Today we’d like to introduce you to John McLucas.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
About five and a half years ago, I moved down here from the San Francisco area to attend Musicians Institute for their audio program. It’s a very short certificate program, so after that, I spent the next few years touring in bands and picking up occasional projects to scrape together my bills. I ended up joining a band and touring about half of the US states in it and playing a couple INSANE shows, one was opening for TOOL, Coheed & Cambria, and Primus.
After a couple of years of the touring life and the instability, ups, downs, label issues, and other factors, I had to pivot into music production and audio. I knew I could create a successful business on my own, as I could execute as fast or slow as I wanted to, and in the end, I was completely to blame for problems or to credit for successes.
At that time, I had taken a year lease in South Central, LA in the Expo Park neighborhood. Four bedroom house with my homies in a duplex, bars on the windows, and I had to make my bedroom of 116 sq ft a suitable studio to have people over in. It wasn’t easy to make it appealing, but I did my best and grinded through countless craigslist ads and FB posts and messaging people to see who needed things from me.
After a lot of failures, I started developing a small base of clients and started learning about the importance of creating quality, consistent online content. I work primarily with pop and rock genres, with the occasional heavy band coming through my doors for projects. As I continued grinding and working and building myself up, that’s when things took a positive change…
Before things really took off in 2018 to a whole new level, I rented out a very small space in an industrial area and lived on the floor of my studio for 11 months. No windows, no kitchen, no shower, living out of my car, no people to hang out with and socialize with. And it was INCREDIBLY difficult mentally to bear.
I’m also wondering if one or some of my clients will read this and maybe understand why some of the items were in the studio, but hey. I just didn’t want it to be public knowledge at first 😛 That’s a whole discussion on perceived value haha! So after 11 months of that, I was financially in a good enough place to move out and move my studio into the living room of my home, where I’m at now in Glendale!
I’m producing anywhere from one-four days a week, Mixing one-two days, creating three videos a week, a podcast, and usually multiple pieces of daily content on IG and Facebook about my work, my thoughts, industry perspective, or advice on helping artists create great content.
Some of my accolades from the adventure:
– Playing to 10,000 people at that TOOL show
– Touring 30 states in the US
– Working with Grammy-winning engineers
– Speaking at a convention in Orlando to audio professionals about my “come up.”
– Producing and Mixing music as a full-time career
– Hiring a full-time employee to create content for my personal brand & edit my audio projects
– Having a fricken’ rad beard
– Creating video content for a platinum producer & TV show
As far as how I got here, I’ll run some bullet points:
– Sacrificing nearly every other element of life. I stopped going out with friends to practice mixing, gave up every comfort of having a humble home to live on a floor. Gave up on really having a social life outside of work/concerts/meetings. I had it dominate my life, and THAT was the level of effort I had to put in to get to this point now.
– I stayed top of mind with my clients and people in my network, so when they needed something I could provide I was the first name in their head.
– I had (and have) no ego attached to my methods for what works. I realistically evaluate myself periodically to see what is working. And what isn’t, and that self-awareness is INVALUABLE.
– I’m relentlessly kind. I understand how fragile reputation is, and while I definitely have people who don’t like me, I uphold my standards of kindness in every business situation, even if it’s incredibly difficult. You NEVER know who will be referring a project or opportunity to you.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
LOL, I wish. The studio floor life was definitely a challenge, but I did it knowing exactly what I was getting into, so I only have myself to blame for that. But still, not easy.
The other struggle has honestly just been managing my time, project, and focus. I have found SO much opportunity and the possibility that sometimes, I have a hard time keeping focus on a goal or path to make sure I succeed at it.
Something that USED to be a struggle for me was understanding my value and creating a proper value proposition to potential clients. It’s daunting to say you are worth $1,000’s of dollars at times, but once you get a few clients in the door at that price point you can look to the proof of your worth in the free market and carry that confidence forward. 🙂
We’d love to hear more about what you do.
I actually recently collapsed my business entity and operate fully under my personal brand of “John McLucas” to make things simple, and since in it’s current state people are truly hiring me, not a company name.
I’m a pop and rock music producer and mix engineer that specializes in creating a lot of movement & excitement with my client’s works of art.
There is no more beautiful moment than dialing in an idea with the client on the couch and then turning, saying “check this out” and smiling as they LEAP out of their seat and start running around or dancing because their mind got blown. I live for those ” WHAAAAAAAAAATTTT?!?!?!?!” moments.
Outside of my main business of music production and mixing, I also create a lot of online video and audio content. I have a weekly podcast called the Learn Music Freelancing, where we learn about music freelancing but soaking up as much information as we can. That, which is weekly on Monday, with my Thursday YT videos covering a variety of topics geared towards giving artists the ability to create great content, are 100% geared towards helping artists be GREAT at running a DIY business.
That’s a secondary passion of mine to my business. I want to see artists be able to create a content weekly or even daily and not be scared, worried, or unsure of what to do in the process. And through that content and value, they bring to their communities, create scalable growth. This could potentially end up being a consulting business, but it hasn’t officially yet.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
The future is open-ended for me. I’m very fascinated at the organic opportunities that have presented themselves through the video creation I’ve explored over the last six months. So hopefully that will continue to grow.
Honestly, my plan is to follow the opportunities that I get and keep executing on what I know works. Which is community participation and giving back, underpromising and overdelivering, and staying top of mind as an authority in what I do.
Pricing:
- Mixing & Mastering $175 to $300 a song
- Full Production $650-900 a song
Contact Info:
- Website: johnmclucas.com
- Phone: 6507873090
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_mclucas/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jhnmclucas
Image Credit:
Steven Ward, John McLucas, Michelle Wiebach and Melina D Photography
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
