At Silverbirch, we are fortunate to have it both ways!
My company brokers close to 500,000 CDs per year and offers other specialties such as in-house duplication, website design, on-line store, posters, etc. We also do recording and mixing.
I do this by employing 3 other people full time. Two run the CD business and the other does recording/mixing plus spending a few hours a week with the websites and other things.
My studio is designed and equipped as a dedicated mastering facility in which I work about 6 days a week . My recording engineer and a couple of freelancers use it as a mix facility after hours. So far, nobody has complained about mixing in a mastering room. Well, actually, one of them complained about my beautiful monitoring system. He now brings in NS-10 when he works! The slight of those speakers in my room are small price to pay for the extra income. And yes, we take them down during the mastering sessions!
So I get the best of both worlds. I am a full-time mastering engineer and hire others to take care of the rest of the business. Its also amazing how these businesses compliment each other. People know us as mastering place and at some strategic point in the session, I mention the CD manufacturing and they trot out to the office for a quote. Others come here because of our great reputation as a CD manufacturing company, see the studio and will sometimes come back and record, mix or perhaps master their next project. Financially, all of our operations will occasionally see a dip but rarely at the same time so this helps with cash flow.
Of course I do have to keep my eye on the whole operation but I don't mind doing a little part time managing. But it not too time consuming because we have good experienced independent people working here and most of the time, I just do my thing and watch my little enterprise run along smoothly.
Andy,
Silverbirch Productions.