The Future of Gear and The Power Of Networking

This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 66

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

six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood and I'm here with my amazingly beautiful but frozen cohost, Chris Graham. Chris, how you doing buddy? I'm good. I have fought all my joints work now. Yeah. For those who don't know, we just came back from Nam this week and Chris, just to paint the picture here, Chris, first time flying in like nine years, Chris's flight out of Chicago on his way home is canceled due to this crazy vortex. Everyone's probably heard about it, this crazy arctic vortex thing that came through the north and it was like negative 20 degrees in Chicago. Negative 40 or 50 wind chill and Chris, his flight was canceled. Chris, what did you do? Tell the audience what you had to do in your scrappyness. I'm glad you asked, but if you're not interested in my story, just know we've got some great stuff for you guys.

We're going to talk about Nam, what we learned, what you can learn. It's awesome, but so I haven't flown since my first son was born. He's eight. This was like a little anxiety inducing for me to fly out to Nam. My longest flight I've ever been on, used to fly all the time long time ago and so flew out direct la on the way back and connected through Chicago almost in the Chicago. My cell phone starts getting notifications about canceled flights I land and the forecast is that it's going to be negative 27 degrees and now for those of you who are in other countries and negative 27 degrees Fahrenheit is all you need to know. It's enough to kill you really fast. It's negative 32 degrees Celsius. So it's actually pretty close. Yeah, so like we land, everyone's freaking out. I sprint across the airport, which is a weird site.

Chubby little man, like myself. Chubby, tall man, tall man. Like myself. Yeah. I'm pretty tall but anyway, so I get there and there's like a flight that's been delayed that goes to Columbus. This was where I'm from. I like wait for an hour with this sweet girl that's like a brand new employee of American Airlines and she finally gets me first place on standby, so I'm like, all right, yes I got, I'm going to be home tonight. And then they've canceled that flight. We look at the weather and everybody's like, Hey, they closed midway airport, which is like right down the street from O'hara where I was. So I was like, oh crap, this isn't gonna work. I'm going to get trapped here because it's going to be negative 50 degrees windshield. So I rent a car. It's six hours drive how we're all the cars not taken by this point because I ran.

Okay. So I like sprinted. I think that most people weren't considering like, hey no one's gonna fly out of here for like three or four days. And I think I was on the leading edge of that. So I run and get my car, thank God. And it was the most terrifying drive I've ever done for the first hour and a half. It's like 25 mile, 30 mile an hour winds blowing 90 degrees across the highway. So I felt like my car was going to get blown off highway quite a number of times. There's like semi-trucks, jackknifed, so I pull over and I'm like, I'm just going to take a nap in this rest area for like 10 minutes. Was this after I texted you saying if you get tired, take a nap. Okay, good. I'm glad I potentially saved your life there with that text.

Well you almost killed me and let me explain that. So I get in and I'm like, I've got to go pee. And it's like a blizzard outside and I didn't have my coat because I was like, oh, I'll just be in la. No big deal. So I'm just like a Hoodie. Oh God. So the bathrooms like a hundred yards away. So I get out of my car, I run into the bathroom and as I opened the door, this is two in the morning in the middle of Indiana. I opened the door. I walk in in this teeny tiny little hillbilly sprints out of the women's restroom, shaking his hands and I'm like, Oh God. So I like try to ignore what's happening. I go into the restroom and he waits for me outside and I come back out and he like starts to move towards me and I just got the heck out of there.

I can't imagine like your leg went six, two, six, three, six, two. Yeah. With shoes on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a tall boy. You're a big boy and I can't imagine some redneck hillbillies shaking his hands coming into the women's restroom, literally chasing you across the Arctic Tundra. That is Chicago at this time. That's such a hilarious thought in my mind. Yeah. These like truck stops are known to be meet up spots for certain types of people and it's a nice way of putting it if you're into that. No judgment. Just this guy seemed like he was going to eat my face for breakfast the next morning. That happens in Florida for sure, but I don't know about Chicago. I didn't have any trouble staying awake for the rest of the night. I was like, Oh God, he's a serial killer, right into my car and just straight shot.

