all of the principles of design in general while doing the one specific thing. So it was like that task, the t-shirt designs were just the task at hand. When I'm learning all the same design principles all the other designers are doing, but all the other designers are learning them while being very scattered in what it is they're supposed to do today. There was never a question of motivation. I knew I had to get up and do the thing.

Laziness that got out the window early. That was, you know, that had to go right away. So all of those things just had to get out of the way. Cause I knew I had to hit these deadlines every day and man, it's just amazing how efficient you're going to be when you're, anytime you procrastinate something, somehow you get the thing done by the time. Right. So essentially without intending to, I was procrastinating everything cause I would start the project on the deadline day because it's the only way I could shove all those projects into my calendar. Well that's due on Tuesday and I've got all kinds of stuff to do on Monday so it looks like I'm doing the thing on Tuesday that's due on Tuesday. That's the way it's always going, so that rapid fire work, I think that probably just helped me get all of the skills without really trying to like, okay I want to get really good at this tool.

I don't have time to focus on a tool. I don't have time to focus on software. I just have to do the work whichever way my tendencies do. Here's the interesting thing about your story so far. The story is very much in line with Chris's story is very much in line with my story, which was we learned how to be very efficient in what we do and you built up your career just being more and more efficient and putting things out. You're making deadlines. You are probably making more and more money every year. We won't get into the details of that. But

Chris and I, our story is the exact same where we started. I made $29,000 my first year working in my parents' basement, my studio, and it went up from there because I got more and more efficient about doing what it, what it is that I do. I started raising my prices and not losing work and so I started doing that more and more. The difference though, between you and Chris and I is that you, instead of getting even more efficient and just raising your prices and keeping that same workflow, you completely shifted things to where now you are doing, you said you're working with two artists right now. Are there more than that or just two main projects that you're doing, right?

No. Oh no. Right now. I mean, we're kind of constantly keeping all of these projects afloat. So in a way you could say I'm working with all of the artists that I just listed. There are, you know, very few, you know, the contract will run out sometimes or the album cycle will die down. But I mean for the most part I would say I am juggling, I don't know, six or seven bands. I didn't include grandson. We work with grandson right now. We work with desk rocks right now.

My point with that is six or seven bands. You're doing that right now with your agency where before you might do six or seven bands in a day. Right? Yes. And so that's a complete fundamental shift and I think that's, that's the interesting thing that I'd like to find out more info about you from, cause Chris and I, we talk about this all the time on the podcast, how to run your business exactly how you were running your business, where you are making sure you hit deadlines, you are becoming more efficient, you are optimizing your workflow, you're doing customer relationships, you're managing a bunch of customer relationships and inching up your income year by year. We've beat that to death. What we don't know a whole lot about is how you put these bigger deals together. Where it is you working with an artist with a very like a, I would say probably an order of magnitude, much, much larger project.

Overall. How does this sort of stuff come about? Because now you're not just saying, Hey I will send you this deliverable. You pay me this money, thank you, goodbye. It's no longer that. Now it is. We have a relationship together. We are building something much, much larger together. And so what does that process look like from start to finish? Like someone contacts you at some point and then you go through your, you, I'm sure you have some sort of process set up now. How does that look by to put some sort of big project like this together at this level?

I mean it's a macro micro type of thing. It's this idea of I was content just being a specialist and just doing these little things here and there and that was fine because really my goal in life at that time wasn't necessarily to be the best at what I did necessarily though. You were, it was just to try and, you know, support myself and my wife and pay my mortgage and all that stuff. I was just trying to, without going too far into it, a lot of like my parents are still together to this day and when I was a kid they argued but they were only arguing the core was always about money. So money was always this like infectious thing that kind of like polluted so many areas of my life. And I just see much that like if you don't get your money sorted out, if you don't get your financial situation sorted out, it's just going to provide you with so much unnecessary stress so much that it might even hurt your marriage.

