In this episode, Tim sits down with Scott Adamson — touring front of house audio engineer and founder of The Production Academy — for a wide-ranging conversation about building a life in live sound. Scott traces his career from mixing indie bands in small clubs to working with Grammy-winning artists in arenas, sharing how luck, relationships, and just sticking around long enough opened doors he couldn't have anticipated. He shares his experience with  the financial realities of the touring world and speaks candidly about The Production Academy, the online education platform he spent nearly a decade building, including what he got right, what he got wrong, and how that informs his thinking going forward. Throughout the conversation, Scott brings a refreshingly self-aware perspective on his own financial habits: what he wishes he'd done sooner, how regularly investing even a little helps in the long run, and what he'd do differently as an entrepreneur the next time around.

Scott's question for Timothy: How do we approach online education?

Key Takeaways:

1. Scott describes his work as a creative collaboration with artists, translating what happens on stage into what the audience actually hears and feels.
2. He spent his twenties and early thirties living cheaply, often without an apartment, bouncing between tours — but with no savings to show for it, a gap he deeply wishes he had addressed sooner.
3. Despite the touring industry's lack of contracts or union protections for crew, Scott notes that touring people rarely talk openly about rates — a habit that works against them collectively, though he actively tries to share what he knows with colleagues.
4. Scott spent close to a decade building The Production Academy, generating around half a million dollars in revenue — but with very little profit, largely because he focused almost entirely on product development and not enough on sales and marketing.
5. He identifies his biggest entrepreneurial lesson as the importance of complementary skill sets: building something alone means doing everything yourself, and the things you're not naturally good at — in his case, sales — tend to get neglected.

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