Start Here: The System to Break Through
You're 35. Give or take a few years.
You've been mixing professionally for a decade. Technically solid. Clients come back. The work is good. You know what you're doing behind the board.
But when you look in the mirror, you don't see a successful professional. You see someone who should be further along by now.
The mental block isn't about your mixing. It's about your role in all of this. Your capabilities. Your worth. Whether you actually belong at the level you're trying to reach.
And that mental block costs you everything.
But First: Why Listen to Me?
Fair question. Here's what you should know:
I've spent seven years coaching over 300 mix engineers, producers, and mastering engineers. I've worked with Grammy winners, Grammy nominees, Top 40 engineers, and people in their bedrooms just starting out.
But here's what matters: Unlike most business coaches—even ones who claim to work with audio professionals—the engineers I work with operate at the level where Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Harry Styles, Lana Del Rey, Ariana Grande, Flume, and ODESZA are the standard. These aren't aspirational names. This is the tier where my clients actually work.
I don't coach people who dream about the top level. I coach people who are there, and people building toward it with actual strategy instead of hope.
This isn't theory. This isn't a course I bought and resold. This is seven years of pattern recognition working with over 300 engineers at every level, distilled into frameworks that work whether you're just starting or already working on major releases.
The blog has hundreds of free articles. The results are documented. The people are real.
You don't have to take my word for it. Read the content. See if it resonates. If it does, you know what to do.
The Test: How Many of These Are True?
Be honest with yourself:
On money:
You're not sure what you should be charging
Your rates haven't increased in 2+ years
You discount when clients push back
You have no idea what you actually make per hour after all the invisible work
Some months you make $8K, some months you make $1K, and you can't predict which
On clients:
You take almost every project that comes your way
You're working with clients who drain you
You can't explain who your ideal client is
You hope past clients come back but have no system for it
You don't know where your next 3 projects are coming from
On positioning:
When someone asks what you do, your answer is vague or takes 3 minutes
You're "a mix engineer" with no differentiator
Potential clients don't know when to hire you vs. someone else
You're competing on price instead of value
You have no clear point of view that separates you from commodity mixers
On boundaries:
You accept unlimited revisions because you're afraid to say no
Clients ask for "one more thing" and you always say yes
You work nights and weekends regularly
You don't have a revision policy in writing
You feel like you're giving away free work constantly
On systems:
Everything lives in your head—no documentation, no process
Every project feels like you're starting from scratch
You forget to follow up with potential clients
Your file organization is chaos
You have no idea how long projects actually take you
On mindset:
You compare yourself to peers and feel behind
You question if you're good enough for the rates you want
You think "I'll raise my rates when I'm more experienced"
You're afraid to lose clients if you change anything
You feel like an imposter when pitching higher-level clients
Count them.
If you checked 3-5: You have significant gaps costing you $20K-40K per year.
If you checked 6-10: You're leaving $40K-60K on the table and probably know it but don't know how to fix it.
If you checked 11+: You're operating on hope and hustle, not strategy. The gap between where you are and where you could be is $60K-100K per year, and you're exhausted trying to close it through sheer effort.
Why You're Stuck
These aren't separate problems. They're all symptoms of the same thing: You never learned how to run a mix business. You only learned how to mix.
Nobody teaches this. You spent years learning compression, EQ, reverb, automation. You learned how to make records sound incredible. But nobody taught you how to position yourself, build relationships strategically, price based on value, qualify clients, create agreements, build systems, or manage the mindset blocks that make you undercharge and overdeliver.
So you defaulted to hope. Hope that clients find you. Hope that you're charging enough. Hope that this month won't be a disaster.
Meanwhile, engineers at your exact skill level—sometimes worse mixers than you—are making $100K-150K per year consistently. Not because they're better at EQ. Because they have what you don't: clear positioning, strategic relationships, defended pricing, qualification systems, documented processes, and pipeline visibility.
When these exist, everything changes. Not incrementally. Fundamentally. Feast-famine stops. Pricing anxiety disappears. Bad clients self-select out. Your calendar fills with work you actually want to do. Income becomes predictable.
And it happens faster than you think—usually 90 days if you're committed.
Which One Are You?
The Plateau — Same income for 2-3 years. Same types of clients. Technically solid but financially stuck. You think better mixes will get you better clients. They won't.
The Multi-Hyphenate — Producer-mixer-writer-artist-everything. Good at all of it, competing with specialists in every category, losing on price. Your versatility is a liability because you don't know how to package it.
The Remote Engineer — Not in LA/Nashville/NYC. Competing on price because of location. Apologizing instead of leveraging. Geography hasn't mattered for five years but you're still operating like it does.
The Family Provider — Supporting a family on chaos. Everything in your head. 50-70 hour weeks. Hope and hustle instead of systems. You're working harder when you should be building infrastructure.
The Wrong Level/Genre/Specialty — You're working, but not on the projects you want. Wrong tier of clients, wrong genre, or stuck in a specialty you want to leave. You know where you want to be, but you don't know how to get there from here.
If You're Ready to Build This
I've created tools and resources for each stage:
Rate Reality Check — Free. See what you're actually making per hour after all the invisible work. Most discover they're making $12-18/hour when they thought they were making $50. Takes 5 minutes.
The Mixer Blueprint — $100. Complete frameworks for pricing, client qualification, rate scripts, discovery structure, efficiency protocols. Self-directed implementation.
Strategy Call — $350. 90 minutes to diagnose what's broken and design your next steps. You come with the ONE thing keeping you stuck and exactly what to do about it.
Accelerator Bundle — $375. Blueprint + Strategy Call together. Systems + custom roadmap.
Course Waitlist — $800. 8-week self-paced structured program. One system per week, implemented in sequence. All frameworks, templates, calculators, and scripts. No live calls, no accountability—just the complete roadmap if you prefer to work independently. Q1 2026 launch.
Elite 1:1 Coaching — $8,000. 12 weeks private. This isn't for people who are already successful and comfortable. This is for the engineer who wants to transcend their current position—whether that's $30K or $150K—and knows that doing it with someone else is the only way it actually happens. We build everything custom: positioning, pricing, pipeline, systems, mindset. This is partnership, not templates. Weekly calls, unlimited access, complete transformation. Start with a Strategy Call to see if we're a fit.
Explore How I Think
Not ready to commit yet? Check out some popular blog posts:
The Real Timeline of Mix Engineer Success — Why the path to success isn't "overnight" and how to navigate it.
Core Business Philosophies Mix Engineers Should Know — The principles behind building a career that's creatively fulfilling and financially sustainable.
Stop Asking For Work (A Mix Engineer's Guide to Actually Getting It) — Why your outreach isn't working and what to do instead.
15 Pieces of Advice from 5 Years of Coaching Mix Engineers — Real-world lessons distilled from coaching hundreds of creative professionals.
The Bottom Line
You went to the test at the top of this page and checked some boxes.
If you checked 3+, you have a problem. Not a small one. A $50K-100K per year problem.
The good news: It's fixable. Not eventually. Not "someday when I'm more experienced." Now. In 90 days if you're committed.
The bad news: You can't fix what you won't acknowledge.
So acknowledge it. Stop telling yourself you're doing fine. Stop normalizing the chaos. Stop accepting that this is just how it works.
It's not how it works for successful engineers. It's how it works for engineers who never learned the business side.
You learned how to mix. Now learn how to build a business that supports that craft.
Everything you need is here. The articles are free. The frameworks are proven. The path is clear.
What you do next is up to you.
Questions? Email hi@mjm.earth
