Howdy Partner

Over the last few months I have been on the journey to find my next life... mainly my next career. I won't go into the whole reason why again, that's in an older post. However, my friend Val has returned from Greece and we caught up on Friday after work.

If I haven't mentioned it before, Val is the owner of The Sound Basement. A local rehearsal/recording studio that has a lot to offer. I met Val back in 2008 when a friend organised a band and invited me to play bass for him. We haven't played in 3 months, but that's a different story.

Upon meeting Val, we seemed to have got a long really well straight off the start. He invited me into the studio once to have a look at what he's doing, and I learnt straight up that this place he's created isn't just somewhere for people or bands to come in, jam for a few hours and go home or a gig later on.

Val has ideas, he's a crazy person with a million different ideas. The only thing is, he has too many ideas and needs a bit of focus.

Well, a few months back when I was looking at buying into a music shop franchise that pitches itself mainly as a music tuition place that happens to have guitars, drums, keyboards etc for sale as well. It's a great place and I love what the owner has done. It's a brilliant idea that appealed to me. However, for some reason I had an interesting feeling when I went to see the shop that I was interested in. When I told Val about it, he went to see the shop a few days later and called me to say "Steve, I went to the shop. Hmm, I didn't get a great feeling either".

We both agreed there was a vibe about it that didn't rub either of us in a positive way. So, after that Val and I met up face to face because at that stage both of us had shared personal projects with each other and have a basic understanding of where each of us stand in the art of music.

I went in that day to see Val in regards to an acoustic project he's doing and wants me to be the guitarist. I agreed and then we moved on to other topics, one of which was this music shop. The talk about that was short, we both had mutual feelings towards it and then the conversation quickly moved on to other things.

I identified that while Val had a bunch of brilliant ideas, some profoundly insane that will work only because they're crazy, while others more mainstream and easy to work with. Val appeared to need a hand. He's doing this all pretty much single handed, with only his wife, obviously a strong woman who has helped dramatically in Val creating this studio and making it nearly double in value in a little under 3 years.

Val comes out with "Do you see anything here that you could help with?"

A light bulb not only lit up in my head, it glowed so bright it exploded.

I saw this as my opportunity to finally let go of IT and become part of a more realistic idea of how I want to work and live.... in the music industry.

The only question was, "What the hell do I do here?"

What did I really have to offer Val apart from being an extra set of hands and maybe be his clone for times where he can't be two places at once.

Well, after much much thought, and with Val's return from his overseas trip we organised our Friday afternoon meeting and mainly caught up about his trip. Soon after, his wife turned up and the talk turned to business.

6 hours later and a numb bottom, we had something in place. A verbal agreement with some ideas on what is going to happen. I told Val I felt a great deal of relief that now a lot of the important questions have been answered and a lot of the doubt has lifted thanks to our chat.

It just went to prove that with both of us putting our heads together, we had this beautiful agreement (albeit verbal) where we both have a fair partnership with both of us coming out with everything we want.

Naturally, from here on we'll be talking to accountants, lawyers and other people we may need to bring in, and we'll both sit down with these people to have an actual legal partnership agreement set up so we cover all bases from the good parts to the bad parts.

While neither of us want the bad parts, we both know it's realistic to be aware that the proverbial poop can hit the spinning wind machine otherwise known as a fan.

We both ended our lengthy catch up at about 11 pm on Friday night knowing what each of us have to do to go to the next step.

So, it looks like the ball has begun rolling. We have set out what areas of business I will be responsible for. What profits and running costs I will be associated with. The split of business between us, how much I'm buying into the business.

In between all the chatter, we also had some more crazy ideas pass between words. One of which is going to be a first time thing using my skills in technology and his knowledge of music to develop a cool and interesting way to deliver music to fans.

Sadly, this has been done before, just not in Australia. But it's cool and crazy ideas like the one I can't really talk about just yet that are going to make this a bloody fun journey I can't wait to be a part of.

My goals appear to be covered well;

•Less time working in a business, more time working on it.

•Being more creative

•Setting myself up financially so I can support myself and my family without worry of losing it •all tomorrow.

Val has similar goals but his main one is much like my first one. Have a business that runs while we're not there.

I'm excited, terrified and looking forward to the challenges I have to carry over the ideas Val has and make them a profitable music experience for bands and regular people who just want to have some fun.

I wish I could share these ideas with you, but I can't until they're ready to be delivered. But when they are, you'll see, they're awesome ideas. Val's got them, I've got the motivation to get them happening. Together, we're hopefully going to have a brilliant creation of a music studio like no other. Fuck it's scary. I can't wait.