02. An audio expert who wants a personal brand
Today's guest is an audio expert who owns a successful audio house. He's got more than 19 years of sound production experience, including music, live events, reality TV, and commercials. Our guest wants to create his own personal brand to re-establish old relationships and find new clients.
Episode transcription
Phil: Hey there, welcome to Brand Therapy, the podcast where we help people with the challenges faced in their business, in their brands. I'm Phil Pallen.
Lauren: I'm Lauren Moore, I get so uncomfortable and nervous when you're introducing and I'm like is he going to say his last name? Cause that means I have to say my last name.
Phil: I just decide on the fly, never know.
Lauren: Always the sheep, never the shepherd. That's me.
Phil: We have a great job as brand strategists. We help people build, promote, position their brands and say that again. That was out of order. What is it? I suppose if I'm lecturing about this, I might want to get the order. It's a fun week because in fact I am in Florida at Full Sail University. Once a year. I come back to campus and hang out with students, but I love this time of year because I get to see old friends, but I also get excited about what students are accomplishing to become ready for the workforce.
Lauren: Wait, wait, I'm going to interject because aren't you at Full Sail for a specific reason? For a big event.
Phil: Hall of fame?
Lauren: Yes. You're not just going back to campus. You're going there for a huge event where alumni come.
Phil: Oh, I didn't say that. Did I?
Lauren: No.
Phil: Oh yeah. Of course.
Lauren: You’re not just visiting campus...it's Hall of Fame season.
Phil: So once a year all the students can stop school for a week. We have Hall of Famers that come back on campus and the whole school kind of shuts down and parties productively with sessions and events and all kinds of guests that we have on campus. Now,this podcast, this brand new one that we only started last week is also celebrating. We have as our guest today, one of the Hall of Fame inductees.
Lauren: So I did not go to Full Sail, but after hanging out with Phil, I've realized that actually being a Hall of Fame inductee is a really big deal, right?
Phil: It's a huge deal. You have to have graduated at least 10 years prior and you have to have some big names, big awards, accolades under your belt. You need to have won an Emmy like today's guests. You know, they're our past hall of famers that have won Grammys and Academy awards and all different kinds of things for work that they've done specific in the entertainment industry. That's part one.
Part two is they have to have given back to students. Fernando is somebody who does this routinely and that's how I've built a friendship with him is when we go back to campus together and work with students. So this is fun. I don't always get to brand my friends, but today we're branding our friend as part of this Hall of Fame celebration for the first time ever. Rather than me just getting on stage and lecturing, we're using Fernando as an example of building a brand from scratch and launching something brand new by the end of the week.
Lauren: So this episode is going to be really actually quite different from the other ones that we're releasing and, have already recorded because in this episode you'll get to get a true look at our working process. So you're going to hear us talk about visuals. You're going to hear us plan for photography, and ultimately we're trying to find a way to let Fernando be in the spotlight with his own personal brand that's separate from his well established company.
Phil: We want to hear what his goals are. We also want to figure out how do we monetize, right? If he's going to set up a brand and it's going to be set up to either render a service or sell a product, we have to listen to what Fernando tells us and figure out, always keep in the back of our mind, how can we sell this? So you'll hear that happen.
Lauren: Yep. Are they going to hear about it?
Phil: Right now, let's do it. So here is our chat with Fernando Delgado.
Fernando: Hall of Fame came at a very interesting time because last year I guess it was actually the year before I lost my biggest client and I didn't realize how, I guess dependent I had become. I've always been a freelancer so I didn't, in my mind really ever depend on anybody or any one client, but I worked on this show for seven years and it occupied so much of my time that I did very little with other clients in that. But on the flip side, one of the things that I've also learned is that I was damn good at that job. And so I guess my goals are to reestablish some of my old relationships that had gone kind of falling to the wayside over the years with some of the clients that I really enjoyed working with and establishing new clients.
