How Full-Time Producers Never Run Out of Work

In terms of your own business, how many weeks or months do you usually book ahead? The entire curve of my business has been me learning how to keep projects sustainably and consistently in order. I was like, oh, I'm completely overbooking. Hey everyone, Daniel Grimmett here.

You're listening to Producer Management, the podcast that lets you in on real conversations between professional music producers and their teams, the deals, the strategies, and the unfiltered advice. This show is brought to you by my company, Dark Label Music. When producers want clarity, strategy, and growth, they call us.

So whether you're a small studio or a Grammy-winning veteran, reach out to us at darklabelmusic.com to see if we can help. Hey everyone, happy 2026. This is the first episode of the new year and we're going to start things off with a banger.

This is a great one. So as a freelance producer, sometimes you find yourself with not enough projects and other times you may find yourself overbooked and starting to feel burnout. The ultimate goal obviously is to be somewhere in the middle while still being able to project future income.

This is the game of finding stability. There are many different phases to being full-time. Going full-time isn't the destination.

It's really the starting point. Now you're actually on the field and you can truly learn how to play the game. So I pulled just an amazing clip from a private conversation between a few of my producers who are first-year full-timers asking questions to one of the junior consultants here at Dark Label who I believe is in his fourth or fifth year being a full-time freelance producer.

And he gives just some really helpful and transparent insights around things like how far to book in advance, the dangers of overbooking, and why that can actually set you up to have less work. He talks about, you know, getting into the habit early on in your career around setting boundaries with clients even when you need the money. It's kind of scary and you know much, much more.

So I had a just a big grin on my face when I listened back to this because it really shows the power of having a business-minded group of peers in this industry. I'm super grateful that I have one myself because what took someone two to three years to figure out can now be passed on so that it only takes the next generation of working producers, you know, half the time or a quarter of the time to figure that stuff out on their own. So it's pretty amazing to see.

I'm going to roll the clip here for you. It's about 10 minutes long and then stick around because I'm going to come back and give you a quick tactic for staying booked and making this career feel more stable. To answer your own business, how many like weeks or months do you usually like book ahead or like stay ahead to keep to make sure that you're always like actually fully booked when next month comes around so it's not like oh shit I only have one project.

Do you like have a yeah have you like found the sweet spot or like a rule or like? Yeah anyone want to chime in on that? How many months ahead do you guys book? I mean I'm happy to share like best case try and book three months in advance. Like I feel as though it I don't know that's what what it is about that number but I feel like I've got things booked for the three months I feel really good. If I feel like I have been booked for two months I feel decent and I'm still kind of doing some outreach.

If I feel like I have nothing for next month and I'm really like leaning in harder on the outreach alongside whatever I'm working on. I would also say that like I've tried to to do more like multi-song projects like EPs and stuff because then I know I'm going to be working on like you know one or two songs a month for that project for the next three months or something. So then it just allows me to like plan my time a little bit better.

I think it's a great answer and I was literally going to say the same thing which is if you can project income for three months ahead of where you're at and you're like looking solid that's a really good stable sustainable pattern I feel like. And then the further you get the more you have you can project income but then you can also predict income a little bit too. Like you can know like when you have a really steady base of repeat artists you can kind of be like right these artists are on like this kind of trajectory and rhythm.

They're probably going to sustain that but in the meanwhile I should probably have a couple backup projects back here in case any of them fall through and you kind of like can put your projects in strategic places. But for me it's definitely been that three month mark that Joey was talking about. Like if I can project three months into the future and I know what my income will probably be and then I can make sure that I have a little bit more than that as far as projects that I'm stacking as the months go that's where I've found consistency and sustainability for myself is that three month mark.

Two is not enough. Four you know I mean is great but it doesn't always it feels a little like sometimes to me booking that far out feels a little bit like I'm letting things fall through you know what I mean. Like it's like oh it gets a little wishy-washy even if they have done a positive you know.

