Today we’d like to introduce you to Nick Broomhall.
Hi Nick, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Thank you very much for having me! My name is Nick Broomhall and I’m a musician, producer, audio engineer, and content creator. I’ve always been passionate about music and I started playing drums when I was five-years-old and guitar when I was eleven. Both of my parents have always loved music, too, and their musical preferences greatly influenced mine.
I’m blessed to have been raised by a hard-working, loving, and supportive mother who made countless sacrifices to enroll me in music lessons, drop me off and pick me up from all my band’s shows, host my obnoxiously loud bands when we practiced in the garage many long nights, and so much more, all while working full time to provide for my siblings and me. I’m deeply grateful to her for allowing me to give music that degree of importance from a young age.
In 2014, I moved from Northern Kentucky to Boston, MA, to attend Berklee College of Music—an immense undertaking for my family, financially and logistically. To this day, I’m fueled with motivation when I think about how much my parents, my siblings, and my grandparents believed in me during one of the most pivotal chapters of my life.
My time in Boston was incredibly impactful. Everything I experienced during those four years, both inside and outside of my academic program, fundamentally shaped the person and professional that I am today. However, the most life-changing event that I experienced was meeting Camilla, who is now my wife.
I was a go-with-the-flow, “not sure what I want to major in yet,” eighteen-year-old freshman, and she was a focused, driven, intelligent, international, beautiful, business and economics major at Northeastern University. We bonded over our love of music and I quickly realized how much passion she put into everything she pursued.
When she believed in something, she did so wholeheartedly. So, when I shared my career goals with her, even the seemingly impossible ones, she said “Okay, let’s make it happen! But let’s actually make it happen.” I had never met anyone more determined and comfortable with a challenge before. The more time I spent with her, the more excited I became to set ambitious personal and professional goals. Sharing that energy with each other every day taught me to tackle obstacles creatively and with optimism.
During that time, I also met great friends and colleagues and eventually joined the band Chronologist with Zach Gordon, Julian Gargiulo, and Nigel Li. We collaborated on some of the coolest music I’ve co-written to date and played many fun and memorable shows across the country. After graduating from Berklee in 2018, I moved to Austin, TX, where Julian introduced me to the legendary and renowned record producer, Machine. I had the privilege of working closely with him at his recording studio, The Machine Shop, during my years in Texas.
By the time I moved to Miami, FL in 2021, I was determined to establish my own music production studio and audio services company, so I decided that the move to the new city was the perfect opportunity to officially found Architect Tiger Studios. At the time, I had a handful of clients that I had been acquiring gradually through word of mouth and referrals, but I knew that I needed to start promoting my work in order to see significant growth. So, I began filming myself as I worked on creative projects, showcasing my songwriting, production, and other technical skills, and posting the videos online.
For 2 years, I worked a 9-to-5 tech job during the day while dedicating early mornings, evenings, and weekends to Architect Tiger Studios. Camilla, who is incredibly entrepreneurial, would come home from her demanding full-time job in finance, and devote hours and hours every night to building the infrastructure of Architect Tiger Studios.
While I handled client projects, filmed, edited, and posted content, developed brand partnerships and collaborations, and conducted outreach, she built out our CRM and project management systems, worked with a designer to create our brand book, developed the first iterations of the Architect Tiger Studios website, carried out our financial analysis and bookkeeping, and the list goes on. We worked together on strategic tasks, such as developing our pricing strategy, content schedule, inquiry management system, and growth initiatives.
In June of 2023, around the time that my weekly YouTube series, Thick Riff Thursday, started taking off, I took the (thoroughly calculated) leap of making Architect Tiger Studios my full-time venture! After several months of steady growth, we were able to start expanding internally and opened our first paid internship opportunity that September.
I’m grateful and proud to say that today, Architect Tiger Studios is comprised of a small, yet highly efficient team and Camilla has been able to transition to a more hands-off, advisory role, as she continues to work full time in finance and pursues her master’s degree in business administration.
I’m profoundly grateful to all of our clients, the incredible artists that I’ve had the honor of working with so far, the innovative and industry-leading companies that I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with, my family and friends who have demonstrated constant support, and of course, the Thick Riff Thursday community that inspires me to keep showing up every week. I invite you all to continue writing this story with me, as the most exciting chapters are yet to come!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It certainly hasn’t been an easy path. From my younger brother being rushed to the hospital for a life-threatening bone infection and unexpected type-1 diabetes diagnosis in 2016, to my mother being diagnosed with cancer and having to undergo grueling treatment (and emerging victorious! Shoutout Mom!) just a few years ago, to my younger sister battling a severe eating disorder that required extensive out-of-state treatement, the most difficult challenges to navigate have been the personal ones; the ones that were impossible to foresee. No one is ever fully prepared for life-altering circumstances like these, and it’s natural for your mental health to be heavily impacted. That’s when you have to put in extra effort and strength to pull yourself back on track. (Quick shoutout to my mother and younger siblings, who have bravely faced these challenges head-on, and to my older sister and grandparents, who have been unshakeable pillars of support through it all.)
In terms of professional obstacles, I would say that the most consistent challenge I faced after choosing to pursue a career in the music industry was the general pressure to opt for a more stable path instead. At times, this pressure was external, and at times, internal. And I know it’s something that most creatives have experienced.
Whether it’s the people in your own circle urging you to follow a more conventional career path and to treat music as just a hobby, your teachers in school trying to convince you that success in the arts is unattainable, life’s inevitable stresses and financial obligations, or even when the doubts come from within, the feelings can be consuming and truly demoralizing.
This is a very complex and nuanced subject that, unfortunately, doesn’t have a simple solution. However, the biggest takeaway from my personal experience is that who you surround yourself with makes all the difference. I’m aware that it’s a privilege to have had a supportive family from the beginning, but I had to be very intentional with my choices as they related to friends, mentors, who I spent my time with, and who I confided in. Company is powerful and influential.
To anyone experiencing these types of doubts, I encourage you to find people who energize you and remind you that the sky is the limit. Find a community, whether it’s online or in person, of go-getters and driven individuals who approach challenges with enthusiasm and positivity and from whom you can learn. Don’t sit in silence with your thoughts and concerns. Instead, ask questions, initiate conversations, and research actionable steps toward your goals.
Lastly, I leave you with a list of things to trust:
- Trust yourself: There is a reason why you’re viscerally drawn to music or to your particular craft. If it comes to you organically, don’t push it away.
- Trust the ups AND the downs: If this were an easy, linear journey to success, everyone would be doing it. Trust that the downs are making you stronger, pushing you outside of your comfort zone, forcing you to grow, and therefore, the next ups will be higher up than the last.
- Trust in opportunity: Every day, there are more and more ways to present your work to the world and to make your products and services available to the public. Be open-minded, embrace innovation and technology, learn to be strategic and resourceful, and be consistent in your search for opportunities, because they are there.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
At Architect Tiger Studios, I provide music production, mixing, mastering, project consulting, and composition services. As a content creator, I give viewers an authentic and transparent look into my songwriting and production processes while developing new musical ideas every week. And as a solo artist, I specialize in crafting heavy, emotionally impactful music.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.architecttigerstudios.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/nickbroomhallmusic/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_t2g66DL2SVW9YVHt9yaA
Image Credits
Philippe Lasry
