We caught up with the brilliant and insightful David Reed a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, David thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
The biggest challenge as an audio engineer and being profitable is the consistency of services provided as a freelance worker vs accepting a salary for guaranteed pay. I spent the last two years working for a company that paid me about $65k a year (net $43k) for a job that would’ve paid out $150k in freelance work, and all I really gained from it was a burnout after the first 6 months working there. Back in 2021, when I first started there, i was a new father and needed secure income. Looking back, however, the smarter decision would’ve been to struggle a bit more and keep doing freelance work for the full rate of what i was worth. This year alone i worked over 400 hours of unpaid overtime and it was not worth it whatsoever.
To sum everything up, the biggest challenge is not only demanding your worth, but also getting other people who don’t understand and could never do your job to value it for what it’s worth. The best way to deal with that is to keep your price the same and keep on putting yourself out there. Eventually you will drum up the clientele who will happily pay your price for your time.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got involved in audio engineering and music production when i was about 14 years old through a series of unfortunate events and head injuries. When i was younger i participated in football, baseball, and wrestling. I was an all around athlete who was dreaming of getting a scholarship to Iowa University for wrestling, and was putting in the work daily to make it happen.
During the wrestling season of 2012-2013, i was in the semi-finals for the Tulsa national tournament and gave myself a pretty severe concussion. I couldn’t walk properly, i could hardly think, and everything became a blur in an instant. After weeks of rest, tests she treatments, the doctors told me I was no longer able to participate in contact sports due to the severity of my head injury and how bad the next one would be if i continued. For a few months after that i was lost, unsure of what to do, and feel into depression for the first time in my life.
In April of 2013, everything changed when my bestfriend at the time Ezkial jokingly brought up making music. We were both avid writers and fans of hip hop music, so it didn’t take much convincing to get me on board with recording our own music. We started with a Macbook, a pair of beats headphones, and garageband as our studio. We made several songs, created sloppy beats, had a blast being creative, and for the first time in months i felt inspired to work towards something that could be my future.
On June 22nd of that year, Ezkial was hit and killed by a truck on the highway about 5-10 minutes from his home. I thought I had felt depression and despair before, but having someone who was your bestfriend, and pulled you out of the darkness once, suddenly get ripped from your life makes it hard to even begin to cope and understand why these things happen.
The next four years of my life throughout highschool were filled with plentiful coping and avoiding mechanisms to try and bury my problems inside of myself. Drugs, sex, broken relationships and psychadelics were the cradle that held me close and closed my eyes and ears to the outside world. I slowly stopped caring about anything, music included, and allowed myself to succumb to the sickness stirring inside of me.
As highschool came to a close, i was quickly realizing that i didn’t have much time to decide what i was going to do, so i went with what was comfortable and started searching for trade schools for audio engineering. Eventually i was recommended to a place in Kansas City called IAEA (The Institute of Audio Engineering Arts) located at a studio called BRC Productions. Little did i know that this school would be my saving grace, and the wake up call i needed to get serious again.
There were no handouts in this program, and if you wanted to finish it you had to earn it through hard work and proving your knowledge gained. The teachers taught me music theory, sound theory, music composition, how to play piano, studio and live sound recording, active listening, mixing and mastering, hooking up live and studio equipment at the highest level, repairing outboard gear (LA2As, neve 1073s, etc.), compose soundtracks for movies/shows, sound design and synthesis, and gave us knowledge of tons of industry standard analog gear like microphones, consoles, compressors, and much much more. They also taught us about music business and law, which is where i found my bread and butter for the foreseeable future.
When i graduated, I immediately started focusing my efforts in helping local artists create their sound and how to promote themselves and gain traction locally. I wasn’t the best when i started, but now I’m at a point where all i need is my apollo twin and my mac mini and i can provide better quality than any studio in a local 30 mile radius. Put me behind the gear they own, and I’d make fools out of every single person working there. I’ve done work for live sports productions, live concerts, studio recordings in just about every major genre (big band, jazz, country, classical, hip hop, RnB, rock, metal, pop, folk, instrumental, jam band, etc.) and created a reputation around myself that brings random people to my messages more frequently than not without any local promotion.
The key thing i discovered was that you can’t just be a good beat maker, or a good mixer, none of those things are that qualify you to be an audio engineer. Those things make you a beat maker, and a mixer. A true audio engineer and producer is someone who can manipulate the content at hand at will, and can help create something more than it seems with what’s present. Conceptually and literally, i can do anything that involves audio, and if i don’t know how i will learn quickly and do the job with excellence. If you’re looking for the key skill that lends itself to all of this? Problem solving. If you can solve people’s problems, you will make money and friends, and solving problems is what I’m best at. I did it for myself, and i can do it for anyone else as well.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Pay for promotion and be authentic. Don’t cater, don’t overplan, just simply get yourself out there and be willing to put some money behind yourself. No one randomly blows up anymore, and honestly no one ever has. There are hundreds of hours of work behind every artist and their breakout hits, and more hours put behind promotions to get them in your public eye. You must be willing to sacrifice monetary gain to rise up in the world, and that means investing more into yourself and your businesses than you actually retain from them.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The story is the cycle of life. I’ve had over 6 people close to me die over the last 10 years to various causes. I’ve been undervalued, underestimated, abandoned by old friends and teammates, told i would never amount to anything, and i still stand here today living my life exactly as i wish with everything I plan and execute going accordingly. Most people would kill themselves after losing everything, but that only made me stronger and helped me turn into a force to be reckoned with. When you lose someone or something important, it puts a black stain on the pattern of your life that everything esle builds itself around. The stain eventually gets smaller as you get older, but it will never go away. I hold the stains on my life in a place of honor, and I’m thankful for the things in my life i had to go through that made me who i am today. Everyone who’s gone would be proud to call themselves my friend if they were here today.
Contact Info:
- Website: Dee_reed.beatstars.com
- Instagram: @Dee.reed_
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeeReedOfficial?mibextid=ZbWKwL
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-reed-1456a01ba?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=android_app
Image Credits
David C Reed II