It might hurt all these different make, you know, force you to do an impulsive, bad decisions, all that stuff. So my quest for financial stability isn't some like isn't some like I want to be rich. That's not necessarily what it is. My thing is just no money's important cause I don't want to have to worry about money. I don't want to wake up knowing I can't pay the bills because it's going to affect everything else and then you're going to try to talk to me and I'm, and I'm mad, but I'm not mad about this. I'm mad about this global picture that I'm not making enough money. It's an infectious thing. So for me it was like I definitely have to get this sorted out and I know that sounds like it. Minimalizes it, it's like people would probably roll it, the rise of that whole idea, but it's like you just need to make sure money doesn't become an issue for you every day.

You're not angry about money everyday. What do you got to do to get that point? That's what I was trying to do. Um, so what I'm saying now is that I was trying to like make money and do all that stuff. That was the goal of my design. However, every now and then I would find myself walking in the hot topic or walking up to a merge table on a tour or whatever and just looking up at it all and saying, you know what? I've been working my butt off in the merchant industry for all this time and all this merge still sucks. It still sucks. Like the, it is so scattered, so inconsistent. I'm not getting any story from these bands. None of these bands are creating a movement because these designs are just churned out by all these different sources, sources that don't know anything about the core story of the artist, all that stuff.

It just becomes this scattered messy thing that all of my time in the merchant industry didn't fix. I didn't move the needle, I didn't improve it. So once I started working with 21 pilots, I started seeing a little bit of a blueprint on how I could improve the overall brand cohesiveness of the music industry in general. And I think not only that, like I said, I think there is a place for it today because with so much attention deficit, um, there just has to be a moment for someone to stop and pay attention. You know what I'm saying? There can be, you know, there's going to be like a hundred cars that are going to drive by the road here, but when that big like parade float with a big dinosaur screaming and blowing flames, we will stop. So there has to be something worthy of our attention.

Something that can be an immersive experience, something that can be an interactive experience in order for us to actually change this music industry and how branding is approached. So I got that in my head and once I got that in my head, having this vision of doing something bigger in regards to design in the music industry, it got very difficult to go back and turn out those, you know, 10 designs or 10 projects every day. It was like, okay, I think that this chapter, this phase of my career is over because I can no longer stomach just being a cog in the machine. I think I have to figure out a way to reconfigure the whole machine. One of the things you said earlier that really grabbed me is that Tyler assumed Tyler from 21 pilots assumed that you would do everything. Yeah. That's fascinating.

We talk a lot about in the past, and I talk about this all the time when I'm doing like coaching with somebody or a meeting, another small business owner and we're hanging out, but this idea that the market will tell you the market told you what to do next. Well, I'm really lucky to work with an artist that believes in like a grassroots small team because you know, at the very beginning of 21 pilots that hole and when I guess when 21 pilots was starting to do big tours, just about everybody on that tour was a friend, like a school friend or somebody like that in some way. So he was all about being like, okay, I got Mark Ashman video is figured out right now. I've got Brandon right designs figured out. Very simple for him, right? So that was a tremendous life changing advantage for me.

But he was right. And I think there's something genius about Tyler Joseph, that his instincts tend to be prophetic and he just has a way of making decisions that are true to him. And then you see that they pay dividends long term. So Tyler's opinion was that a singular creative source, maybe he didn't say this, a singular creative source would make the brand more cohesive. I think that's what was in there. No matter what he said to me, that's kind of what he was realizing. And I did, you know, and him being a senior writer is making the music more cohesive or music more honest, all that stuff. So it was just, you know, 21 pilots gave me a taste of something amazing. And you know, for that transition period when I was getting out of merge design, what I tended to do at this point, we were working a lot with 30 seconds to Mars, working a lot with Underoath and we did align from my chemical romance.