Some of my professional goals are just to work on projects that are going to challenge me because I think I got very complacent working on the same project for a long time and so I'm really hungry for something that is just outside of the scope where my comfort is.
Phil: That gives us so much to work with. That's great because what's cool about this and even for students and for people to hear this, is that like you automatically assume when someone is being inducted into the hall of fame that they're so successful that everything is made for them. Of course they work hard, but welcome to the real world. Where you even saying this, I, I'm relating to this, I lost my biggest client last year and I feel a bit of stress, you know, feel a bit of stress right now today when it comes to like paying payroll at the end of the month in a very quiet month.
Fernando: Right?. Well that was our biggest goal last year was to not lay anybody off and thank goodness we got through the year without having to, but it was rough.
Phil: But it's interesting Fernando, because actually carving out a personal brand fits with this goal of reestablishing relationships. The old notion of it's so much easier to have a recurring customer than it is to create a new one, right? To generate business with someone who already knows you than it is to find someone brand new. But it's not the company that sells that. It's you. You are the face that has that conversation and makes that deal. So I think that fits in well with what we're working on today.
Lauren: Fernando, I'm curious to know, I'm really unfamiliar with all things audio. Honestly. This is my first time talking into like a fancy microphone in my life. Walk me through what makes your services or and your perspective different from competitors.
Fernando: So my company is, it's, it's like a hybrid of what currently exists in the marketplace. There are generally two different categories that my client would seek audio services from. They would either find somebody that does it that doesn't necessarily own the equipment and will get that equipment from some vendor somewhere. And then the second category would be an owner operator who owns their own equipment but is probably pretty limited on what they have available. A lot of well that work on let's say feature films, commercials, that type of stuff. A lot of those people are operators and it works for them because the job and what it requires doesn't really change that much, from a technical standpoint.
I did a lot of reality shows when I was in my early twenties and thirties and every show was dramatically different from the next. On some shows, we would have big old control rooms with video walls with many viewers and like all this equipment to surveil people and stuff and a very controlled environment. And other shows, we had an audio bag strapped to our bellies and we're running around the world, you know, chasing some people that are on some kind of scavenger hunt or something.
So the big rental companies, they don't have people that are going to get invested in your project and the owner operator is very limited in the equipment that they have available. So they're not very flexible in how they can service their clients. What we do is we streamlined the whole process. You look at our website, there's a book now button and it's linked to a starter questionnaire. Ask all the questions that we ask every single client, regardless of the genre that they're shooting. It doesn't matter if you're shooting a commercial or movie or reality documentary.
We needed answers to all of those questions so that we can figure out exactly what you need and well, apparently what kind of person you need to do that job. And I think there isn't a rental house anywhere, anywhere that it is going to take the time to find the person for you. They might help you on the equipment, but at the end of the day, their goal is to rent you as much as possible. Our goal is simply to provide you with an efficient, uh, sound department.
Lauren: No. Yeah, no, it does it. You explained it really, really simply, which helps me understand that you basically save your clients a lot of time and ultimately a lot of money too.
Fernando: Yeah. Well, not only that, but through the questions. Our work is also felt in the post production process. The biggest problem with production audio was scratchy, intelligible audio, which, in the real world, that I'd been living in for so long, that's not acceptable. You don't get to do it a second time. So if it doesn't sound good then they just can't use it, it's like well that's a no brainer. Getting good clean audio, that's, that's what we do. So that's issue number one. We don't have to change anything on our world there. And the second thing was documentation and that's something that we teach all of the people that come into our office, how we want it done and how important it is and we're working right now on opening a post production side of our business so that we can start servicing the entire project from pre to post.
Lauren: Obviously your goals for the company are to expand this post-production leg and service and you're also wanting to work with old clients and more challenging current projects. Do you have any goals for you personally as kind of the face of your business? Do you want to be teaching courses? Do you want to get more established on social media? Are you interested in um, writing or public speaking?
