We recently connected with Al Sgro and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Al, thanks for joining us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I’ve been a freelancer basically my entire career, so I don’t have a solid basis on which to compare a salaried position to my personal experiences, but there are certainly times when I daydream about working for a solid company. Over the years, friends have remarked to me about how great it must be to work for myself– the flexible hours and freedom that provides, etc., etc., but I don’t see that I have much more autonomy than other professionals I know. To get things done, I generally keep regular hours, and since my projects require that I regularly interface with members of the salaried work force, I think my day-to-day isn’t all that dissimilar. Except that I do it from a home office, but these days, is that so remarkable either?

During the daydreams, what’s most appealing is that a “regular” job might narrow my job description a bit. For instance, for me, last week included tasks that ranged from music production, engineering, & mixing to marketing strategy meetings, digital ad management, and a music licensing negotiation. Plus, there was a sprinkling of a/v production, producing a live-streamed corporate event, reviewing edits, and giving notes.

It’s not the amount of work that feels daunting, it’s the diverse nature of all the work combined. The often unpredictable nature of freelance work at times leads to taking on projects that can feel quite disparate, necessitating a lot of shifting between purely creative and analytical. So, it’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, I enjoy engaging both sides of my brain, and on the other it can be tough to get momentum going from one direction to the next.

Al, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I try to keep my services under an umbrella of entertainment with a focus on music. Having come up playing in bar bands as a kid, I studied theatre in college. When I landed in LA, I helped start a music venue and also founded a non-profit theatre company. After touring all over the world as a multi-instrumentalist, I opened a recording studio in Los Angeles and began producing records, but I quickly found that scoring for TV & Film made good use of both my musical & theatrical background.

Fortunate to support myself through these efforts, I became more sensitive to changes in the industry that were making things tougher for creators. Streaming generally felt like it threatened the livelihoods of people like me, and it spurned a desire to get a some formal education related to IP, which took the form of a graduate-level Entertainment Law & Industry Certificate from USC Gould.

Currently, my business revolves around 1) the creative side: composing for Film/TV & Advertising, producing music, creating engaging music-related a/v content and 2) the consulting side: music supervision and consulting, managing a select roster of creative talent, music clearance & licensing consultation for agencies and productions.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Here’s an experience that I think shows how a passion project can grow over many years into something more substantial.

My early 20’s in Los Angeles were a time when I was less concerned with business plans, budgeting, and growth and more concerned with being creative and having fun. In 2001, I met Gary Jules at a coffee shop on Melrose Ave in Hollywood. We were both regulars there and had some friends in common. We started playing music and eventually he asked me to play in his band. I think at the time he’d give me a hundred bucks every so often, but I wasn’t doing it for the money, I just loved playing shows and dug his music. He and I ended up circling the globe on tour and he had a huge hit with a song called “Mad World,” which was featured in the movie Donnie Darko and went on to #1 on the Billboard charts in the UK! That fame changed the trajectory of his career, but it was also my first experience supporting myself as a musician.

The story doesn’t end there, because being that 2023 is the 20th anniversary of “Mad World’s” #1 in the UK, we thought it would be a good time to re-launch Gary’s musical efforts. This time around, however, I’m not just playing in the band, but I’m managing all aspects of the re-launch, re-building the team, and really partnering with Gary in a much more vital way. Those early days playing coffee-house shows for no money set me on a course where, 20 years later, I’d be in a position to help re-invigorate the project and put it back on the world stage.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I guess you could trace the “start-up capital” back to my parents giving me a $5k loan back in 1999 to buy a 16-track tape machine and a 24-channel console. I split a cheap lockout in DTLA with about 4 people and started trying to make records. But since then, I’ve always looked for creative ways to build costs into project budgets. Like, if I needed some special piece of gear, I would build the cost of buying it into my budget for an upcoming project, which meant I’d end up with less money in my pocket, but I’d have that piece of gear to use on the next project, and so and and so on.

If only I’d known about corporate credit cards with points back then.

Contact Info:

• Website: answerproductions.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alsgro/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/al-sgro/

Image Credits
Shervin Lainez