290 | Owning Your Niche with Integrity | with Kris Kaiser and Stephen McCaul

Kris Kaiser and Stephen McCaul met at a pub in Santa Monica, California, and hit it off immediately. A shared interest in sound brought them together. Kris and Stephen's professional paths were quite different, but audio was a common thread throughout their lives.

Kris's PhD dissertation studied the effects of urban noise on the breeding behaviors of frogs. Stephen developed audio software for video games. Both shared a love for spreadsheets, food, and the glorious sound and invitingly impenetrable interface of the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer.

A few years later, Kris was a professor and Stephen worked on increasingly complex audio problems in his day job. As an escape, they began experimenting with home-built synthesizers and wild DIY noisemakers. Stephen developed a Eurorack module over a weekend after a dare from a friend, and the synth community took notice.

That was the beginning, and in 2016 they quit their jobs and took Noise Engineering full time. Now a staple boutique developer, their hardware and software products are used and adored by hobbyists, composers, artists, and producers around the world.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• [00:59] Intro
• [01:26] A hobby into a full-time endeavor
• [02:18] Turning hackathon ideas into tangible products
• [03:26] Navigating the challenges of early manufacturing
• [04:25] Finding solutions through industry connections
• [06:13] Collaborating within a niche community
• [07:42] Gaining traction using marketing platforms
• [09:50] Episode sponsors
• [13:04] Balancing quality & price in a competitive market
• [15:35] Attracting early customers through trade shows
• [17:06] Educational content as top-of-funnel strategy
• [18:05] Connecting with people via face-to-face outreach
• [19:29] Tapping into LA's vibrant music community
• [20:00] Showing prototypes & gathering real-time feedback
• [21:50] Attending trade shows for customer interactions
• [22:33] Finding success with in-depth blog content
• [24:54] Expanding into software for flexible compositions
• [26:45] Developing innovative guitar products
• [27:53] High-quality instruments at Noise Engineering

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
• Boutique musical instrument firm dedicated to making tools for any artist https://noiseengineering.us/
• Follow Stephen McCaullinkedin.com/in/stephen-mccaul-10842b1/
• Follow Kris Kaiser linkedin.com/in/kris-kaiser-77b345203/
• Book a demo today at intelligems.io/
• Done-for-you conversion rate optimization service storetester.com/

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