Fernando: I would be open to any of those things, but I haven't really thought about it actively. All of my personal goals are, are really more professional. You know, like one of the things that I've, I have yet to do in my career is I've never shot a movie from beginning to end. I've done a fair amount of second unit work, which is basically when they have more than one team working at a time, I'll pick up second unit work because they don't want to travel the town person. I would love to do a movie from from beginning to end. That would be cool. That's something that I, that's on my professional bucket list.
One thing that I've actually really considered is maybe been supervising sound crews on these reality shows for a really long time, but on reality shows the sound supervisor doesn't continue on through to post. So I think it would be cool to get involved with maybe a feature or an episodic and work with the production channel all the way through. One of my personal goals this year is to get some certifications for some software that I have just not touched since I was a student. That is very relevant today and that's one of my goals is to get all the certifications so that I know I'm proficient enough to start offering it as a service to a client.
Lauren: I was looking over your questionnaire and loved some of the video or webisode ideas that you said you could film tomorrow. In particular, I really, really liked your third video suggestion, which was how to hire a qualified sound person like things a producer should know and I haven't talked with Phil about this, but I think it would be really cool if we sort of positioned you with that in mind, those kinds of like advice for producers from a sound guy basically through either blog posts or courses or videos. I think that's there's a real opportunity there. What do you think about that?
Fernando: I think it's a good idea. We've actually been trying to figure out what videos, we have a whole series of coming out talking about invoicing and how to invoice a client. And I was just writing up some stuff on three tips a production should keep in mind if they're doing a location scout without a sound mixer, which happens all the time.
Lauren: So here's what I'm thinking. Obviously you are so involved with your company and you're always putting your company first, which is really what you should be doing as a business owner. For your personal brand, we need to offer something a little bit different from your company so that way distinctions are really crystal clear to anyone who comes across your site or social media profiles that are independent of your company. So based on your questionnaire and what you've been saying, it's very clear to me that you like helping people, you like the business of creativity and you like streamlining any sort of audio transaction. So here's what I'm thinking.
Phil: If you've listened to past episodes, you've heard it before but you're going to hear about it again. This is the time where I tell you what we do for a living. We do this just a much more detailed, longer private version and it's called a brand audit. If you like what you hear, you should consider hiring us to help you or like that mirror that tells the truth about what's working and what's not in your business. If you are interested in more information and a special offer that we have for our podcast listeners, only visit https://philpallen.co/expert for all the details. What are you waiting for? Go and do it.
Lauren: We could position you as an expert and to turn turning creativity into a business or we could position you with producers in mind specifically and you could kind of be like an audio consultant for producers in a way.
Fernando: I like that idea.
Lauren: The second one.
Fernando: Yeah. I've actually, for a while I've been trying to figure out a way how to position myself personally as just that. I don't necessarily care if I'm the person working on the production, but I like the idea of building a system for a client and then whether it's their sound person or one of our sound people or myself going out and executing it and it, it all happens. That's really what I enjoy doing.
Phil: I think it sounds good. If we can build something out of what you enjoy doing that's kind of the whole point.
Fernando: Amen. I'm a big fan of companies that have dual mission statements where the first one is your main bread and butter and the second one is actually doing something to not just take but give back and help people achieve. Yeah, it suits my company's culture as well. One of the things that we really been struggling with is I've always given people advice, even if it's to my detriment.
So what has happened here in Las Vegas is a lot of people that I gave advice to 5 to 10 years ago about purchasing their own equipment. These are people that do what I do for a living, well, purchasing their own equipment and not necessarily renting from me. Well now all of those people have all their own equipment and rather than renting from me, they all rent to each other for less. And so not only am I servicing, not no longer servicing those clients that I helped introduce those people to, but I'm no longer getting the equipment rental on it as well.
And like I said earlier, I don't take money from people's day rates, so I wasn't getting any of that anyway. But we've lost all of that rental income as a result. And so the thing that we've kind of been battling with is, okay, do we start charging or taking some money from these guys? Well, no, because that's the opposite of our culture that we don't believe in that. So we can't do that. So what do we need to do to bring in money and do we have to start other revenue streams? That's actually one of the reasons why we opened the store last year towards the last quarter of the year. We opened a little online equipment store so that we can start adding a new revenue stream to compensate for those losses.
