We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brandon McCollum. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brandon below.
Brandon, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?
My name is Brandon “B Mc-C” McCollum. I’m an audio engineer, music producer, content creator, and sometimes rapper. I’ve been making and performing music in different capacities for 20 years. I graduated from Institute of Production & Recording in 2017 and 2019 with two degrees. One for Audio Production & Engineering and one in Sound Design For Visual Media. I ran my company Nice Guy Entertainment as a record label for 5 years during 2015 to 2020. I slowed down running the label for about a year in June of 2018 due to helping my mom through her bout with cancer and then shut the label down in 2020 due to the pandemic and not having a lot of the same resources. I lost my mom in 2021 due to Covid and had a bunch of life setbacks over the years that have put me in an interesting transition phase in my life/career.
Right when the pandemic hit, I started getting a lot more remote work editing podcasts as well as radio commercials. After doing that for a couple years and seeing some limited success I decided to start Nice Guy Creative Services. I’ve always had a passion for helping creatives and brands bring their visions and ideas to life through audio and content. That was my mission with Nice Guy Entertainment and it is the same with this new endeavor. Nice Guy will always be the brand and is a way of life. I hope to bring back Nice Guy Entertainment in the near future as a network of artists, brands, and content creators coming together to bring kind, inspirational, entertaining, and educational content.
Brandon, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve always had a passion for helping creatives and brands bring their visions and ideas to life through audio and content. I feel like I do this by bringing what I like to call the “Nice Guy” approach by bringing kindness, integrity, motivation, and inspiration to everything I do and everyone that works with me. That is also the idea behind Nice Guy Creative Services. The new entity that is a one stop shop for artists and creatives and all of their audio and content needs. Whether it be helping people launch podcasts, helping with recording, editing, and mixing, radio commercials for brands and businesses, producing/engineering music, creating sample packs with musicians/producers, and anything audio and content related. I am also getting back into the live show world and plan to help get artists on stage again like I did when I ran a record label.
I think where I truly thrive and find enjoyment in what I’ve always done is seeing talent and potential in others and helping them build upon their talents and strengths. Giving them motivation to start or keep going when they’ve thought of quitting so many times before. I’ve changed up what I do, pivoted, have yet to find true success but one thing I can say is that I’ve never given up and there’s always a spark of hope deep down inside. For all of us. No matter what life throws our way.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My ultimate dream is to win a grammy as a music producer for my mother who passed in 2021. She always said “you’re going to make it to the Grammys and I am going with you wearing a Versace dress that you’ll buy me.” After she passed I decided that I still want to do that for her in her memory. 2025 right before I turn 40 is what I have my eyes set on. I have no idea how I am going to make this happen and I have tons of obstacles in front of me. In order for this to happen it’s going to take an incredibly large amount of dedication, hard work, commitment to learning/growing, creating an abundance of music/content, collaborating with countless artists, while helping and inspiring as many people as possible along the way.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
My story that illustrates resilience is a long one that spans over the course of 20 years but really the last 5 or so years.
I got my start as a rapper in 2002 and began making beats shortly after. I worked dead end jobs, worked on my rapping/production chops, put out music, performed, went to shows, and networked in the scene locally for about 10 years. After it felt like my life and career was at a stand still I decided to go to Institute of Production & Recording in early 2014, just shy of my 29th birthday, where I ultimately ended up graduating with two degrees. One for Audio Production & Engineering and one in Sound Design For Visual Media. I originally went to school with the dream to start a record label called Nice Guy Entertainment as well as produce/engineer younger artists and help them with their careers. Giving them opportunities I always wished that I had when I started. The label came together very quick after I started school and I ran my company Nice Guy Entertainment as a record label for 5 years total. Throwing tons of events, putting out countless albums, and doing whatever I could for my artists. However, I slowed down running the label in June of 2018 when my mom was diagnosed with Non Hodgkins Lymphoma which is a form of cancer. My mom’s the closest person to me so it was a no brainer to put everything to the side to help her throughout her battle. So for most of 2018 into 2019 my life consisted of going to work and being by mom’s side when I wasn’t at work. Sometimes making it to the gym and my girlfriend’s place. That’s pretty much it.