So three is like a sweet spot for me personally. I'm just asking because in like November I had not like starting December I had basically almost January and February and then the holidays happened without outreach and now I'm kind of like midway or like halfway in January and like shit I gotta find some project for March. That feels like I should have had something more but because of the holidays and me taking a break just I gotta learn to prepare for holidays.

The entire curve of my business has been me learning how to keep projects sustainably and consistently in order and do outreach and do like it literally I literally feel like I just got the hang of it in the last year of my business. So it took me about four years I guess three and a half years to like get to the point where I wasn't doing this like feast famine feast famine feast famine like it was just so consistent where I'd be like oh my gosh I'm so busy and then have nothing and then be like oh my god I'm so busy and then have nothing you know and so it's just like it's just a roller coaster that you have to kind of like acclimate to and then figure out okay here's why I have nothing it's because I'm just overbooking because that's a real thing too. Like for me I was like oh I'm completely overbooking to the point where I'm so maxed out that I let everything else slide I'm not looking for new clients I'm not doing outreach I'm not doing YouTube I'm not you know whatever like I'm not doing anything I need to do to get more clients so I actually have to go a little bit under that if I need to raise my rates raise my rates or whatever I need to do to get to the point where I'm not overbooking so that I can book consistently you know what I mean like either both are a real problem and then also too sometimes just like you know the thing of like leaning back into oh I'm gonna have the work they said they're gonna when the money's not in the bank right it's like no if the money is not in the bank the project's not going forward I need to find something else to fill it even if they end up going forward in my head it's just it's not done until the first deposit is in and we're working on stuff and that is another mindset thing too where it was like I would lean back think I had projected income but there was no money in the bank and so it's like okay cool that project isn't going forward I can't count on that three thousand dollars I can't count on that I have to keep going until I for sure have them and then probably book on top of it which goes back to that not overbooking thing right because if you're overbooked you think you have this income you're not gonna be looking for projects because you're so full yeah one at one of the many learning curves for sure yeah yeah I think I've been probably working a little bit too hard on projects just because like oh now I need to like grab seize the moment kind of thing you know people coming in like oh can we I need this release in a month and then I'm like yeah uh taking working nights or like evenings extra too yeah balance is huge man get you know early in your career start booking a day off like a full day off you don't work you don't touch anything you don't do any music start putting clients on your schedule if it's a rush fee like that charge a rush fee you know what I mean if it's uh if it's if it's going outside if it's requiring more of you make sure you're charging for that you know what I mean rather than just like oh yeah okay you know because you don't need to do that you have a business it's like it works to you you it's your business you get to run it for me artists come in I had an artist he said uh okay cool I'm I he said I said something like typically I'll do one session a week with an artist and maybe two if I have time we could do two a week speed up the deadline a little bit and I said what's your availability he said I have five days a week and I said okay great cool that's great so you're really flexible we kept talking and they said cool so we're gonna do five sessions a week and I was like nope nope sorry I do not have the we can do two maybe most weeks some weeks I might have to bring it down to one but we'll do two and he was kind of like disappointed like visibly and he had already said like I want to go whatever and he was so excited and I had to be like nope can't do that sorry I know that's what you'd really like to do but like no I just can't do it and he's like oh oh okay all right you know and he could kind of readjust but for some reason he like heard me say five and I didn't you know I was like no can't do it so you know you have to be willing to like really just mold people to your business and be like here's what we're doing here's what we're doing here's what we're doing and then yeah how do you adopt that mindset when you really need the money yeah totally really need to take those like kind of rush projects sometimes well knowing that putting yourself in a position where you don't need the money is everything right so if you're taking on let's say if you're taking on rush jobs charging a rush fee for those jobs or if you're taking on night sessions and you need night sessions charging a little more because of the night sessions or whatever that you have to take on or if that's your desired workflow that's fine but just anything pushing you out of your desired schedule make sure you're charging for such or get to a place where you're like all right if I've got to grind for a week to get out of this hole of like putting in all the crazy extra hours but then once I'm up here I'm not going to do that anymore even