Transitioning from Studio to Consultancy
By: Tanner Campbell
Tags: Adventure, Consulting, Marketing, Podcasting, Podcast

I’ve been haunting the engineering suite of The Portland Pod for two years now, and in that time I’ve worked with some truly amazing people and brands to create incredible podcasts, informative audio books, and even a Hollywood film! The journey from day 1 to today, day 824, has been meteoric, but also scrappy and white-knuckled and, at times, seemingly impossible.

But for all their highs and lows, these two years have been the most enjoyable and rewarding years of my life.

The “why” behind that being the case, is what I hope to share in this post.

What I’ve learned after 10-years of podcasting, 5-years of editing for a living, and 2-years of owning an award-winning and nationally recognized studio in Maine:

I’m not really passionate about audio, or podcasting.

Flatly, I derive no joy out of editing or engineering audio.

I don’t even feel especially strongly about the medium of podcasting.

For me, this “job”, is just something I’m fortunately very good at and which allows me to be my own boss and live life on my own terms.

Don’t jump to conclusions just yet, I have more to say.

I’ve never felt passionate about the what of anything I did. Not when I ran a IT firm in Delray Beach, not when I ran an AV company in Denver, not when I ran a design company in Tallahassee, and not when I owned a recording studio in South Portland.

I did those things because I didn’t want to work for anyone else.

I couldn’t stand working for other people.

It wasn’t that I thought I was better than anyone, it wasn’t that I couldn’t take orders, it was that, whenever I worked for someone else, my ideas were never listened to.

I’m an idea man. I like to solve problems, I like to fix things, I like to figure stuff out. When I can’t do that I feel unhelpful, I feel like I’m wasting my life.

It’s all very dramatic, and maybe it’s hard to understand, but when I’m “just going through the motions”, it’s hard to articulate exactly what that feels like for me. Imagine just being utterly uninspired, uninvested, and uninterested. It’s like that.

So another reason I always struck out on my own was because being an entrepreneur is like volunteering to fight forest fires with garden hose: the problem is always way bigger than the tools you have to fix the problem so you have to get incredibly creative.

For me, feeling overwhelmed and regularly challenged, was the only thing keeping me from metaphorically jumping out a window.

But podcasting, because I’ve had to get so close with my clients to solve their problems, because each podcaster has a different goal/desire, revealed something to me I hadn’t ever recognized about myself.

I like helping people to realize their potential and then, having done so, helping them to move forward in their lives.

The amount of unbridled joy I derive from a 2-hour strategy session with a new podcaster who is trying to figure out how to escape their day job, is immeasurable.

Workshopping and brainstorming, is my jam.

Getting people unstuck, getting them to escape their personal psychologies, getting them to see the potential lurking within, that they just cannot see themselves, for whatever reason, is, to me, like biting into a York Peppermint Pattie 😂

Weeeeee! How’s that for a throwback Thursday?

Because what bigger challenge is there than getting a person to see themselves as you see them? Really think about that. What could possibly be more rewarding than getting someone to “see the light”, and then watching them become more fulfilled?

Nothing.

Now, of course, I’m not saying I’ve helped any of my clients achieve inner peace 🧘 or full self-actualization, but I am saying that the kind of work I do with my clients has allowed me to discover just how capable I am of helping them improve their lives through, of all things(!), podcasting.

My experience in business (which, as you’ve red, extends well beyond, and started well before, The Portland Pod) has taught me a lot, and it took two years of working with podcasters, and hearing them say things like:

I’d never even thought of that! How do you know all this stuff? Where did you get that idea? How did you know this would work? I wish I had done this earlier!

…for me to realize that what I have isn’t just a set of technical skills, I have insights and answers.

I have 16-years of in-the-trenches-trial-and-error as a relentless and risk-taking entrepreneur. How many people have 16-years of that sort of experience?

But in addition to this, I have a lot of faith in people and what they’re capable of achieving — even when they can’t believe it themselves.

I’m not a business owner, or an audio engineer, or a podcaster — though I have those skills — I’m a consultant. And now, with the benefit of hindsight, it seems obscene that I didn’t realize that sooner.

Of course I’m a consultant, I’m all ideas, strategies, and implementations… what else would I be? An architect?

So it’s time for me to move forward in my own life, to become the thing that I can now see is the thing it’s time for me to be: a person who helps others move forward.

What happens next?

You’ll notice some changes here on Medium, to both the look of my “brand” and to the content.

I’m going to be writing a lot more about how podcasting can be used to start a business, or grow the revenues of existing businesses. Most new content will focus on how to use podcasting as a tool for getting unstuck from wherever a person might currently be stuck in their life.

Oh, and a whole lot of marketing advice 😉

The studio will not close! No chance of that. We’ve still got plenty of work to do, after all!

I still have clients to service, and contracts to honor, but I’ll be stepping back as lead engineer to invest all my time into speaking and consulting — I already have a full roster in Q1 so I’ll be jumping right into it after the holidays.

As I step away, the studio will be run by others, but the quality work we’ve always produced will go on in the Audio Engineers I elect to add to my team.

We’ll also continue to use the studio for our own productions (always handy to have a studio in your back pocket, right?).

I’m grateful, and I’d like to say thank you 💖

There were a lot of people involved in me getting here. Friends who encouraged me, clients who believed in me, big brands that took a chance on me, and total strangers who saw what I was doing and went out of their way to help me succeed.

People like Ted and Jon, who made small investments into my business in the very early days.

Corporate clients like Marshall Communications and Spinnaker Trust who, when the hammer of COVID came down on me in March, saw the value in pre-paying their entire 2020 year to make sure I could weather such a ruthless storm.

Celebrities like David Walton who, when his production company needed a studio in Maine to do ADR work for a film in the middle of COVID craziness, went out of his way to think of me, who had only just met a few months prior, and to challenge me to rise to the challenge of doing a kind of work I’d never done before. And people like James Curwood who almost literally held my hand through learning how to do that work.

Good Mainers like James Laplante who didn’t evict me when I couldn’t afford to pay rent on my studio for a few months because of COVID fallout. Or like Tim Cotton, who for absolutely no reason I can discern, told Rowman & Littlefield that he wanted to record his audio book with me and not some other more prestigious studio. Or like Greg Boulos who took time out of his busy life to sit with me and talk about business, or Jacob Coldwell who gifted business coaching time to me because he believed it was worth it, or Rich Brooks of Flyte New Media or Maureen Milliken of Maine Biz Magazine whose decision to feature me in their media connected me with countless opportunities, or Amanda O’Brien who was the first person to put me up in front of a crowd and give me a chance to prove what I knew about podcasting. Or my friend Mark, who sadly passed away just recently, and his wife Sonya, who let me remodel their basement in exchange for free rent so I could save money and focus on my business.

And how about industry brains like James Cridland of PodNews, or Ed Ryan of Podcast Business Journal, or Steve Stewart of the Podcast Editors Club, or Dan Morris of Podcast Magazine and Blogging Concentrated who gave me my first conference speaking gig?

It would be impossible to thank all these people (and others!) enough, but without their trust and support I wouldn’t have made it. While it’s true that I worked hard, I risked, and I leveraged every skill I could, without the kindness and faith of others, my effort may not have been enough to get me to where I am now. In fact, I know it wouldn’t have been.

Thank you, and here’s to the future 🥂