“I’ve started over more times than I’d like to admit. This time I’m doing it in public.”
For those of you who don’t know me (almost all of you) my name is Richard Pryn. For almost 15 years now I have been calling myself a composer.
I have specialised in Trailer Music for most of that time, landed some of the biggest trailers, written a huge amount of music, won a few awards, all of the stuff that sounds great on paper (but actually doesn’t really mean a lot)
However, in the years 2022-2023 it all seemed to fall apart.
In 2022, the company I built, with a friend of mine, called Protege (which had it’s own production music library as well) fell apart.
In Early 2023, I was later no longer required as a composer for my biggest client.
In that same year, Google announced a core update, the ‘The “Helpful” Content’ update, that over the next 12 months tanked the traffic to my website, and education business, by over 90%.
This was brown trousers time.
Not only had I lost my biggest music client, and a company I was counting on to grow, but I also lost my ‘back up’ plan - the traffic to my education site.
While this was happening I had moved house with my family (wife Debs and three kids) and our mortgage went up 50% and got a huge tax bill as a result of me cocking up massively.
It felt like my entire world was falling apart around me.
So I did what any sane person would do.
I started to look for ways to get more clients and also get my traffic to my website back. And generally find any way I could to earn a bit more money.
I got an Instagram coach to help me use short-form content to drive traffic to my site. In 4 months of daily content it did very little in noticeable traffic or revenue
I wrote a weekly newsletter in the hope of securing sponsors and getting revenue that way
I launched various coaching programs and memberships on my site
I released 30 albums of my own music in the hopes of becoming a viral TikTok sensation and get streaming revenue (over 12 months this only brought in $400)
I launched 2 niche sites focused on getting traffic from Pinterest.
I tried using Facebook ads to sell courses but my account got flagged.
I launched a new podcast and show on YouTube
I became an Amazon influencer making review videos
I started a TikTok shop (again more review videos)
I even started freelancing for other companies to help with automation
Each one of these things felt like I was starting over again.
In short, I was scrabbling for something to ‘save’ me.
I was falling into the podcast-inspired shiny object syndrome; I would hear an interview with someone succeeding at doing something I wasn’t and I would think “hey, maybe that will work for me”.
Thankfully there was one saving grace, my newsletter…and more importantly, you.
That’s right, you.
Because I had built an email list I was able to work around these setbacks.
I could pre-sell a new course (Horror Music Mastery), launch a very successful mentoring program (The Composer Accelerator), launch my new community (The Composer Academy) and most of all get words of encouragement all the while from those of you who replied to me.
Because I had direct contact with the people on my email list, I was able to recover from everything that had happened.
The magic was the people, not the algorithm.
Rather than focusing on SEO and algorithms I want to focus on people.
This newsletter to be a more personal dispatch about me as a composer, educator, and business owner.
Me being myself; making music, creativity, building things, the messy reality of making a living from music.
Not a content schedule, just honest dispatches when I have something worth saying. Like I am talking to a good friend.
If that sounds like your kind of thing then stick around ❤️
You are awesome and I am very grateful for each and every one of you.
Rx
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