It's like the next four hours was totally fine. Just saying Tom Petty at the top of my lungs until I got home. Well, I for one, I'm glad you made it home safe. I would've been super sad and felt responsible for your death if you would have crashed and died. Well, I appreciate that because I talked to you and to coming to Nam and I feel responsible. So the topic of today's episode is basically our recap of NAM, but it's so much more than that because if there's been dozens of videos and youtube, there's plenty of shit on the Internet about Nam. Our spin on it is what is at Nam for the average home studio owner, what does that mean for the future of home studios? There's a lot in this episode related to how this benefits all of our home studio listeners and I think we saw some critical stuff, Chris.

We did and not only do we see a lot of cool stuff and got sort of some interesting ideas about where our industry is going. I think some of the best application is talking to you guys about how you can further your career by going to events like Nam and for those of you guys that don't know what name is, it's the National Association of Music Merchandising and it is hundreds of thousands of people. One hundred, 15,000 be specific, 115 thousands because it feels more like a million because it's like wall to wall people and they're all like musicy, so there's all kinds of at Nam and when you're there it's just a nonstop networking opportunity. It's insane. Here's the deal, like Chris and I have been meaning to go for all these years. We've been in a seminar which is fine, but I can't even put into words the magnitude that is Winter Nam and it gave us some thoughts on how important getting your ass out into the world and putting boots on the ground is when it comes to networking.

Furthering your careers, meaning people that you can mutually benefit, people that can benefit you and that you can help benefit as well, and this happened time and time again to both Chris and I and the people in our circle that we were hanging out with these random occurrences that you would never expect it to happen. Just presented themselves. These random things happened where two people met that shouldn't have otherwise met. It just was a random occurrence and we would have never met some of the amazing people we met for this trip and some of which will actually be on the podcast in the future that we would never have otherwise gotten had we not gone to NAM random encounters in the hot tub. We're not going to talk about that. It's not as bad as it sounds. Encounters on the floor of NAM at different booths.

We were talking to people and random people would wander up to us. It'd be something that I've wanted to meet for all these years and all this was made possible just by buying a $300 flight to NAM and getting our ticket to the event. Yeah, it was incredible and I think one of the things we talked about on the show a lot, some of the feedback we get from people all the time, it's like, Hey, I live in the middle of nowhere, small town or even big town and I'm like the only audio engineer I know, I don't have a network, you know, it's like I'm trying to do this and completely alone, you know, feel for you there because I sat in my basement for 10 years mastering songs and clients never came over. It was always over the Internet and because of that you've developed some very odd habits as a grown man.

Just grunting. Chris and I were traveling together and so he was telling me these noises he makes. He wasn't aware. He makes them. Yeah. Sorry, I'm putting you on blast Chris. But it's just funny to me. It's like we all do this. Like I whistle. I like seeing myself because I'm stuck at home all the time and I have to entertain myself. So it's like we all get these stupid weird habits because we're like these cave dwelling creatures and when you get put out in the world you start to realize how all these stupid weird shit that you do with all these habits you've created for yourself are weird. So it's like you're not by yourself, Chris. I'm in it with you too. Yeah, I think I might be a little weirder than you in real life. I think I asked you like 10 times if you're okay.

Yeah, you did. Well, I'm one of these people that like, I'll just be like minded my own business. It's quiet. Then I'm making that noise or you know, not to get into too much detail, but I'm always making noises constantly. You just sit there and he'd be like, out of nowhere, just like a lot of the yoga came in and you know, you don't notice them until you're out with other people. So with Nam, what made it so incredible for me, I try to steer us back towards the here. Yeah, there's a point to this, I promise. Yeah. So at Nam we talk a lot about having a reality based focused. You know, we talked about that Dr Henry cloud quote, integrity is being able to eat reality for breakfast without getting sick. When you're at NAM and you're interacting with hundreds of other audio engineers and companies who sell audio gear and companies who make plugins, you get a really strong dose of reality.