Lauren: So ultimately you're too nice. I think that's what we're, they're too nice, too humble, but clearly, I mean I think these multiple revenue streams are a great idea and I'm getting really excited about this kind of producer consultant stream as well because that's another way to justify charging for your expertise.
Fernando: Well, you know another reason why I like it too is I can put more people to work. That was one of the reasons why I really enjoy doing reality shows is if I was doing a feature, two, maybe three people on a sound crew, you work on some of these reality shows. I've done shows where I had as many as 30 people on my crew and that's pretty awesome to be able to call it that many people and say, hey man, I got some work for you. So if I'm consulting that means that we are potentially putting other people to work, which I'm a big fan of.
Lauren: So with this audio consultant vision in mind, tell us about where, what problems you're seeing in the current production process with producers specifically and how you think you could fill in the gap with fixing them.
Fernando: I think one of the big things is over the years people's titles have become very washed out. You can get a producer credit for just about anything, especially if you're willing to compensate on the rate. And so there are a lot of people out there that are capable to do work in one area and completely oblivious on how to do it in another area. The irony of the whole thing is for the most part the equipment is the same. It might be made by a different manufacturer, but what it does essentially is the same.
But the process is so different, that the person that could work on project A and not work on project B and that happens to be one of the things that I have a lot of. One of my best attributes professionally is that I'm incredibly flexible. I've done live shows for pretty much my entire television career. I started off in music and so I understand the music process both live and recorded. I understand live television.
I've been doing live sports my entire career and I've been in reality shows. I've done commercials, I've done movies and so I understand the process on all of these different genres that most people are niched into any one of these genres and I guess the benefit is that I can bring something that works in genre A over to genre B to increase efficiency and save productions money.
Lauren: That's so interesting because I would assume there is a process that's used by every genre of television or film, but that you find that they vary.
Fernando: Well, the thing is the process is different. I'll give you an example. If you're doing live tow, you have a production manager. And that production manager runs the set. Nobody does anything on that set without the production manager knowing, right? I don't handle a talent, a microphone without the production manager, a camera person who doesn't go from decided to stage onto the stage without the production manager knowing that's how it works. On a movie set, you don't have a production manager doing that or I'm sorry, not a production manager, a stage manager. The stage manager runs the set on the live show. Are you going to a film set? There is no stage manager. You have an assistant director and the assistant director runs everything and that's the person that you go to.
So if you live in the live world, your connecting cables to 53 foot trucks, if you're working in the feature world, you're rolling a cart in. If you're shooting a documentary, you have everything that you're going to need in a bag over your shoulder. So it's all the same tools. They all essentially do the same thing, but the process for all of these different genres, is different. And I've been very fortunate in that I've worked in and around all of these different genres enough to understand the process for all of them. And I have relationships with people in all of these areas as well. So if there's ever something that I don't know or understand, I can always call them and use them as a resource.
Lauren: I'm trying to sort of flesh out services like concrete services that are a starting point that can be shown on a personal website so people have an idea of how they could work with you even if it's ultimately not the kind of final working relationship. I'm am imagining three different steps and they each build off of each other. So let me know if this sounds, if this sounds right in the world that you work in. So I'm thinking of kind of the most high level, hands off, lowest price of a service that you would offer would be related to like consultational or organizational consulting right at the beginning of a project. So basically you would use your expertise across different genres to advise on the roles and kind of the structure of the audio team and possibly give some insider advice into who they should hire as a type of person and what their roles would be.
Fernando: Yeah, absolutely.
