Recording Connection student Jordan Rodgers Gets Hired by Mentor!

Every once and a while someone really believes in you and gives you a helping hand. Jordan Rodgers, a single mother with a love for audio, just found this out first hand. She’s been apprenticing with 713 Studios in Houston, TX for a little while now. When her mentor, Ricky Rich, came to her and asked her what she was doing to earn a living while she was apprenticing, she told him that she didn’t want to take on work that would distract her from her studies at 713. Ricky left the room and returned just minutes later with a full-fledged job offer as an office assistant so that Jordan could make money while continuing with her audio education.

“I think he knew I would say yes because I told him the only reason I’m not working is because work takes me away from here,” she says. “It’s like a win-win for me. I get to be here, work, and learn. Like it’s a little dream for me.”

Jordan has been working hard, super hard, for years. She’s gone from working jobs in fast food, to retail, to office management. Having a small child meant she had to forgo pursuing her dreams of working in audio while she saw to providing for her child and herself. Having spent years grinding away, paycheck after paycheck, Jordan’s mother started pressuring her to pursue higher education. After going on a tour of Houston College and not really feeling like it was a good fit for her, she went home and had a serious conversation with her mother: “I told her, ‘I’m tired of chasing money. I want to chase my dreams now. Give me the chance to chase my dreams. If I make it, I make it. If not, then I will go back, suck it up, and do the whole college thing and get me a desk job or whatever’…I think at that point she realized music was my thing.”

That’s when Jordan found the Recording Connection. She took a studio tour of 713 Studios and immediately decided to double-down and bet on making her dreams a reality. It’s been working out ever since. “I was doing like all those different jobs,” she says, “from fast food, to retail, to corporate America—your typical eight-to-five desk job, the thing that everybody supposedly wants. But really, like I don’t want that and like going through all of that, I realized that this is where I want to be. I think that’s what Ricky saw, and that’s the reason why he brought that opportunity to me because he realized, I don’t want to be anywhere else but here.”

When asked what the future holds for her Jordan says, “In the end, I actually want to own my own studio. Where I’m at now, you know, my foot’s in the door. I’m officially an employee here…I just feel like being able to help Ricky out at the studio gives me that extra step and that extra information that I need to run a studio in the future. Sometimes I feel like this is too good to be true, like it’s happening too fast. I just started the program a few months ago and now I’m learning things on the business side. Not just the audio, the engineering part—I’m actually learning what it takes to book sessions, what it takes to bring in clients, about invoices here, invoices there, like all this stuff that keeps the studio running… And the other night when Matt [an engineer at 713] had to step out of a session for a little bit to help another client, I actually got to help run the board and it was a gospel group that night…That felt great. You know like you can’t get more hands-on than that.”

Keep going Jordan! We believe in you!