Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Troy Hardy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Troy, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
Thank you for reaching out! I’m happy to share what I can with your community, and hopefully it helps someone. I wouldn’t say developing my confidence was a conscious thing. It organically happened by taking on challenges, work or personal, that are a little outside my comfort zone, or stretch out my skill sets. I wouldn’t go around yelling out that I’m a confident person, that’s just weird, but I do know that I’ve had the ability to adapt and rise to the occasion. I’m comfortable knowing that I can rely on that ability for myself, my friends and my clients. I feel like social media, business and personal, only shows the “glossiest” unrealistic view of how things are and leaves out the challenges of how you get there, so I’d like to share one of my growing experiences. I’m 16 and It’s my college audition for the music school, and it has to be on classical guitar. At this point I’ve never played classical in my life. My nylon string guitar was a gift from a student I was teaching, it was a $150 Yamaha guitar. I practice the best I can and things are okay. I go into the audition and completely meltdown. I was so incredibly nervous I barely get through the piece because my right hand is shaking so badly it’s hitting the wrong strings. The last piece I play was a little blues inspired song that my guitar teacher had shown me. That went well, and I think showcased that I actually could play, unlike my train wreck performance of the classical piece. Over my years at that school, I kept working, had a great instructor, and eventually ended up teaching a guitar class in the same room that I had the horrible audition in. This is and example of one of the extreme and many instances that helped me build my confidence in challenging situations.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
What I do is deliver the best possible product for my clients. That may sound generic but I’ve done so many different things in music and in music for picture it’s hard to explain exactly what I do without getting extremely long winded. The exciting part about what I get to do at Rocket Surgery Music is all about the variety in my work, and how each project will have it’s own unpredictable challenges and rewards. You get a mix of clients you have a long history with, and brand new clients that keep your “reading the room” skills sharp. The core of what I do is problem solving. It doesn’t matter if the work is music editing for film or television, producing an artist, or scoring a scene. It’s all essentially the same job, really creative problem solving.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Here’s what I’ve figured out so far…#1. Don’t be a dick. (Don’t call HR on me, but I think it gets the point across). #2 LISTEN. Generally, everyone is so busy trying to be the coolest person in the room and impress others they’re often missing key information. #3 Always look out for the client. This means, do your job to your fullest potential, duh, but always have a wider view of the project. Example…if you’re working on a picture and you see a boom mic in a shot in the final version then speak up. This usually doesn’t happen because there are many talented eyes looking for the same thing, BUT if it slipped by then you have to say something. Amateur stuff looks bad for everyone on the project, so always look out even if it’s not your department.
Tell us what your ideal client would be like?
My ideal client is someone who hires you for what you do and then gets out of the way. This doesn’t mean a free-for-all, with 3 hour lunches. What I like is when the client has a desired outcome they can share and then they let me figure out how to get to that outcome . It’s not likely you’ll nail it 100% of the time, but as long as the client is focused on communicating the end goal and not managing how I get there, it’s going to be a better experience and result for everyone.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rocketsurgerymusic.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/troy-hardy-2090008/
Image Credits
pine and palm
