SKILLS TO PAY THE BILLS

With sole traders making up a whopping 61 percent of Australian businesses, it’s little wonder that resources, information and assistance for small enterprises are abundant. Plug ‘small business podcast’ into a search engine and you’ll be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available to the budding entrepreneur. So why is it that when it comes to the ins and outs of running a small business, audio engineers and producers are so useless?

My theory is this: the reason you got into audio or production in the first place is the same reason you’d push your mother down the stairs to avoid looking at a profit and loss statement or, heaven forbid, your superannuation fund! Audio engineers and producers are programmed to figure it out as they go along. When a new compressor or microphone arrives we don’t start by trawling through the manual – we just plug it in and figure it out. So why would we read the manual on running a business? It sounds like a lot more fun to simply jump in and start running it. In fact, if we were to assess the notion of becoming a freelance music producer or opening a studio from a business-savvy perspective, we’d run