We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Niko Zorich a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Niko, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happy a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

Definitely. Don’t get me wrong, I sometimes feel a bit out of place or apart from “the real world”, especially when work slows down or I find myself struggling to make ends meet. It’s advised to not compare yourself to others, as we all lead different lives, but sometimes it’s hard not to. Although overall, as far as work is concerned, I am happiest when I am doing what I know I’m good at and truly love. Whether it’s producing a song for a recording artist or designing a logo for a business, I’m passionate about being able to create something for someone.

I’ve gone through several “soul searches” throughout my career and always seem to come back to the creative side. In 2012 I began as a musician wanting to make my own music. Went to a music school miles away from home in hopes of improving my songwriting skills and making connections to get me where I wanted to be. Turns out it wasn’t what I really wanted to do. I then learned production in 2014 and began making music for others. By 2015 I had opened up a recording studio/production company/indie record label and everything–a full-time gig. Through that I delved into the visual arts in order to help promote music and shows for recording artists I worked with which eventually led me to start working with clients that had nothing to do with recording or performing music whatsoever.

That grew stagnant after some time and I decided I wanted to compose scores for films and video games. Went back to school to get a degree and yet again…decided it wasn’t what I wanted to do. This led me to begin thinking that maybe I should be pursuing something different, something “real”. I considered getting into the medical field, something in accounting, made jokes about going to work on an offshore oil rig for six months at a time–I felt lost. Not that any of those careers aren’t adequate by any means, it’s just that none of them were what I envisioned myself doing.

My mental health began to suffer. I dealt with a good amount of self-doubt and bouts of depression and anxiety. I was constantly comparing myself to others that had consistent and “real” careers and wondered if I had “chosen the wrong path”. It was rough, and may have been one of the darker periods of my life. I felt like I had failed myself and wasted time, but in actuality all of that helped me discover that I was exactly where I wanted to be.

It’s been over a decade since my back and forth career started and now I work as an (almost) full-time graphic/print designer for various companies, still making my own music and producing music for others as somewhat of a side hustle. I got engaged to an amazingly supportive woman, started taking better care of my mental and physical health, learned a solid work ethic, picked up some new enjoyable hobbies, and stopped revolving my life around my work and focused more on things that bring me joy. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. And I know without a doubt that I wouldn’t be where I am today had it not been for that period of time where I had no clue what I wanted to do.

As of right now, I’m 28 years old. If my 18 year old self could see where I’m at now they would be thrilled. I realized I wasted no time during that decade of self-discovery, and that my biggest mistake was not embracing the journey, as cliché as that may sound.

If I can impart any bit of advice to someone struggling with figuring out where they belong, or doubting what they do, I’d say to embrace it. Am I the best at what I do? Most likely not. Do I think there’s a solid possibility I could make a living off it? I think it’s very possible. But do I enjoy it? Yes.

Do what you love, and don’t doubt yourself. Don’t run away from taking risks or considering every possibility imaginable, but don’t sell yourself short. If you do what you love, get good at it, and do it with pride–people will appreciate it.

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
—J. A. Shedd.

Niko, 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 been a nerd–I’ll start with that. I didn’t have many interests growing up except food and video games. But looking back I always had an interest in making things, and was a very meticulous kid.

In my early teen years I frequented a gaming arcade with PCs and gaming consoles and would just stay for overnight lock-ins and “nerd out”. It was pleasant. Smelly, but pleasant nonetheless. I recall a time it was rather crowded one night, and a majority of the PCs and gaming consoles were being used by other parties. So, my little brother and I decided to commandeer a PlayStation in the back of the room and came across a game we had never played before–Guitar Hero. We played for a few hours and turns out, I was pretty good at it. I had always had a thing for rhythm and had good finger dexterity. I ended up beating the little campaign mode they had in the game and by the end our time there I was acing various songs on the highest difficulty. That event triggered an interest in learning how to play the actual guitar, so I pleaded to my parents to get me one, and so begins my life as a guitar player.

I picked it up pretty quickly, and received a lot of praise from friends when I would play around them. Over time I got more and more into music, and eventually started writing my own material. Flash forward a few years, and I decided I wanted to learn how to record and mix the music I wrote. I attended an audio engineering program, watched a hefty amount of YouTube videos, and started producing and distributing my music onto streaming platforms.

I started networking quite a bit in the music scene and eventually began getting asked to produce music for other artists. Word gets out rapidly in such a niche community, so it soon became a full-time gig for me. I loved it.

In 2015 I opened up a production company which I aptly named Nitpick Productions. Artists would come to me, I would record/mix/master their music, and help them get it released for others to enjoy. I always had a decent sense of branding, advertising, and what makes something “good”, so I began somewhat managing the artists that would come to work with me. Helping them write their music, showing them how they could write/play something that would work better in terms of production, overall how to create their “brand” as an artist. This ultimately led me to turn my humble little production company/home recording studio into somewhat of an indie record label. I began distributing artist’s music under the label, and would set up and manage their various social medias. By 2017, Nitpick Productions was a fairly notable blip in the local music scene, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Through helping these artists advertise their work, I realized how important the visual arts were to creating a marketable brand and getting your music noticed. I then began getting in to graphic design, video editing, and photography in order to further expand services to my clientele. I would design logos, album arts, social media banners, flyers, promotional videos, etc. so that way when a new artist came to me and wanted to make and release their music, I would have an entire identity set up for them.

