I made my favorite business card back in 2008.
I worked for weeks to come up with a cool design, figure out my “branding”, and decide exactly what services I wanted to advertise. I was convinced that the card needed to evoke “who I was” and be both memorable and informative.
So naturally, my business card looked like a Parental Advisory sticker and advertised my services as an audio engineer and a web designer. You should conveniently forget the fact that I had hardly made money doing either of those things, and that they have almost nothing to do with each other.
Is it any surprise that no one who received one of those cards (I’m sorry) hired me for anything?
My book Quit Aspiring has a whole chapter dedicated to a technique I use when meeting people in lieu of having business cards. I seriously haven’t bought one since somewhere around that 2008 time frame.
But today, I’m going to share with you what I’ve used as a full replacement for your business card. I’ve used it successfully multiple times now. More importantly, I’ve seen others use it to great success too.
Why Not Buy a Business Card
I’ve shared my thoughts on this before, but I’ll say it again – I think business cards are a waste of your money.
In my opinion, making a business card with the express intent to find work is like building social media accounts and website with the expectation that somebody is going to hire you because of that.
They also come with the baggage of having something physical to keep track of, and the hope and prayer that someone will use yours and actually put your number in their phone later.
Of course, that often doesn’t happen, so let’s hope you got their business card and you put their number in your phone and then followed up with them.
To me, everything with a business card just seems like a lot of work for very little reward.
I would rather walk into a meet-up or a conference and be introduced to people by a great mutual connection, or have a reputation that precedes me such that people want to come talk to me.
I imagine, to many of you, both of those ideas seem somewhat impossible.
They’re not.
The first one takes some time to build, because you have to make friends. The second one will likely take a bit of time as well – but I’m fairly certain most of you have no idea how to go about doing this.
I certainly didn’t – and most people whom I see building a great reputation are kind of surprised when they’ve done it.
I assumed you have to work numerous jobs and “build a body of work” to get a great reputation – that’s certainly one way to do it. It’s not the only way, and it’s probably not the best way.
Instead, you need to use your creativity and make something.
What Replaces a Business Card
Years ago when I was in Xbox localization, I realized that I had to choose between one or two paths to keep working in game audio.
I could either compete for sound design jobs, or I could start pursuing something in technical audio by improving my software development skills. I chose the latter.
This put me in a serious dilemma – I didn’t have a degree in software development, I had no portfolio, and I only wanted to pursue audio software development.
Therefore, getting a 4 year degree would’ve been a literal waste of time – the schools I could get into usually weren’t teaching C++, much less digital audio.
The only option I truly had was to start teaching myself and building things.
It’s that building things part that ended up changing the world for me.
As a business man, I realized my clients were audio professionals. I needed to make things both useful and interesting to audio professionals.
I ended up creating The Instant-Take Suite – effectively porting and improving Pro Tools’ audiosuite into Reaper.
I literally sold it – and with it grew this reputation that I knew what I was doing with software.
I put it onto my resume, and eventually opportunity came when 343 Industries were interested in my skills set. That makes it sound like I simply waltzed into working on Halo – not true – but the interview process went surprisingly smooth because I wasn’t “selling myself” and I had already demonstrated literally what I could do.
Now, your challenge is to take that concept and replicate it for yourself.
How to Make Something Incredible
Most sound designers make a 1 minute long or so demo reel and send it in with a resume. There’s nothing wrong with that, at all.
But it’s also not exceptional.
To create a figurative “gravitational field” that pulls people to you – you need to make something cool that hits three qualifiers:
- It’s a little different than what everyone else is doing
- It demonstrates your abilities
- It’s attention grabbing for your customer
Something Different
My friend Ben bought my C# course the first time I released it. He wanted to know how game audio works and specifically how to hook his sounds up in a simple demo game.
In the course, I advocate that you have fun and you make something cool with the knowledge.
So, he made a twelve minute long implementation demo of Unity’s “roll-a-ball” game.
If any of you besides Ben made this – it would be heresy. Roll-a-ball has no interesting or redeeming aspects to it – zero.
But Ben took Roll-a-ball and went absolutely nuts with it – not because he had any intention to do so, but because he was having so much fun he couldn’t stop himself.
To tell the story of what he did – it nearly required a twelve minute video. Something that, in any other circumstance, I would never ever recommend to anyone.