Lauren: So the second stage I'm envisioning is even more granular. So you, you're recommending the structure and the type of person they might want to hire and if they want to work with you more than you would actually go further and recommend equipment and an actual process to be used either like either or in pre during production or post production. And even further you could rent it to them at like maybe a discounted rate because they hired you as a consultant. And then the last stage I'm envisioning is actually your team. So not only would you oversee the organization, the equipment and the process used all the way from pre through post-production would, but you would actually hire the team and manage it for them.
Fernando: Yeah, that sounds lovely.
Phil: I just sit back in these moments and let the genius work because when it comes to creating services and naming, I'm telling you she works magic.
Lauren: Okay. So I know you don't like to brag, we've learned that much on this call, but I know that you have done some pretty incredible projects and worked with some, some big, big names and networks and, and whatnot. Could you let us know some of those big names and that way we could find ways to weave it into your site copy?
Fernando: Hmm. Let's see. I guess the biggest thing is that I have an Emmy for my work with HBO. And I'm pretty proud to say that I still work with HBO.
Lauren: Good for you. And I can, I mean, HBO is such a major name that I'm sure it well, but you don't like to brag. So if you, if you did like to brag, it would probably help with, with your, um, business too. But it's pretty awesome.
Fernando: No, I'm very proud that I work with them. I mean if you look at my social media, I kind of bragged that way. I guess because I'm proud of the clients that I go to work for. I'm proud of the work that I do for them. HBO has been one of my bigger clients and I guess as far as notoriety is concerned, they just happened to be one of my favorite clients because of the people that work within the HBO boxing world. They're all really wonderful people.
Phil: I'm curious to explore as we think about Fernando's personal brand. Normally when we ask him about him, he links it back to the company in some way, shape or form. Lauren, do you have any thoughts on how we can name him? Maybe a brand that is an offshoot of the companies so that all of this can live and coexist together? I'm going into this conversation Fernando, I thought, yeah, we'll build, you know, a very distinct personal brand around your name that is its own entity that will link back in terms of business and conversation of the company, but I'm not so sure about that anymore. I'm wondering if we could come up with like a sub brand from the company that represents Fernando. People love stories. There's an opportunity there.
Fernando: Right. Well, you know, in the fact of the matter is, my team is, I mean the whole reason I created my company was because I wasn't getting support from rental companies. I was supervising these reality shows and I'd have a piece of equipment go down or I wouldn't have the right piece of equipment for uh, you know, uh, something coming up in a couple of days and I couldn't get any support. And so I took it upon myself to start purchasing the equipment and just handling it myself. It just got to the point where I was losing money by not being in my shop to service people that were renting equipment.
And that's when I hired Marcus. But they are essentially an extension of me. You know, I just, I've worked so closely and because these people are like family to me, Crystal knows what questions to ask a client so that I don't have to, I actually participate very little in the overall transaction other than actually physically going out on the job. Unless, of course I'm not available and they find the body to go and do it, but they're the ones that do the majority of the legwork. I usually don't even prep my own equipment anymore.
Lauren: So there are so many ways we could position this. But I still like the idea of you Fernando having your own brand that's linked to your company. And the reason why is because we've been actually deliberating the same thing for our agency, for Phil's company. And we found that it's a little confusing to the average person when they go to the Phil Pallen Collective site. And ultimately they're working with me a lot and Phil comes on for strategy calls, but I'm really managing the day to day along with the rest of our team. And we found that Phil really needed a platform where he had his own voice, where people knew they were getting just Phil. And so I, I think you’re probably experiencing something similar, right?
Fernando: Yeah, absolutely. And the conversation in our office is often, you know, crystal says, but they want you. And I'm like, but don't you understand, I'm not even involved in this transaction. Like the clients that want me call me and I looked at the calendar and Crystal has access to my calendar and if I get booked out on a job that comes through her, that's fine because I have some long term clients that just know it's a lot easier to just stay in touch with Crystal. But most of my clients that want me on their set, call me directly if they call Crystal's phone number, which is a phone number on our website to book sound, I usually have nothing to do with any of those transactions. So it's very interesting.