This became something I took great pride in. I wasn’t just an audio engineer that recorded your music, I wasn’t just a distributor that put your music out, I wasn’t just a graphic designer that created visuals to go along with your art, and I wasn’t just a brand consultant that told you what you should do with your art–I was all the above. To this day I view that as one of my biggest accomplishments. I felt like a huge help, a large stepping stone, to artists. And at the end of the day, I am an artist myself, so I understand how exciting and meaningful that interaction can be. It made me feel like I had a place.

Over time I got better and better at graphic design and began to develop a big interest in it. I offered my services to many different types of people and eventually began designing things far beyond the scope of releasing music. Logos, business cards, websites, apparel, food labels, informational brochures, billboards, you name it. I find it therapeutic and unlike music-making, I can relax and watch television or listen to other music while I do it. It quickly became a big passion of mine.

As time goes on, it gets easier and easier for an artist to make their own music, and I ultimately got a tad bit burnt out on the process after having worked so hard on it for so long. Couple that with COVID-19 which made it very difficult to meet with artists to record their music and everyone struggling to make ends meet on their own–work slowed down quite a bit for me. During this time I began toying with the idea of making graphic design a bigger source of fulfillment and income in my life, and started doing research into how I could make that a reality. After all, there’s a constant higher demand for it as opposed to people needing music created. Plus, a majority if not all of the work could be done remotely from the comfort of my home. I decided it would make more sense for me to begin dissolving the entity that is Nitpick Productions and begin working as an independent contractor under my own name, where I market myself as not only a music producer but also graphic designer.

I began applying for graphic designer jobs both locally and remotely, which at first felt a bit daunting as my resume had nothing on it besides work that was solely involved in making or mixing music. But eventually, thanks to a design portfolio I had been building based off my work with recording artists and beyond, companies saw my worth and I began landing design gigs.

I’m still fairly green in the industry but I believe I can continue building out my resume and design portfolio to land more exciting work opportunities. I still write and produce music for both myself and others. Not as frequently as before yet I still have a burning passion for it. But if you had asked me a decade ago if I envisioned myself as a graphic designer, I probably would have chuckled.

I’m excited to see where this new endeavor takes me, and how my music-making continues to grow alongside it. I’m always open to taking on new projects, either audio or visual related, because it’s what I love to do.

And that’s the story of how this nerd found some things that worked out pretty well for him. Thanks, Guitar Hero.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The look on someone’s face when you present what you made for them. I’ve witnessed recording artists cry tears of joy when I played back their song for the first time. I’ve seen people’s eyes light up when they see their business idea transformed into a logo. It means so much to me. Because as an artist myself, I’ve had those exact experiences and understand how much they mean.

I’ve teared up hearing a song I wrote turned into something I could physically hear played back at me. All those emotions and thoughts I poured into it immortalized into something I could experience from an outside perspective and share. It’s like therapy.

I’ve not only started my own business but have come up with a handful of other business ideas, album artworks for my songs, and more. To see how something as simple as an idea I had in my head become something tangible I could hold like a business card or shirt, is impactful.

It’s that feeling of someone coming to you and saying “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” and you looking back at them and saying “Why can’t it be?”. While in the grand scheme of life it may be small and unimportant, I feel like a difference-maker. It gives me purpose.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I used to have an issue with being a control freak. An arrogant one, at that. I thought that every idea I had was the better one and anyone to challenge that was attacking my expertise and opinion. I was well aware of it and was never happy with it, but it would just happen.

In hindsight I realize a good bit of that was a power struggle due to issues I had with my own self-worth as a creator. One of the driving forces behind me learning how to produce my own music was because I didn’t trust anyone else to do it how I wanted it done. I thought I knew exactly what to do, and how to do it. After a plethora of terrible mixes, poorly written songs, or even awful looking logos–I realized I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.

As an artist, the last thing I would want to do is forfeit or lose my creative control to someone else, unless I simply just did not know what to do or I greatly valued their input and work. In the past when someone came to me with opposing feedback on why I did something either with their music or design, I would come back with reasons as to why “my way” was the better option. It’s one thing if I was doing that simply because I wanted it to be a good product, which don’t get me wrong, was and still is a very big driving force behind it. But as I matured I realized a lot of it boiled down to pride.

At the end of the day, people are going to want what they want, even if I don’t fully agree with it. It took me a long time to come to terms with that but I eventually learned how to detach from a project to an extent and simply do what I was asked to do. I’ll always go above and beyond and do everything I deem necessary to create a good product, but not if that conflicts with what that person originally envisioned.

Pride can become toxic very quickly, but doesn’t always have to be a negative thing. For me it was to understand that I could take pride in making something happen for someone, exactly how they wanted it to be.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nikozorich.com
• Instagram: @nikozorich
• Facebook: facebook.com/nikozorich
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/nikozorich
• Other: [email protected]