Let me just say that 2019 was the craziest year of my life to say the least. In January when my mom was in the middle of her bout with cancer, I found out that I could get grants and loans to go back to IPR for a little while for my second degree. I only needed to go for 6 months so I would be done that June. Even though she still needed my help, my mom gave me her blessing and I went back to school while still helping take care of her. On April 1st of that year, my mom went into the hospital for what ended up being 45+ days for a treatment called CAR-T which at the time only 300 or so people had gotten. The treatment was crazy. They essentially sent some of her cells to a lab in California and then they got sent back a few weeks later and put back into her body. The super charged cells essentially acted like Pac Man and gobbled up the cancer cells. I’ll never forget about a week or two after she got out of the hospital, I received a phone call from her while I was at school saying that she was cancer free. It was crazy how quick it was, less than 2 months really. I was on cloud 9 and with my mom cancer free I felt like I could finally focus on graduating from IPR and getting back to running my record label. Shortly after I found out the news about my mom, Nice Guy Entertainment had a show at Dayblock Brewing Company. It was one of the most amazing shows we had thrown in ages, however, when I left the venue around 2 AM I discovered that my car had been broken into and my backpack filled with a few thousand dollars worth of gear was stolen. Including a laptop, iPad, field recorder, my college books/papers, and most devastating of all a hard drive I hadn’t backed up in 6 months that also contained my sample library that I hadn’t backed up in years. Which if you’re a music producer, you know how important your sample library is. I lost work that set me back heavily. Also within a week or so after that my car overheated on the freeway causing me to have to junk it. Through all of this, I still ended up graduating from IPR with honors a couple weeks later. I once again was feeling confident and ready to take on the world again. I had a few crucial freelance gigs after graduation, went on a vacation, and when I got back I was confident I’d finally be able to get back to running Nice Guy Entertainment properly. Wrong again. In August of 2019, I got a stomach bug that literally lasted for 4 months. Some of the worst aches and pains, I’ve ever felt in my life. I still don’t know exactly what it was but I was out of commission and unable to focus and follow my passions until early 2020. Then we all know what happened in March of 2020.
When the pandemic hit, it really felt like the world was playing a cruel joke on me and my family. My mom had just had a cancer treatment about 10 months prior which left her immunocompromised and then a pandemic with a new disease that was literally affecting people just like my mom the most. I was also living with my parents at the time and working full time as an essential worker at a group home so to say I took social distancing seriously would be the understatement of a century. After a few months in though and with my mom staying healthy throughout 2020, I found ways to stay busy. I started creating content and creating sample packs for music producers with my friends. I also ultimately decided to shut the label down in 2020 due to not booking shows, losing my studio access at school, and due to me taking social distancing very seriously.
Through all this, my worst fear happened the following spring. In March of 2021 my mom became extremely sick. She went to the hospital and initially we were told it was only pneumonia and she would beat it. She came home after a couple weeks but wasn’t showing any improvement at home. We brought her back to a different hospital at the end of May and suddenly she was diagnosed with Covid and my family ultimately had to make the decision to let her go a week and a half later. They wouldn’t even let us visit her in the hospital unless we decided to let her go. So with my dad and my brother watching from home on his iPad we had to say goodbye to our favorite person in the world. Although this is now over a year ago, I have been in a weird place mentally and creatively for quite a while. I never want to give up the dream though and I want to figure out ways to keep doing what I love and keeping my mother’s dreams for me alive because she was my biggest supporter. Through my mom’s fight with cancer and up until the end of her life, I never heard her complain and she always had the biggest smile on her face. She always lit up every room she walked into. Even though I feel like I’m not half the person my mom was, I want to find a way to be a bright light through all the darkness. Just like she was.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.NiceGuyEnt.com
- Instagram: NiceGuyEnt
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NiceGuyCreativeServices
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/brandonamccollum
- Twitter: NiceGuyEnt
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@NiceGuyEntertainment
- Other: I recently recorded some interviews/live presentation content in the form of a podcast courtesy of a company called Form Entertainment at their Sonic Fusion 2022 event in Columbia Heights, MN. I recorded these alongside Alycia Grace of This Is Perfect Harmony LLC. Be sure to check out this episode from those recordings. It also goes into detail about a bit of my creative history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjBiHu0rb6c