About Dave and Molecular Sound
Dave Connolly is a music composer and founder of Molecular Sound – a London based sound production agency which has worked with Sky, Premier League, Adidas and Disney. He started out working on his own and has now grown the business to lead a small team. He started working with The Indispensary in 2023, after realising he was spending too much of his personal time carrying out admin tasks, which was affecting his health.
www.molecularsound.com
We spoke to Dave to find out why he decided to work with a VA and how The Indispensary has helped him to find a healthy balance between work and his personal life, and achieve growth in his business at the same time…
Life Before a VA
“It was just a slog, really, it felt really tiring every day. I would literally go to bed and then wake up and I was back on it, you know? And it was my life. I had the occasional social break, but that was all – and I remember thinking, “I can’t do this forever.” Then I had a big health scare, which I think could have been, in part due to me overworking, and it basically made me reassess my priorities.
“I also think my mindset sometimes is, if I can do it myself, then that just saves me money. But actually, now that I’ve grown more and things have changed, I can see that freeing up that time and headspace enables me to essentially make more money and grow the company even more.
I’m quite hands on, and I’ve always prided myself in being across everything, from paying employees and invoices, to doing my receipts. So, on a weekend, I would just sit and get my receipts in order and my accountant told me: “There’s people out there that can look at that.” And I thought, “Well, what about all the security and data I have, is that going to be an issue? And she was just like, “Well, no, because, you know, these companies are designed to work with high level executives and be able to help you with pretty much anything you want.”
And that’s where we come in.
Dave explains how working with The Indispensary has not only transformed his work/life balance but also helped with business growth
“In the early days of Molecular Sound, I had no personal life, but after working with The Indispensary, I can go home at the end of each day knowing that everything’s getting done. I feel my work life balance is so much better, because I’m not actually in the trenches doing all the admin work and nuts and bolts of the business that I’ve actually got quite a healthy distance from.
“I feel like it has changed my life. That sounds a little dramatic, but it has. My weekends are mine now, which they weren’t before working with Lucy.”
Lucy knows the business so well now that she does a lot of things in the background that I don’t even know about. So, it kind of looks like there’s not much going on – but when you look into it, it’s all running smoothly behind the scenes.
The big aha moment for me was when one day I noticed I had a lot more free time. I’m focused on so many things in the business that my biggest fear about working with a VA was that they just chase me and chase me and chase me. And that then becomes another admin task. But actually, that never happened.”
The Indispensary’s Impact
“The Indispensary is a company that has a breadth of experience that they can assign to you based on what you actually need. And there’s a flexible way of working, so it wasn’t particularly risky for me to try out. It was almost like: give it a go and see how it works, and that really worked for me.
“I just felt clearly that Joanne, Lucy and the Indispensary team, realise what business owners need. And so it felt like a no brainer to go forward with it, and a relief I’d done it very quickly.
“I’m a music composer, a creative. I haven’t had any formal business training and I really resisted the idea of being a business owner for a long time. So working with The Indispensary really helped bring that much needed business experience and expertise in, which we otherwise wouldn’t have had. And this has left my team and I the space to do what we do best – be creative.”
With this extra support, Dave is excited about the future for him and Molecular Sound:
“It makes me feel excited for the future, because we’re in a really good place. And having the knowledge that I can now run the business in a sustainable way and that isn’t going to take me back to those 12-14 hour long days, makes me feel it isn’t as daunting as it once was to push things further and grow more.
I’m really excited to see how the business grows, and now I’m working with The Indispensary, it feels like I’ve got a team alongside us, supporting us.”