There were all these like there are all these opportunities for, and that's actually how Joel and I started working together. Um, I would not only do a bunch of t-shirt designs, but I would also hand them to Joel. Joel has a lot of experience in corporate clothing line and in that whole world like majestic or VF corporation, all of these big real apparel companies, right? So I would hand him like a hundred little graphic things that I did for 30 seconds to Mars and he would take all this mess of design and try to put it together and into a clothing collection for 30 seconds to Mars. And we did the same thing with Underoath. We did. So it became this thing of these little transitional things of well really we only needed to do five t-shirt designs. Why did you create a hundred graphics and why did we end up doing a collection with 25 30 garments in it?

Right? It was because I can't stand doing just a little piece. And if you asked me to do a little, if you ask me for a piece of candy, I'm going to make you an entire cake. It's just, there's no way around it right now. You know? So what? And I started finding myself way more creatively fulfilled if I could not give myself the stopping point that I used to have, which went against a lot of my instincts. And going back to what you and I had always talked about, you know, I think you introduced me to the idea of Tim Ferriss. I say the idea is actual human being, but he's also an idea the institution of Tim Ferris, the philosophy of Tim Ferris. Yeah. You introduced me to Tim Ferris, um, introduced me to email with all these different things. And it got very clear though that as much as you and I talked about business, this idea of a business that can run without you.

While I just wasn't a great candidate for that because we could hardly find time to get lunch, let alone figure out a way for me to walk away from my business and the business still runs. I was a sole proprietor. I'm all by myself. There's, I can't delegate. You know, I tried to delegate a few projects here and there and it just didn't work the way it was. So again, there was probably some divine intervention when having the kids. And I'm in a hospital for two months, obviously this is way more important than anything I would ever do with design. I am here, nothing else matters. I don't care if I go broke for the next two months sitting in this hospital. But that under oath project came through and I said, well Joel, this is it. This is the first time I'm going to really be able to delegate a project.

So can you handle all the managerial stuff? And I can try to come in and be a technician after midnight and actually design things. And that's what we did. And essentially that was how the layout for under oath did. And you know, Joel's spending the day talking to the band, talked to the manager, talking to the label, all that stuff. And I'm doing the design work. So we created this somewhat of a visionary integrator role. Me being the visionary, Joel being the integrator. So Joel, you know, is running the day to day of the business. Joel is in touch with the clients every day and it allows me to think of the bigger vision and also to be the main lead designer day to day and come up with the core concepts that are hopefully based on the core story and kind of get much deeper and much more emotional about it.

Then I would say most designers tend to get, I'm, I'm, I'm an emotional dude, so I want to break it down to the core of why you feel the way you feel and very quickly. Well you said a couple of things there that I think are interesting. We talk about on the podcast, I always make this joke about how I was a loser. I was terrible at business and then I met my son and it was like this, you know, the joke I always make with everybody is there was this moment of like transformer, like I must provide like I'm going to figure this business thing out. I love this little guy and I'm like, I remember the moment when like they were weighing him at the hospital at st Anne's and I said something to my wife and I was like kinda holding his head up while they weighed him and he looked over when he heard my voice and our eyes met and it was like in that moment I was like, Oh man, it's about ready to get crazy in here.

I'm going to have my business running like crazy in a minute. And it is so counterintuitive how the thing that is going to take up the most time ever and is going to be the most distracting is not the right word because they are the thing. But the most consuming ends up being the most effective motivator for clarifying your business because there's no time to be scattered anymore. You have no choice but to clarify what it is your business does. Ego kind of flies out the window because now your life is service and protection and your business is no longer the most important thing in your life. Yes. So once the thing gets demoted to not the most important thing in your life, it gets much easier to delegate. Whoo. Oh man, that, that man, if we could do a, if we could do a podcast, I mean maybe this is it, but like the conversation of how kids becoming a new parent affects business.

Oh man. It is like it because it's so unsaid. If you don't have kids, there's no way you can know and there's no judgment if you don't have kids and you don't know that stuff yet. But it is just such a, it's almost like the Mike Tyson quote of everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth and then once you get punched in the mouth, then um, there's all the BS goes out the window. Like it's just clarity of vision, clarity of intention, and then your decision just become way more. Like, I don't know, you get less time to frolic around in the field and you actually have to get down to business. One of the things that I found with that is, you know, before kids, somebody would come back with a revision and be like, Oh, could you do this? And I would be like, and now, man, what, what did you say?