You get a really strong sense of, Oh, this is what I'm really is. This is what the audio industry really is. This is what audio engineers are really like, and that is a very, very good thing for your career. Yes, you start to realize that you're not the only one that makes weird noises, but you know what I'm saying like you see that everyone out there is just like you in some way, shape or form and you can relate to those people and honestly that's healthy for us as human beings, we are social creatures. There have been studies that say, if you spend all of your life alone, you will die way before people that spend their lives with other people. I don't know what the study is, I'm not going to cite that, but you can look this up somewhere. There's a study about this and whether or not it's scientifically backed.

I believe it to be true that we are social creatures that are made to be around others and just the sheer fact that we have gotten out there some and we've spent time around people that are just like us is extremely helpful just for the mental aspect, but there's also so many other benefits to be gained for spending time around people like we did at Nam. Yeah, so my advice, like definitely my take home was I was getting on a plane, flew to Chicago, rented a car, almost got my face eaten off, got home at five in the morning, drove all through the night, walked in the door and my sentiment was worth it. I'd do it again in an instant and my other sentiment was this idea of like, why didn't I start doing this right out of college, got my audio degree? Why didn't I start immediately going to name them so that I had more of a reality based mentality around what is my industry and definitely meant strong advice, you know, for you guys that are locked in basements all day.

I didn't drums and mixing songs and whatnot. Go to the conferences, not just go to conferences, go to local meetups. If there's anything like in Nashville, there's tons of awesome producer meetups and studio meetups and studio warming parties or just like gatherings for audio professionals and music industry people. Your city, if you're a major city definitely has some. If you're in a smaller city, might have some, but then you have winter nam that you should absolutely go to. We'll talk about how you can actually get a ticket to that in a second because it's only for industry people too. There's summer NAM which is here in Nashville and if you go to that, I live three blocks from where that's held so we can all hang out here and drink a lot of coffee and get caffeine. Height's three, there's a e, s that's another event that's specifically for audio engineers and so it's a more concentrated version of hanging around people at Nam, except you just exclude all of those other vendors from the equation.

No drummers. That sounds great. Oh No, drummers. Oh God, please. If anyone spent any amount of time in either summer or Winter Nam in the drum section. It is actually hell, don't go to the drum section. Don't do it. Yeah. Let me tell a funny story. So Brian and I walked in and were like, we're not gonna. Look at a map. We're just gonna wander these thousands of acres of music gear and see where we land and like we walk in and all the sudden we find ourselves in this basement and we're the only Caucasian people in this basement and it's like hundreds of booths of Asian audio manufacturers that are all selling the exact same microphone. It was the knockoff reject basement with shinzen quality audio and like, yeah, all of these people you've never heard of before. So we were like, Whoa, where are we? And like Brian is trying to find some coffee and it's just this weird thing, so we like got out of there pretty quick and stumbled into the drum area and I'll never forget this guy's face, but there's clearly a drummer walking around with drumsticks.

He's that guy and he's just literally hitting the cymbals like symbol, new symbol, new symbol, new symbol, and there's like hundreds of people doing this or like, Hey, I'm going to try all the snare drums at Nam and if you can imagine like 500 drummers experimenting simultaneously. Unsynchronized, welcome to hell. Hell yeah. Let's bring this down a little bit. And before I forget this, if you are trying to get a ticket to NAM and you can't just join a joined audio engineering society, members of that getting into nam for free, as far as I know, that's how I got into summer now. 20 17. So look into that. If you're looking to go, we got into this press because of this podcast. You can also start your own podcast just for the sole intent of getting into nab or you can always get him through a friend.

Yeah, if you have a friend who works for, you know, a guitar company or a Drum Company or an audio company, they typically have extra passes and you can get, you know, like a sponsored path pretty easily. Yeah. Let's actually get into the meat of some of the things we saw at Nam because there were some things that are going to, if not disrupt industry now, which I don't think what we saw this year is going to really do a whole lot of disruption right now, but it is going to plant the seed of disruption for the future and potentially eliminate the need for a lot of what we saw there as far as hardware. Yeah. Well what's interesting about name in general and that you need to understand quick history lesson about our industry is that back in the day, if you wanted to record records in say 1930, you needed some weird equipment.

