Meet James Howard

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful James Howard. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with James below.

James, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.

Confidence and self-esteem are earned, learned, and won. They also require a tremendous amount of perseverance and self-reflection. Until you’ve faced adversity and challenges towards your goals, you might not know what pure confidence and healthy self-esteem look like. For me, personally, I’ve faced challenges having my peers not like my music, my taste, or thought I was aiming way too high in what I wanted to achieve. I can definitely recall some moments in college where every time I thought I was getting to that next level of what I wanted to do, someone would say something to me like, eh it could be better, or why don’t you do this or that instead. It took a lot of perseverance to push through these moments in a positive way and reflect. I learned a lot about myself where I could ascend the unknown, take the chance, and use my bigger goals as my guiding light towards what I wanted to do in life. If you can reflect on yourself and what can use improvement, improve those parts, your future self will without a doubt thank you. For now, you can accomplish previous tasks you were once unsure of, with confidence. Everyone’s capable of improvement and positive change, and I live by this creed everyday.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m an owner of Black Barrel Records. We’re a recording studio, record label, music and guitar repair shop, and tech integration company. I love building and growing this company with all of the different aspects of what I have loved working in throughout my years growing into this role. Right now what’s new is we’ve currently signed a new distribution deal, which will help our artists succeed even better. We’ve also expanded into retail with our first-ever location in my hometown of Shelton, CT, and we are now dealers of household brands such as Ernie Ball, D’Addario, Mogami, Dunlop, SJC, and Focal.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think the three most important skills I use on a daily basis are personability with others in the workplace or otherwise. This skill is stacked with executive decision making. Picking a goal and making sure it’s in your sights no matter what. The third and most important skill I tend to stress to everyone I work with: actually knowing your trade and what you’re doing is very important, but also knowing when to reflect and improve your own knowledge of your trade!

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

I’m always looking for collaborative partners. If you’re interested in anything music/audio related whether you perform music or not I’d love to discuss! Please feel free to shoot me an email. [email protected]

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.blackbarrelrecords.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackbarrelrecords/

Image Credits

Chantel Malin