Level up your skills like a protagonist.

Want to confidently tackle new skills and master your life using proven game design concepts?

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In OutLVL Creative, we’ll cover topics like:

Write to Win: Attract Clients & Make Them Love You

The most brilliant creatives are excellent writers, speakers, and communicators. Discover how to become the premier authority in your niche, get connected with anyone, and communicate effortlessly without coming across as desperate, needy, or unprofessional.

Mental Models from Beloved Games & Anime

You’ll master key marketing and business concepts through video games & anime analogies, helping the info glue into your brain effortlessly without taking notes or braindead scrolling through blogs and articles.

Upclass Your Skills at Ludicrous Speed

No one hires a one-trick Epona. If your skill set doesn’t grow, neither will your career. But despite the popular 10,000-hour wisdom, you don’t need years to get dangerously good at new skills. We’ll cover how to get ‘good enough’ at the essentials and build your career right now.
__________

Hey, I’m Harry — your guide to marketing yourself & your craft. But I have a damaging admission to make:

I struggled to find work for years after graduating college as a composer & sound designer.

I did everything wrong: My client outreach sounded desperate, I didn't have a portfolio chock-full of great work, and I had almost no network. Even after 4 years at Berklee College of Music, my dream school.

After graduating, I had a choice to make:

Either accept my life as it was, drifting between projects that could never hope to pay the bills... or grind it out, building the essential marketing skills I never developed in college.

So I spent thousands of dollars on marketing and business programs promising to help me close the gap. But I quickly discovered the ugly truth:

NONE of it was geared toward creatives.

While I became a solid marketer, helping my clients make north of $25M+ through advertising, email marketing, and organic growth...

I was painfully aware this wasn't what I set out to do. I still wanted to build something for myself and help out other creatives along the way.

That's why I created OutLVL: To make practical marketing and business principles work for audio designers, artists, game developers, indie studios, product designers, and more...

So you don't have to waste a precious second learning how to market yourself the slow way, like I did.

If you're ready to take the leap, you can join the free OutLVL Creative newsletter here:
‍

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By subscribing, you confirm you must construct additional pylons want to receive Harry Lodes’s DAILY emails. They’re worth it, promise.
Akash Thakkar
Sound Designer & Game Audio Instructor
“Harry Lodes’ class on writing for game audio freelancers was a fun and eye-opening experience for my game audio students and I. What really stood out was Harry’s ability to teach writing techniques that attract clients without coming across as yet another desperate contractor - a crucial skill in our industry.

One of my favorite aspects was his use of clear analogies, which made the content easy to understand and apply, even for those who don’t consider themselves writers. Harry’s class didn’t just teach writing; it empowered my students to confidently market themselves in the game audio world.”
George Vu
Composer & Sound Designer
“Learning from Harry is a reminder of who and why we write for. We write to communicate and connect with other humans. And Harry is a master of communicating and connecting. His ability to put his humanity into his writing is what makes him an excellent teacher. I plan on bringing that to my professional reach-outs, cold emails, and in-person hangouts.”
Chel Wong
Video Game Composer
“Harry is a great speaker! I loved how he gave specific game specifics for both Do's and Don'ts. With that, it helps implants memorable specifics that stick with you long past after you've been introduced to them. Harry is very knowledgeable and is able to convert that knowledge into easily digestible and actionable advice.”
Blake Rogers
Chief Marketing Officer, EastWest Sounds
“We've worked successfully with Harry Lodes on multiple award-winning product launches, including Hollywood Fantasy Orchestra, Forbidden Planet, Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition, and our new ComposerCloud+ subscription service campaign. He's one of the few people in the entire industry who 'gets it'."
Jannik Hainke
Product Owner, UJAM
“I’ve worked with Harry Lodes for several years and he has been an essential part of our blog growth, including recent launches such as Beatmaker RICO, Beatmaker CIRCUITS, and Finisher BOOST... Thanks to Harry’s exceptional writing skills, we’ve seen increased engagement, conversions, and revenue from these launches."
Sagar Jethani
VP of Marketing, Slate Digital
“Harry did a masterful job writing marketing emails and was behind the copy for some of our most successful product launches of 2021. He demonstrated a deep understanding of our market, and has excellent intuition and skill as a copywriter and strategist."