He would probably cut an actual vinyl record live in the studio, like in a, uh, what's the movie? Uh, I am a man of constant sorrow. Oh, that's a brother where outbound o brother. Where art thou? Yeah, they would cut the record live. You need a lot of specialized equipment and as technology has improved, the recording studio has been an easier place to work. You know, eventually they had mixing boards, venture, they had multitrack recorders and now you can be a 13 year old new parents basement and get a pretty good quality recording accomplished as a teenager. Yeah. There was no potential of that ever happening 50 years ago. Yeah, so the important thing to kind of think about there is that our industry is changing a lot and the things that we take for granted, like preamps, like audio, like xlr cables, there are all these things that we just think like, oh well those will always be a thing.

Not necessarily. If you look at the history of our industry, at a certain point, people are like, get rid of the tape machine. Are you kidding me? How are you going to record? You can't use a computer or a hard disk. That's insane. At one point, recording on the computer was completely nuts. Now it's everybody does it. So Nam is so interesting because you see these new technologies come out and you know, we are certainly open to getting sponsors at some point if the sponsors were compatible with what we preach in this podcast. You're never gonna like turn to the podcasts on and be like, you guys need to buy this because it sounds about the same as all the other preamps and the knobs on this one. This will help you get more clients. Thank you for saying that. Preamps man. Don't get me started.

Yeah. So speaking to preempt, we saw a product that we thought was fascinating and let me just reiterate what you're saying here. We are not sponsored, we are not affiliated. This is just barely one we came across. Yeah, we're not sponsored yet. This is just our own. What we saw and how we see it as trusted podcasters who are not being swayed by money is on trying to say. Right. So we're unbiased, at least for the present. So we saw this product and Brian and I have talked at length about whether we should even say who makes it or what it is like you know this. We're not really totally sure. So forgive us. I'm going to accept the gear. Sled alert is technically you have to give it to me as soon as I say the brand, I tried it and name it sounded amazing.

I'd love to try one here in the studio. We're looking into that. It was a USB mic from antelope audio. Now hold on, hold on, hold on. Cool. Your jets aren't Usb mics for twitch streamers and gamers? Yes. It's a $1,500 USB mic with Builtin Mike Emulation, preamp emulation compression hardware stuff. Fiscally. It's got the interface incorporated with the mic. It's just plugged the damn thing in and that's all you need. You don't need a separate interface. You don't need a separate preamp. You don't need any other dongles or gadgets. You plug the thing in on any computer and you're done. Yeah, my jaw hit the ground. When I listened to this thing, I was like, that sounds like a really, really good mic, and you can be like, oh, I want it to show them, look this way, I heard that mic or this classic Mike.

I want to state that the floor was way too noisy and I could not give an opinion on how I thought it sounded because yeah, it was not a good listening environment, so I'm not going to state with our loved it or hated it. What we did love was what it accomplished and the precedent it is setting for the future of gear for home studios and especially the traveling studio. Yeah, so if you are doing a lot of solo musicians where it's like 99 percent vocals is the only thing you're using a mic for. It brings up this interesting question. Is there a time in the future where there is a top shelf high quality microphone? It's just a USBC cable that you plug in that powers the Mike and then you plug the headphones into the bottom of the mic. I think you use the headphones on your computer.

You don't. There's no like headphone in on the actual microphone. There actually is. Oh, there is. Oh Damn. I didn't even see that. So what's so interesting about that is is there a future when hit records are recorded on USB mics. Here's the thing is like I don't see that being far away and it sounds ridiculous. Anyone owning a professional studio now with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear are just like rolling their eyes out of the back of their head right now that even the thought of that, because as gear sluts who want to be validated by our gear collection, that goes completely against everything you've ever believed. But if you look at the reality of like the kid who grew up with pro tools or the kid who grew up with a crack Cubase or even fl studios or something. The kid who grew up with that.