Lauren: It is. And it's actually, it sounds like a day in the life of our company too, to be quite honest. What I'm thinking is that Stickman Sound, I mean it's your part of it and it's your brainchild essentially, but, but it's, it's going without you still for the most part. I think that we set up a brand for Fernando and the difference between your personal brand and your company brand is that your personal brand has that producer's twist to it, but it's also showing that your kind of the mastermind behind the problems that Stickman has solved. That's kind of, I dunno, Phil's nodding. Phil's nodding that, that, that works for him too. Does it, how does that feel to you?
Fernando: That sounds great.
Lauren: Now, Phil, for Fernando's brand identity, are you wanting to see similarities in color to stickman sound? Are you imagining something completely different? Like what do you think is best?
Phil: I envision maybe orange or something that feels related but it's not exactly the same. I think we can be inspired by the photography and the existing brand identity for the company to come up with something really cool.
Fernando: Cool. I'm open either way. You guys are the pros in that area.
Phil: Did you have any thoughts, colors or any, you know, style preferences, Fernando, that you want to weigh in? Now's the time.
Fernando: No, not really. I've never really been a very flashy person, but I've worked in and around with set designers my whole life and pretty much my whole life now sometimes they bring out some individual pieces and I'm thinking, what the hell is that? And then you see the whole thing finished and it's like, oh, I get it. That's awesome. So I'm bad at that stuff. So you guys work your magic. I'm sure I'll be happy with whatever.
Phil: I feel very good about moving forward with all of this. Fernando: Wow, this is very exciting. You guys are awesome
Phil: Fernando, what are you most excited about in all of this?
Fernando: The whole idea of moving into more of a consulting role. I kind of feel like I do it already anyway. It just never really had a way to, I guess, entice other clients.
Phil: Fernando is such a nice guy.
Lauren: So nice and so humble.
Phil: He's so humble. But we find this with people who work behind the camera, out of the spotlight. They don't often want to talk about themselves. They want to talk about everyone else. In this case, his team, which I love. Fernando is the kind of person I'd want to work for.
Lauren: Totally. You can tell that Fernando really loves helping and advising people. So I'm so glad we figured out how to position his personal brand in a way that's still honest to who he is.
Phil: I think that photography is going to be key because hearing him, it's believable, it's captivating. You're like, I get what he's all about. We have to figure out with the photography, how to show that, so people get it in like three seconds or less. And now at the time of recording this podcast, we haven't branded Fernando yet, but certainly at the time of airing, we have. If you're a Full Sail student, you're on campus this week for Hall of Fame, be sure to attend my sessions this week on position, building and promoting your brand. Fernando is our guinea pig. To show you how we can build a brand from 0 to 100.
Lauren: That's a new best slogan.
Phil: Yeah, that's new. I've never said that, but I don't even think it makes sense.
Lauren: Well, yeah, I think we could work with it.
Phil: Fernando, this is a first. Normally I come to Hall of Fame and I give lectures and I talk about the same kind of thing. But I thought for fun this year, let's have a human example of someone who doesn't have a brand and end's Hall of Fame with a brand during the session. So it will also be super interactive. We'll be interacting with students. I get to be a part of the decisions that are made to arrive at this. And Fernando also has not seen the brand that we will present him.
Lauren: So it's even fun for people who aren’t at Full Sail this week, because you can actually learn about Fernando's brand and see it in action by visiting philpallen.expert and going to the blog.
Phil: Yes. So those are your two ways. We're so excited that you've been here and you're a part of this as well. If you've enjoyed this episode, go to iTunes, leave us a review. We're a brand new podcast, so that really helps other people find this. And let's continue the conversation on social media, on Twitter, and on Instagram @philpallen
Lauren: @thelaurenmoore.
Phil: And this has been another episode of brand therapy. Use #brandtherapy to continue the conversation with us online and we will see you back next week.
Lauren: I want to make it sound fun, but I just can't come up with one right now. So see you next week. Bye Bye.
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