Certainly the ability to determine your own destiny is an exciting prospect for any professional. But there are advantages and disadvantages to setting out to launch your own company.

Events of the last few months have raised the stakes considerably when taking that leap, particularly when a good portion of a new business’s income will depend on the struggling ad industry.

Still, boom time or bust, the challenges and payoff remain amazingly consistent in the audio post business regardless of economic indicators.

Providing you have the right combination of contacts, a balanced client base and chutzpah, anything is possible. The key, those who have endeavored to make it on their own say, is to never put all your eggs in one basket. In other words, doing commercials, TV shows, feature films and new media projects can help you get through even the toughest of times.

‘Advertising has been slow for awhile, but there still seems to be a lot of [TV] shows,’ says Euan Hunter, founder and audio engineer at VO2 Mix in Toronto, which launched last summer. ‘That’s been really a kind of saving grace for us. If we were strictly relying on advertising, I’d be biting my nails every day.’

Hunter, who cofounded the shop with fellow audio engineer Terry Wedel, says much of the TV work is coming from specialty channels that have been around for a decade and are finally starting to get better budgets.

A diversified client base has also been central for the team that launched Rival Music & Sound Design.

In their case, the other side of the coin has been network rebrandings. Since its launch two years ago, Toronto-based Rival has seemingly cornered the market in this area. Most recently, Rival, founded by composer/producers Sonny Keyes and Gerry Mosby and production coordinator/producer Jane Heath, finished 132 separate pieces of music for the new-look CBC last fall. They have also done sound design for CTV’s rebranding as well as Family Channel.

But it was a slow build to get to that point where they could take on such substantial assignments.

When the company launched in 1999, cash flow was a major issue for the young audio shop, says Mosby, who got together with his partners when all three worked at Jungle Music in Toronto.

‘You don’t get paid for awhile in this business,’ he says. ‘With our first big contract, we didn’t get paid for six months.’

So how did they keep things going?

Two words, says Mosby: ‘Credit cards.’

Calgary-based start-up Twisted Pair Sound also found itself facing tough economic realities when it launched in the fall. Started by Regina audio post veterans Pat Butler and Michael MacNaughton, Twisted Pair was midway through construction of a new $250,000 state-of-the-art studio facility on Sept. 11.

Hoping to cash in on the expanding production base in Calgary, Butler and MacNaughton watched helplessly as commercial production ground to a halt nationwide. Work continues to be slow on the ad side, they say.

On the other hand, the low Canadian dollar is attracting long-form work, which is helping make up the difference, says Butler, founder of Regina-based Protrax Digital. ‘We’ve got Universal Studios in here doing a week of ADR.’

Twisted Pair, which boasts Alberta’s only 5.1 mixing facility, has also managed to ride out the downturn, thanks in no small part to a network of contacts that was already in place through work Butler and MacNaughton had done out west over the previous 15 years.

Meanwhile, the team generates new clients through good old-fashioned legwork, says MacNaughton, founder of Regina-based New Music Productions.

‘Particularly on the ad side, it’s all relationship building, and that just takes some time,’ he says. ‘The advertising thing is basically just face-to-face [contact], getting out there and talking to people, being involved in what they’re doing and giving them suggestions – giving them lots of options.’

Indeed, VO2 Mix’s Hunter, who previously worked with partner Wedel at Toronto’s Keen Music Voice and Sound Design, spends more than his fair share of time working the phones and trying to convince clients to let the shop bid on projects.

‘It’s a hard thing to get new people to come through. We had the advantage in that we had a lot of clients that we’d worked with in the past who came with us,’ says Hunter, whose shop recently completed spots for Sony PlayStation and the Canadian Lung Association.

‘Getting new clients in the door is quite an effort. They’re comfortable where they are.’

Over at Rival, Keyes says that with the constant turnover at agencies, getting work on the spot production side is dependent on building personal relationships. Agency creatives moving to new agencies have opened all kinds of new doors for the young company, which recently completed audio work for Chrysler and Pizza Hut.

‘We build relationships mostly with the individuals within the agencies. We find that our relationships get cross-pollinated as the musical chairs game at the ad agencies continues,’ Keyes says.

Another piece to the puzzle that helps the audio shop is knowledge of the ad industry. Rival’s Mosby says the more spots they work on, the better their understanding of what creatives are trying to accomplish and the strategy behind the ads, the better it is for generating more work.

‘Knowing the advertising industry and understanding the problems that our clients have really helps us a lot,’ he says.