I didn't get my first dog until I was 21. So can you imagine growing up from single digits always having access to this stuff and where you're going to be at your late teens in your early twenties and if the all you need is a pair of headphones with one microphone and all of your software to create your beads and your loops or the track itself. Like if you take the whole band thing out of it, the rock band thing, which is kind of honestly moving away as far as trends go and most of the stuff, if you listen to the spotify top 50 or top hundred for any country, it's almost all in the box instruments. There's almost no real acoustic instruments involved where you would need an external microphone if that's the trend of the music industry right now. And I'm not saying it will never come back.

The music industry cyclical. So obviously acoustic instruments will come back and strong for him I'm sure, but as it stands right now, the kid who's grown up with this stuff his entire life, he doesn't have to learn all of this complex stuff that we have had to learn our careers. And those before us, all they have to do is plug a microphone in, dial in, remotely, happy with and use their beats and stuff they've created. And of course you have to learn how to use a compressor and plugins and stuff. But they can create a professional amazing song where they're limited not by their technical skills, but they're only limited by their own imagination and their own creativity. And that should be a terrifying thing for anyone with a lot of gear right now. It totally should. And here's the thing that's interesting. Historically, if you owned a studio, you had a moat around, you emote as a business term, it means it keeps competitors from coming to get you.

And so you're like, well I've got the only eight track in New York City on that's a moat. Or Netflix is all the netflix originals. That's a moat. No other company can license those films from them. So it's hard for Hulu or any of these other guys to compete with Netflix. They have a good moat. So if your thing is like there's you and two or three other audio engineers in your town. And you're like, you guys should hire me to record you because I'm the only person with this $3,500 mic who all ish. Here's the thing. That $3,500 mic. There are companies that all they do all day, every day is try to figure out how to make a mic that sounds as good as that one for 50 bucks. Go walk around that basement at Nam where all those knockoff Chinese companies are just creating you seven knockoffs for $100.

Well, this lead alert. Oh you got one? Oh. Oh Man. It's a long time since I've gotten a gear slow alert. Oh Man. Well you know I just came back from Nam so me. But you see what I'm saying? The point is like it's getting easier and easier. Components are getting cheaper and cheaper to get a comparable sound with knockoff gear, but now it's not even about the cheap knockoffs. It's about just a full on emulation and letting the software do all the dirty work and that's where it seems to be going. You have slate. Slate has there mike emulator and there's only going to be more as I'm saying, I'd love to do a shoot up if anyone knows slate and antelope audio, we'd love to do a shoot out between those two weeks and just see who's emulation is better. I will say kristen like slates on the floor, but again, I stated, oh, we're going to be honest.

I stated that again, it was an imperfect listening environment with headphones we were not familiar with and so I can't say either way whether it was better or worse. Well, and let me headphone nerd for just a moment here. It was tough because you'd go to one booth and be like, Oh, let me listen to this mic with this brand of headphones and then let me go to that both and listen to a different mic. With a different brand of headphones. It was really hard to get any sort of opinion that was founded in reality. Plus there's a ton of background noise, so really like I'd love to do some shootouts. I'd love to compare. I'm interested. We're both fascinated by the future of the audio industry and this idea that, hey, in the future, if you've got a $3,500 mic, it might not be worth $3,500 or anywhere close to that in the future because you might have some 20 year old kid 10 years from now.

It's like, I don't care that you're mike was expensive. I bought this Mike at best buy for 70 bucks and I can't tell the difference between the two mikes and now I know you snobs are like, Ooh, it's doing thing. It's not real, but it will be. There are people who all they do all day long is trying to figure out how to bring a $3,500 quality mic to the masses at an under $100 price point. We're not there yet, but will we be someday? We'll look at where like guitar amplifier simulation software like pod farm, back in pod farms days. It was trash and a few guys in the heavy music scene kind of found a way to make it work, but when you look at [inaudible] now I'm going to give a shout out to my friend a true love, an stl tones. He just launched a new plugin and it is amazing what they have accomplished with digital sims. Now 100 percent in the box. No hardware required like a camper, 100 percent of the box. The way these things sound now is incredible and it's only going to keep getting better and I see the same thing happening to microphone emulations and knockoffs. I don't know, Brian, I really feel like my line six pod sounds way better than Sony true love's plugins. Oh my God.