Hey, I’m Harry Lodes. Berklee College of Music grad. In another life, I was a sound designer, game developer, programmer, and sound designer.

In my first year as a growth strategist, I landed 7 & 8-figure brands as clients — I’ve brought in tens of millions in revenue for them, and now I want to pass on what I’ve learned to you.

Outlevel Marketer is the guide I wish I had years ago.

Inside, I reveal my actionable principles behind:

Running 6-figure promotions using only email and social media
How to run surveys that get to the root of what your fans really want

All inside the Outlevel Marketer email newsletter:

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Creatives all share a common dilemma:

We’re the weird cousin of ‘real’ businesses. Go to any other field and marketing is pretty straightforward.

Find a problem and build the solution. Figure out a way to tell people you exist without overspending. Sell your solution, then sell more stuff to existing customers. Reinvest the profits.

This works. It’s simple. Elegant.

Every business you’ve ever bought a product or service from does some version of this. They don’t work for “exposure”.

Customer relationships often start with a sale. And if you can sell one product, you can scale your marketing up to sell thousands of them. That’s all well and good…

But how the hell do you apply that to your craft? CAN you even do that?

After all, music doesn’t solve a problem. A game doesn’t “deliver X% more fun than the leading brand”.

I mean, if you can make those claims work, more power to you.

For most creatives, though, it’s like trying to stuff a square block into a round hole.

That’s why Outlevel Marketer exists:

Let's grow your vision together.

Running a brand at scale and want me to find the 'easy wins' that make you more profitable out of the gate?

What you pay for, should you choose…

Are my step-by-step frameworks for creating new instant-selling, scalable products and marketing them at scale, bypassing the arduous process of grinding for follows completely.

I have products for this. They’re expensive, but the investment is well worth it.

Or you can hire me to help you build a more profitable fanbase using the experience I’ve developed generating tens millions of dollars for my clients.

Get A Custom Plan

Now, forgive me as I shamelessly press your emotional buttons and share with you...

A Cautionary Tale For Game Studios:

In 2005, Pixar was at a crossroads that would decide the company’s future.
(Yes, this ties back to games in a big way. Stick with me for a minute.)
‍
They decided it was either time to either:

1) Buy up other businesses and diversify their revenue...

2) Or sell to Disney.

They chose the latter, of course.

But do you know why?

The true reason they sold their beloved IP to the entertainment behemoth who they already had VERY favorable terms with?

You might say, "The money, of course."

That would make sense.

After all, Steve Jobs netted too much Disney stock to fit even in his coffers.

And the stock options of the entire OG team soared in value, making it a great deal all around.

Yet it wasn’t about the dream pay day, as delectable as those many zeroes must have been.

Something else was brewing at Pixar:

Risk. A LOT of it.

As a company publishing a movie every few years, the pressure to deliver bigger and better was unbearable.

If they slipped just once... released a single movie that didn’t punch above its weight at the box office...

Their stock value could halve (or worse) overnight.

And one of the greatest creative powerhouses in the world would grind to a screeching halt.

But Disney with all its inertia could wave a magic wand, Sorcerer's Apprentice style, and poof that risk out of existence.

So a deal was struck, and Pixar’s shares went to Disney.

They’re still cranking _____ years later.

“How does this affect my game studio?” you might ask.

After all, you probably don’t have the same team size, public attention, ambitions, risks, etc... right?

Well, consider this:

If everything rides on the success of your next game, you face the same risk.

The pressure is on, constantly.

Even if you never miss, that’s a heavy weight to carry... and the bigger you grow, the more that risk compounds.

And it’s a risk you do not have to carry, because:

There’s far more to a great studio...
‍Than making great games.

More ways to build a lasting brand and pull in revenue.

Even without an ounce of help from Valve or Epic Games.

Instead, imagine never needing to grind for wishlists to keep food on the table.

Pitching streamers on playing your game only to get left on read.

Or be at the mercy of the media giants inundated with press kits from thousands of indie studios, hoping to get the next big IGN feature.

There’s a newsletter for that — bringing you one actionable tip at a time to help you sell more games, grow your studio, and never be dependent on the big guys again.

I’ve used the same principles to help generate as much as tens of millions in revenue per client in other industries...

And now, I want to apply them to the game industry.

In doing so, my hope is that your path grows a smidge easier.

Subscribe to Outlevel Marketer here:

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