Contrast that with the usual one minute demo reel, though. The contents of that are usually cool or meaningful clips to a sound designer. Ben used a demo that nobody in their right mind would use, and made it interesting.
That’s pretty different, right?
So the first step for you to take is to find something to create that you’re interested in which is also a little different than what everyone else is doing.
Notice that Ben didn’t go make his own game from scratch. He made a demo reel like everyone else. He just made a weird long demo reel with a game nobody uses because he was having fun with it.
So you want a little different – not a magnum opus.
Demonstrate Your Ability
Ben didn’t just “sound” design his demo – he took a simple tech demo and completely reimagined it.
In order to do that well, he needed knowledge of the Unity editor, C#, Wwise, and how they all work together.
It’s a nigh impossible task to demonstrate all of that knowledge in about a minute – right? Exactly.
If you watch his demo, he’s changed the colors of cubes, added game mechanics based on a timer, made the ball’s sounds respond to its physics, and keeps most every sound in key with the music.
That sentence alone indicates that he knows Unity, C# programming, Wwise interaction, and sound, musical skill, and mixing.
I know most of you are looking at these words like
“Adam – you always tell me NOT to market myself as a composer/sound designer/programmer/tennis instructor/dog walker! What gives?!?!”
There’s a vast ocean of difference between writing on your resume that you know how to do something (or that you want to do all of those skills professionally) and literally showcasing your existing ability.
Imagine if I wrote “aspiring Lua programmer” on my website, Twitter or resume instead of going out and making Lua scripts that were literally useful to sound designers. Nobody would’ve cared – right?
So the second step to take is make sure that you create something that demonstrates your abilities well. That’s the whole point, right? Show what you can do and show it well!
Make it Attention Grabbing
This is why I’m ragging on 1 minute demo reels a bit here – everyone does them.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s required by many an employer! But I think all of you know the difficulty of making something truly attention grabbing with that 1 minute demo reel.
It isn’t easy.
This is where the weirdness of Ben’s Roll-a-ball demo is useful. Because of it’s “oh no I’d never want to see that” quality when I describe it to you in words – you can’t peel your eyes away when you watch and realize it’s actually really well done.
My Lua scripts recreating audiosuite is a similar idea – many sound designers love audiosuite and want to use Reaper (which effectively doesn’t have audiosuite). So when give a feature back to them – they’re overjoyed! They also invariably ask me if I can make other things for them with Reaper as a nice side effect.
The difficult part about this is you must know your customer.
My customer was sound designers who wanted to switch to Reaper or use audiosuite in it.
Ben’s customer is a game company looking for someone who can program, use a game engine, and has lots of audio experience.
You must think about who you want to have paying you for your services, and then think about what would capture their eyes. It’s not just about what you want to do.
What to Do When It’s Built
Unfortunately I can’t tell you exactly what to make – this is supposed to separate you from everyone else.
It requires you to be creative and work. You’re a creative, hard worker though – right?!
I can tell you what to do once it’s built, because that’s pretty simple.
Show it to people who matter.
When I made my Lua scripts – I told sound designers (aka the people who would be interested and pay me).
When Ben made his demo – he sent it to me because he trusted me and knew I could put him in touch with others.
(Don’t send me your Roll-a-ball demo – I’m not accepting submissions)
Go out, meet people, and build good friendships. When you make something special – show it to them! You don’t even need to solicit feedback, just share something you’re excited about.
If you know your customers, even better – hopefully you’ve been working on a thing that you know is valuable to them, so it won’t take much effort to get them to glance at it.
The important point is this:
Don’t build something and hide it away until it’s perfect – it will never get done.
You’ll know you’ve done your job right if you’ve had a lot of fun, been really excited to work on it, you’re scared to show it to others, and then people respond really well to it!
What We’ve Covered
I’ve covered a lot of ground here with you today. In short, this is what you need to remember:
- Business cards suck IMO, and they’re a lot of needless work
- Make something cool, instead of a business card
- Make it a little different than what everyone else is doing
- Make sure it shows off your skillls
- Show it off to people that matter
If you do all of the above, you’ll be surprised how word gets around. You may or may not run into a job immediately – but there’s a very decent likelihood you’ll run into someone that says
“Oh I know you! You made that _____ thing! That was really great!”
When that happens, just be flattered and say thank you. Then, you’re well on your way.
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