Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in content creation but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Stephen (Studio Steve) Davis, CEO of Pod Sound School®, located in Raleigh, NC, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Podcast and content marketing for coaches, consultants, and service providers.

Tell us about yourself

I'm a music producer, and audio engineer // turned into a film, and tv editor // turned podcast, content marketing instructor, and coach. It all started with my childhood passion for creating things and my obsession with electronics. Especially electronics that record audio, take pictures, or capture video. I remember being the first kid in the neighborhood whose parents had the first consumer camcorder. Which was a video camera that had to be hooked up to a television and a VCR in order to record anything. However, much of my youth and young adulthood was spent chasing my dreams of being a rockstar and touring the world with a band.

I was lucky enough at 17 to land a job at a recording studio in Hollywood, where I worked and studied audio for three years and where I had the privilege of being mentored by some of the top industry professionals. The skills I learned at the recording studio allowed me to start freelancing as an audio engineer. In my twenties, I started to support myself by doing live sound gigs and recording demos and events for people. This work eventually led to building and operating a recording studio out of my garage. When I had trouble scaling this business or seeing any real profit. I decided to pivot and turn my audio production skills toward video production. So, I attended film school and learned everything I could about film production, Which led me to work on bigger projects with bigger budgets and make a better living.

However, I was still, at best, a trade worker, being paid for my time. So I knew the only route to real financial freedom and success. It would be to start something that could serve more people. This was in 2019 and which led me to finally ask my wife, Veronica, who at the time was working in corporate law, to quit her job and come start a business with me. Both of us were very talented and had achieved some amazing things in our fields. But neither one of us knew ANYTHING about business, marketing, sales, hiring, management, NOTHING. But we took what savings we had, and we made the leap.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Since then (2019), we've been able to provide coaching and consulting services to clients and hundreds of students inside our online courses and make a real living and some actual gross profit. We've grown our company to a team of 6, and while still in our infancy, we have figured out not only a business model that is working and growing for us, But we have also been able to solve problems for our target customers in a way that no one has been able to yet. Relieving their pain and getting them to their desired outcome in the quickest and most efficient way available. For our niche, this solution, or our offer, is this content marketing formula that works on autopilot for biz owners to grow their influence. It's an insanely effective marketing strategy that only requires 3 - 5 hours a month of work and effort from our members but results in a massive output of diversified content.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

Everything about being a business owner is "hard"; there are many layers of complexity. You have to grow your influence, and at the same time, you develop offers and products. You have to manage your team. But the most difficult for me has been the unexpected personal, emotional, and spiritual growth that has been necessary to tackle in order to move the business forward. That's the most difficult and also the most rewarding.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

My three tips can really be summed up into one idea, and that is: Prioritize Strategic and Focused Tasks. As a new business owner, it's easy to be caught up in the thousands of tasks we have to do to get started. But as the CEO of our business, low-priority tasks are not and should not be our responsibility. The CEO's job is to tackle the HIGHEST priority tasks (that's why they get paid the most). Low-Priority tasks need to be outsourced or, in some cases, ignored. This can be confusing at first because when you have a mountain of tasks on your daily to-do list, taking an hour to do yoga or meditate doesn't seem justifiable. When in actuality, taking that time for self-care and conscious clarity may actually be the HIGHEST PRIORITY task and the best use of your time. Because after you have gained that clarity and oiled that machine, you can now perform at your best to first choose the most strategic tasks to tackle and second to tackle those tasks with the highest amount of your focus. One strategic and focused task can have 1000 TIMES the payoff than one overwhelmed, confused, or random task will. Understanding this one concept and putting it to use will 100X your business growth, guaranteed.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.podsoundschool.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/podsoundschool
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podsoundschool/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/podsoundschool
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/podsoundschool

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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