Yeah. Yeah. So now that you kinda have an idea of just that one thing, just that one mic, that one built in preamp and interface and the power of what that's gonna Bring. What else do we kind of see as we were walking around? Chris? Okay, so guys, we saw this thing that had been some pictures floating around in the facebook group of us. Ogling it, we were wandering around and we walked by the DSP booth and Mick Dsp. I've been using mic DSP plugins that so much lately, but there was a chapter in life when I was just like full on mic dsp. They've been around since the late nineties and then they kind of had their heyday with early two thousands. Yeah. So they make some cool stuff. They made get this a one space rackmount box full of switches, relays, electrical stuff and you plug in a thunderbolt cable and it's like a transformer like Michael Bay transformer.

Not like the literal transformer, but like a fictional Michael Bay transformer, like the movie. And you'd be like, computer turned into a really nice compressor and the inside of the box would be like, Ooh. And it would build an analog compressor. Like I think it was like up to 16 of them or something. Yeah, 16 channel. Yeah. Yeah. Or You could be like computer, uh, build a, a Vca style, you know, little old, a little bit about, you know, you would tell it to build these things and it would reassemble itself and do all the digital to analog conversion, run it through the analog parts and then converted back to digital all through a single firewire cable. And so it was this crazy thing where it was actually a plugin with physical analog components. It was without a doubt, when you talk to people in them and be like, what's the coolest thing you've seen?

Everybody would be like, that mic DSP thing from Hell. It's like the gear sluttiest thing you could ever hope to get because it's like this mishmash of plugin and hardware. It's this marriage we've probably never seen before. Maybe campers. The closest thing we've seen to that, and that's probably not even remotely a good example, but this is price point. Do you remember what they said? It was gonna cost. I think it was like seven or eight grand, six to $8,000 for this thing like that is so far out of the realm for most home studios and I mean it's fun. Yeah. I like. This is what I heard most people say like no one asks for this. It sounds mean, but like they'll sell some for sure. Just for the sheer ridiculousness of it. There's some usefulness to it. I hate this. I asked for it.

I fantasize about such a box on several occasions, but this is because you are the reigning gear sled champion. This podcast. Do it again and I rarely ever get the gear. Let alert. Well, what was funny about this box that was cool was like from a philosophical like wow, that's impressive. That brings the best of analog of the best of digital and combines it. What was interesting about it though, is it small? Yeah. One space rack. So like no client is going to walk into your studio and be like, what's that single unit? Green box in the corner over there. You would think it's like a power supply because there's no meters on it. There's just like a light into one button, one button on it has an on button and so it's interesting because what it does is really substantial. I'm sure it's fantastic, but you know, if you buy like some crazy, you know, in everyone's seen him like the mastering compressors with a billion knobs and the huge like legal sheet of paper size, volume, meter do Hickey on it.

When you buy something like that and the client walks in, there's certainly going to be a whoa moment. There's certainly plenty of instagram opportunity there though. It's in my opinion, not the best investment you can make in your business. I think it's a horrible investment as a home studio and I would not recommend anyone with the home studio by this thing. The MIC DSP box. Yeah. There's no way I would ever recommend this to any home studio at that price point. Yeah, I mean as far as usage for this, it's interesting because it's not like something you can show off to clients unless you like explain what it is because no musician is going to have any idea what this thing is. Yeah, it is such a weird thing because it's a gear let purchase at that price point without the gear slut alert that most expensive care.

