How Did We Get Here?
My name is Brad Parsons and I own an audio production company. That sentence was something that I thought I’d never have the ability to say. Yet, as I sit and write this, I’m halfway through my 3rd year in the business. As a long-time musician and songwriter, my biggest fear was “getting a day job” and giving up on a life’s worth of skill and knowledge that I amassed over the past 15+ years (at the time). I hustled and poured all I had into my bands, but either the music wasn’t good enough or the timing was never right.
At 27 I dipped my toe into freelancing with a company called Fiverr. The schtick was “you can get anything done for $5” and I started exactly there. I offered all of my skills and knowledge for a measly $5 a pop. I primarily offered podcast intro music production at the beginning. 15-30 second instrumental jingles, created custom using their examples.
I may need to add: I have no professional training or a college education. I grew up a homeschooled kid in a rural area. My entire career has been based on curiosity. Everything I know is due to one of two things: 1. It’s a necessity 2. It’s fun. The only music lessons I ever had was when I was 13-14. My drum teacher tried to change my playing style and I wasn’t having it. Maybe that was wrong of me and maybe it was a bit stubborn, but it’s served me well so far.
Within a few weeks I went from 2-3 jobs a week to 10 jobs a week. Those 10 jobs at $5, turned into 15 jobs at $15. The more jobs I completed and the more 5 star reviews I received, the higher I climbed on the chart. I peaked at #3 in the intros category within the first 6 months and I was making just enough to pay my bills (As of today I have completed almost 2,000 orders on Fiverr). At that time I knew I needed to quit my day job and make a full attempt.
Around this time I started offering podcast editing and production services. My first client came in the form of answering a craigslist ad and is still with me today. By the time I launched Train Sound Studio, 60% of my work was podcast intro/outro music, 20% podcast editing and 20% miscellaneous (voice overs, commercial music, etc). Today it’s almost entirely opposite. Here in 2021 the podcast production side makes up almost 80% of my business and I welcomed over 20 podcasts to my editing roster.
In the end, I learned something important: I love facilitating other people’s creative dreams. Whether it be a piece of music or making their podcast audio sound pretty, I get an amazing amount of satisfaction taking a concept and turning it into a piece of art or content. In fact, I’m going to be featuring my work more often on Instagram and do what I can do give my clients the platform that they deserve.
2022 is looking great with hopes of opening a podcast studio and doing more work in-house. I’m incredibly grateful for the path that life has taken me on and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
- Brad Parsons
P.S. If you're interested in hearing my music, you'll find the links below: