Earlier this year I had an older musician call the studio asking if we'd be able to to burn him a CD after we recorded him. lol. As a matter of fact, now that I think of it, another one of our clients had his album made on tape cassette! haha and he gave me a copy. I still don't have a way to play it.
It seems a bit bizarre to me that people in - almost - 2025 are still doing things that have been long obsolete. Typewriter technician, developing photos from negatives, CD manufacturing... I'm sure you can come up with other examples. I can't imagine why people would be still doing things like this in hopes that someone will pay them money for it. In today's age, we have Large language models (LLMs) who will surely to EVERYTHING for us, so what's the point of learning anything new when we can just zoom around in our hover scooters getting fat? Well, because learning how to prompt large language models is a skill that increasingly needs to be developed, I totally embrace using AI in your work, but we still need critical thinking and creativity to make these prompts, which is why I say...
Never stop developing skills
Develop new ones. It is known that girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. Besides getting girls, they'll help you think outside the box and see things in a new perspective. Hey! they might even help you eat, dress yourself and maybe earn a little money... magic or fiat!
Here are a few skills that I continue to develop in this day and age:
Project Manangement
This is my career. It's what I went to business school and got certifications for. Although I don't manage corporate projects any more, I do think it's a great skill to have in one's tool belt. Project management allows you to think of something that needs to be accomplished within a given timeframe and helps you manage the scope, budget, schedule, risks and of course stakeholders, meaning anybody involved in the project.
In running both a creative agency and a recording studio, I've come to realize that being able to tell the client exactly when they'll receive certain deliverables and what acceptance criteria we will use to define if the product/service is delivered within spec is crucial and sets you apart from your competitors.
Design
I've done sound recording, mixing and sound design professionally for about 7 years now. This ranges from writing music for ads, recording and mixing for bands to foley for film. Later, as fate would have it, I got into motion graphics and you may have seen me fiddling with Blender doing some 3D stuff lately. This is because we do more and more content production for clients. It's impossible for me to hire a bunch of employees at the moment as we do not have the demand to finance their salaries, but what I can do is do some of the work myself to get a clear idea of how much effort each task might demand. That way I can hire freelancers and I won't pay $500 for something that costs $100, you know what I'm saying? Plus, to be completely honest, I very much enjoy playing music through my studio monitors and zoning out for an hour or two working on a 3D model. It allows me to be in a state of flow for a while and I think it's healthy for anyone to get in the zone like that.
3D design is something that can solve a lot of problems for less technically or artistically inclined businesses. Think of set design, stage plots, conference room layouts, buildings, decoration, characters and of course advertising.
Being handy around the house
Yes, that means fixing shit. Changing the sink, screwing in a cabinet door, sealing a window, sanding/wood staining, changing some basic electronic components, sewing, using a caulk gun. I only know basic stuff, but it's enough to save me time and money hiring specialists to do certain activities. I'd like to learn a bit more plumbing and maybe some electricity to make installations and servicing the water heater, but the basic skills I have, help me and my family a lot.
And there are some other skills I think I'd like to develop a bit too, like...
Gardening
I'm pretty good at taking care of my plants both at the studio and in my house, but they're mostly just green leaves of different sizes. I also have a worm compost system which I use to both get rid of organic waste and feed my plants. You can read about it here Our urban garden is growing!
What I don't have is any knowledge on how to grow my own food. I'd like to start with some micro-greens, tomatoes and some herbs like basil and rosemary, but you never know when the robots might take over the world and we'll need to know how to grow beans and potatoes! so I need to pick up some of these skills just in case.
Coding in Python
I don't plan to be a developer, (although you never know what path live will take you down) but like any language including music, learning a programming language opens your mind to see problems a little bit differently and aside from making it easier to query databases from SQL, or maybe setting up a HIVE node, one could potentially use programming skills to automate many of the things you already do, incorporate various different technologies to create synergy with each other and maybe even do some work for hire.
Anyway, never stop learning new skills. The world needs humans with great skills and if you're in web3, which you probably are if you're reading my blog, the community is so small that it will allow you to stand out and offer your skills in exchange for other valuable things such as magic internet money :)