Very interesting. I would imagine for like live sound companies that this thing might be a miracle because obviously it's going to have no latency. It's analog, but to have that much flexibility to be like, man, we really need this w Dsr for this guy. Alright, I've constructed it within the box. Like a dial up modem. Yeah, so it was interesting, but back to our kind of main point with NAM is if you want to be successful in business, in the recording industry, you must have an eye on the future. You must be thinking about what's coming around the corner and NAM is without a doubt the best place on earth to do that. Do you see this green box morphing into something and maybe a little more affordable and usable for the average home studio? Oh yeah. Or do you see any application for this being shrunk down or changed over to something that we would want to use regularly at a more affordable price?

Well, yes. I do see this morphing into something else that's more available. It's more accessible. And the reason I see that there's a really amazing book. I don't think you guys should go out and read it. It's, it's more like straight entrepreneur startup stuff. Not so much like immediately useful for home studio owners, but it's called the innovator's dilemma and this was steve jobs favorite book and the innovator's dilemma is that what typically happens, I'm going to like just kinda cut and choose what parts to share here. What happens with technology is people come out with really advanced, really expensive brand new tech and only the very high end of the market purchases it and then the company will take that money from the high end customers and they'll reinvest it in order to quote unquote jump the chasm. The chasm is this idea of taking a very high end product and bringing it down to mass market and selling it to everybody.

We see Tesla doing this right now. It's true. That's a good example. They were selling $150,000 roadsters to start with and then it was like, okay, now we're selling $70,000 to Dan's and now we're selling $30,000 cars that the general public can afford. So when you see a new piece of tech at NAM, it's interesting from an innovator's dilemma because stuff you have to innovate, but you have to be aware of. Even if you look at that piece of gear and say, oh no, this is useless. This is crazy. Not necessarily if they can sell a thousand of these units or 10,000 of these units, the very high end of the market, they can take that reinvest into r and d and they might build the next killer product that's available at a much lower price point. It'll be interesting to see first, where does this green box from Nick Diaz p end up in the universe?

Like what is the type of customer it attracts because he was saying that they had people calling up and being like, I don't care what the cost is. I want one as soon as they're available, and so there's always going to be that kind of customer, but then once that gets sorted out, what did they end up doing to cross that chasm if they ever do. Yeah. Nam Guys, it was great. So my advice, I think your take home from this, if we're giving you actionable advice is if you're a lonely audio engineer trying to make it work in the middle of nowhere, Michigan or in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota, these conferences are a huge opportunity for you to meet likeminded people and free to also compare notes with them. You know, we be hung out with some of the urm guys and they were talking about what their businesses look like.

For those who don't know, that's unstoppable. Recording machine. Yeah. These guys are killer guys and amazing entrepreneurs and just to get a vibe for their energy was like, oh wow. I didn't know one could have so much energy hanging out with Joe on a sec and just observing his excitement and vigor for life was like, Oh wow, I need to turn it up a notch. This guy is. Yeah. It's like just being around these sorts of people really encourages you in. It kinda shows you your faults like yeah, if you have the self awareness and the ability to look within and say, damn, I could really improve this area of my life because this person has done such a great job of being an exemplary example if I'm saying that correctly of what it means to be outgoing or what it means to have energy or what it means to be focused or what it means to be a go giver.

Like there's just every single person we met up with and got to hang out with her. This event had some or more than one in most cases, quality that I myself needed to start really, really honing in on and working on and to me that is one of the most powerful aspects of being around people like this. In an event like this, as in no other event that I'm aware of are all of the people I've ever wanted to hang out with, hanging out all in one place and it will randomly meet one of or two of them in one random corner of the room and then randomly meet another one and a restaurant later on and you'll randomly meet another one sitting in a hot tub. You never know what's gonna happen and that's the exciting part of it. So Chris and I say we're going to be at this thing everyday.

I'm here from now on. Yeah, I agree. I mean for me like I gotta throw this in there because it was really inspiring for me. We were hanging out with Joey Sturgis, Joey Sturgis as part of the ensemble recording machine. Awesome guy. You know, he was telling a story about, you know, well first I was like a developer, like he wrote code and then he was an audio engineer and help make records and then he decided to do both at the same time and begin making plugins and he's on track to retire by 40 because these plugins are selling so well and it was like, wow man, I'm a loser.