if I need the money I'm going to make sure that I'm coming from a place of like managing my schedule and my business and you're you're still in your first year right yeah basically I still haven't had like a full year of like really consistent projects like the last year I've been a little bit up and down some months really good but not really like full year I think it was I think it was probably my third year where I had like consistent projects through like I was full time all the other years but I think on my second year was the first year that I had like a week or two during the year where I had to like door dash for three nights or you know to kind of like make it over just that little hump when it comes to your consistency that'll just come with time but also your first year is kind of chaotic and just being okay with that being like cool my first year I'm still figuring things out I'm going to be working hours outside of what I need to be working but then that's where you you take that knowledge and you adapt it versus getting caught into a business where you're miserable because you're working all these crazy hours being like cool if right now I'm working for consistency I'm trying I'm going to try to start implementing these things if I have two or three weeks right now where I need to start grinding but I know the trajectory is me coming out of it me having a consistent day or two off me whatever working these in these hours then you're working towards that you know but the first year is chaotic and that's just kind of it's just you getting your feet on the ground like okay that's nice to hear yeah thanks all right tons of great takeaways there probably wouldn't be a bad idea to go back and listen to that one a few times now I want to give you a quick tactic that my producers use something tangible that you can start doing you'll remember from the clip you just heard when they were talking about why being overbooked is dangerous because when you're overbooked you tend to get overwhelmed with projects and you stop marketing yourself which then pretty much guarantees that you will stay on the up and down roller coaster this is literally the most common mistake freelance producers make I've worked with a thousand producers at this point over the past decade and I think every single one of them has made this mistake at the start I mean I hate to call it a mistake it's it's just something you get into and and it's just like the natural flow flow of freelancing unless you intentionally fix something I've obviously experienced it myself too but here's what I do to help my clients fix that obviously you know I have to start off by just showing them how to go get work in the first place and that takes a little time to develop all those skills but the moment they start getting work I sit them down I have a pretty serious conversation with them because it's going to determine which side of the you know fork in the road that they go down and I want them to go down the right one now once they start getting work of course that you know their clients the projects are working on those are our number one priority a hundred percent but as early as possible I try to instill the habit in them of never shutting off what got them the clients in the first place and the quick tactic you can use for yourself is to simply have a high medium and low setting and credit to my junior consultant for coming up with this these are settings that refer to the intensity that you're going to put into getting work or you know all the things outside of working on projects marketing yourself whatever you want to call it if you are booked three months in advance then you know maybe you're on a low setting you're doing minimal outreach content etc but you're never shutting it off if you're booked two months in advance then you might want to turn it up a bit to medium setting you need to do a little bit more and ideally you get to a point you know after whatever year one year two and freelance where you're at least always a month booked in advance but if you're not then you really need to be on that high setting right most of your time will be spent getting work now the cool part about these settings is that they are personalized to you you kind of determine it obviously a producer who is more experienced at getting work it just takes them less effort and less time to do it so their high setting might look a little less intense than a new producer who is still developing those skills but the faster you establish this habit the better off you will be i can't tell you how many producers i meet who you know no no disrespect to anybody but i meet producers that have been full time for 10 plus years very talented you know on paper they look great but they're just still stuck on this massive up and down roller coaster and this is not the minority of them this is the majority of them so they just never instilled that habit and new habits are just a little harder to learn the older you get so start it now start as early as possible and if you're completely unsure as to the process you know for going out and getting clients then i'll put a link in the description to a video that demonstrates that just look below whether you're listening to this podcast on a podcast platform or over on youtube you'll find a link somewhere below in the description and if you more personalized help and accountability or just want to be a part of a business-minded group then of course you can go to darklabelmusic.com and reach out and we'll let you know if it makes sense for us to work together thanks for listening