Are you doubting my abilities as a, you know, and I would just get so offended. But then once I had kids, it was like, okay, well I'm gonna make this person happy. I'm going to, I'm going to make this artist pumped about my work and I'm going to be chipper about it. Yeah. I need to provide, I need to put food on the table. And then it was the weirdest thing of like, I started working with clients in that way. I was so much less offendable. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it was like, Hey, this is pretty fun to treat people the way I want to be treated and to not take everything so personally that like you're not the great that I'm not the greatest technician of all time. Okay. So what I think when you say that is, you know, for my kids, I wake my kids up in the morning and most of the time when my daughter definitely when she's, she's going to listen to this like 10 years from now and be embarrassed when I wake my daughter up, she's got a poopy diaper every morning.

Right. So I'm changing that diaper right away. And also usually when I get it, my, my son's as cool as can be in the morning. He's just, you know, everything's cool. He's chill, no big deal. I pick him up by changing my, take them down, I'd get him dressed, I take him downstairs and then I come back up and then I get my daughter out when my daughter will be losing it. Every time I take her out of her crib, she just wants to stay in the crib and like keeps just kinda like play in there. Right. So when I'm taking her out of the crib, she loses it. She flails around. She does the worst thing you would want a baby to do while you're trying to change them, especially with a diaper. If they're, if they're flailing around, it's awful, right? They're reaching. So what's happening as a father is you have this thing being completely irrational and insane, and we know as dads, it is not going to do any good for us to react and yell and scream and lash out back at that type of energy.

So we just have to sit here and take it. We might be getting punched in the face, we might be getting kicked in the groin. Whatever's happening to us as dad. We still have to learn to keep our composure throughout the chaos. Right? So in the same way, it's like you're getting this training on how to not be so impulsive in your reaction and also think of the greater good because the greater good for my kids is to not think that dad's a monster and to be terrified of dad, right? I do not want my kids to be scared of me. I want them to respect me and know that I can discipline them, but I don't want them to actually truly be so scared of me. They don't want to talk to me or be around me. There's a big delineation there. So in the same way, it's not all about my ego when it comes to clients.

It's not about like you don't talk to me that way, like that's got to go out the window and you've got to find some common ground. You also have to put yourself in their perspective. Me being in a band knowing that, no, this is my band. I know the way I want to be perceived. I know what I want to say and there's not too many designers are going to be able to come in and Trump what I'm trying to say. Right. So it is very much a work together relationship and I don't know if I knew that when I first started the agency. I don't know if I knew that two and a half years ago or whatever it was, but I know that now and it makes it a little bit more difficult. It's probably not as concise as it was back then where I got spoiled by my first clients.

But I think that there is some balance that sometimes your clients are gonna want you to do things that may not be your tendency. But I also believe that if you can allow those clients to stretch you a tad, you might access areas that you never want to access. It would be like Willie Nelson coming in and really wanting you to just track that awful acoustic guitar that he has. When you know that you have a tried and true acoustic guitar that will get you exactly the sound that you want, becomes a signal that you can predict that Willie Nelson's guitar with a hole in it. You don't know what type of vibration is going to come back out of that thing and you don't know. You're gonna be able to control that thing, you know, in production. So that's awesome. It's this thing of like, but you're willing Nelson and that guitar has a soul and I'm going to figure out a way to make that work.

And maybe at the end of this you get a Grammy on that song because it has the most warm or weird tone that you've ever heard. Right. So I believe don't shut your client down without the ability to understand that wherever they want to take you may stretch your need a little bit. Which brings me to an interesting hypothetical question. If you had been like the traditional like play by the rules, like type of guy, which you are not, you are a make your own path type of guy. If Tyler had come to you, Tyler Joseph from 21 pilots and at essentially communicated we want you to be the creative director, what woul