So yeah, it was really impressive to meet guys like that and to pick up, wow, they are really killing it in this area. They have really poured into themselves. They've really developed their own skills in an area and just, it was sobering, but also inspiring to meet people that were so successful. Yeah. So I think that's a pretty good case of why we've got to all get out of our caves and start being around other human beings, but kind of back to the point of this episode, besides the networking thing, like always having a pulse on the future of the industry because we've said this many, many times in the podcast, if you don't adapt, you will die throughout history. This has been the same for humanity, but now in business, in a capitalistic society, it is the exact same if you do not adapt and change with the times, you will die as a business, so for you to be keeping your finger on the pulse of the industry and keeping up with what is coming and what is changing and what you need to be doing to adapt and right along with that wave that again is one of the biggest benefits of coming to an event like this and, and staying plugged into the industry because before you know it, some kid with a laptop and this antelope audio usb mic will be wrecking your business and you'll have no idea where he came from if you're not on top of this.

Adapting and moving along with the times as well. Yeah, so one more kind of take home for me. Brian and I had a conversation with Graham Cochran and this is going to surprise you guys. We talked about marriage, we talked about having strong marriages and the importance of that and that's something obviously near and dear to my heart. I'm married. I've got kids, I don't want to be divorced ever. Our industry is strange and that there's a huge number of divorce people in it. And it was interesting because we were talking about marriage counseling and it was definitely this thing where I'd been thinking about. It's not like my marriage is in the rocks or anything, but what a great investment in my relationship with my wife. Marriage counseling could be. And Brian, you know, you had mentioned, you know, you and your fiance going through premarital counseling and my wife and I, we did premarital counseling but we haven't done anything and you know, the 12 years since we've been married and it was inspiring to listen to that and it reminded me of.

We used to go to a small group and the small group is like a bunch of married couples that would get together and talk about being married and their faith and stuff like that. And it was really encouraging because, you know, we were married about a year or two when we first started going to the small group, which is the small group and did a decade ago. But it was amazing because we would go to this small group and it was a lot like Nam. We'd go to the small group and we'd be going around the circle and we'll be talking and it'd be like, oh, we fight like crazy. And then everybody else, both you guys fight to. Oh my gosh. I thought we were really our thought our marriage was going to end because we've, oh, it's normal. Oh, okay. And this idea of like talking to other people in real life, hearing about what they struggle with, hearing about what they're working on was inspiring on the one hand to think about your own potential.

But it was also encouraging. On the other hand, it'd be like, oh, okay. I'm not alone in that weird imposter syndrome struggle where, you know, I believe that I'm maybe just a fake and I'm, you know, been pretending this whole time is we all believe that in the audio industry every once in a while at least. And so it was really cool being at Nam in the same way that like being in that small group of other married couples was for me. And my wife, this idea that, oh, other people have struggles too and other peoples have sweaty feet and bio and social issues on the floor. So it was really cool. Really cool. If so if you haven't gotten out to a conference or a convention or even just a meetup where it's a couple audio engineer's grabbing beers and talking about stuff and trying to encourage and edify each other and that might be the next step for you and your business.

That might be the thing that makes or breaks you need to know. For Brian and I both in a. We do this mastermind group with a bunch of other podcasters and bloggers like Liz Shaw and Matt Boudreaux and Chrysalis and Bjorkman vended Dixon and there's a bunch of people. Ian Shepherd comes as well and there are a lot of people where we'll go and talk about our struggles, talk about the things that we're trying to grow in, the things we're trying to learn. And this idea of having a community of likeminded people that you don't see as competitors. But his compatriots is really, really powerful. And I think I would be shocked if maybe five years from now I meet one of you guys listened to the podcast and it's like, yeah man, that was a real changing point for me when I started listening to podcasts and I just completely by myself figured it out. That would blow my mind. Most people are going to figure this whole thing out in a community, in the context of a community. And that's a big deal. Having a community of people that can encourage and inspire and console and all these things is, I think an essential part of building a sustainable career in any field, but especially ours.