5 Things Every Studio Should Do NOW To Take Advantage Of Slow Times

Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 127.

Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm here with my bald, beautiful, amazing purple shirted gray sweatshirt. It cohost Christopher J. Graham. How are you doing day Chris?

Chris: [00:00:33] It's light purple. I purchased three purple sweatshirts just so I could be on brand.

Brian: [00:00:38] No one can see you right now so they don't have to take my word for it. So continue on with whatever you were talking about. No one's listening to you anyways.

Chris: [00:00:43] They trust you though, Brian

Brian: [00:00:45] Chris, what you been up to? My friend,

Chris: [00:00:47] quarantining.

Brian: [00:00:50] dude, is Andy J. Pizza still work at your office that suits your at your office right now?

Chris: [00:00:53] Well yeah, I still have been coming to the office cause it's private and I'm pretty much the only person here.

Brian: [00:00:58] Yeah, I feel like that's pretty much all of America right now, and I'm right there with you, man. But for me, at least, the quarantine thing hasn't really, it's really changed a lot in my life. I've talked about him  episode, so we won't go into there, but I will say I've been playing a lot more video games lately.

Chris: [00:01:13] Ugh.

Brian: [00:01:14] I still work normal work hours, you know, from eight to five is kind of what I do every day. And I've been doing for years, but I haven't been playing a lot of video games, but I'm in one of those phases and I'd say like once a year, generally around this time, usually like in the summertime, I get big into video games and I think quarantine has sped up that whole thing for me right now.

So

Chris: [00:01:31] My oldest son has been playing a lot of video games. He started playing and has beaten the game. Zelda, breath of the wild on Nintendo switch.

Brian: [00:01:40] I just got to switch and I need to play that game.

Chris: [00:01:43] It's a work of art. It is gorgeous.

Brian: [00:01:46] I was a fan back in the SNES days for you young kids, that's the super Nintendo entertainment system. And uh, that was like, I don't know what Zelda that was, but it was great. And I haven't played many or any really since then. And I wouldn't mind getting back into it, but

Chris: [00:01:59] That's amazing.

Brian: [00:01:59] there's just so many games outright now that I love to play.

There's one thing I'm going to give a shout out to a company called shadow. You ever heard of that, Chris? Trevor, it was on episode 76 I think, or something like that. 71 actually, I went too far off. Anyways, he found this company, it's basically cloud streaming PC, so it's like 15 bucks a month and they set up a dedicated PC.

And the cloud that you can access from your internet  play games on or do whatever you want with video editing. And it's like the super high end, like really capable gaming PC with very minimal latency to pay on your internet speeds and where you're located, how far you are from the servers. Trevor showed me last night, he was like playing doom on it and has like zero latency.

First person shooter  from his Mac book pro. He's playing a PC. It's in a server somewhere in America. It's crazy.

Chris: [00:02:48] That's amazing. I want that.

Brian: [00:02:50] Yeah. shadow.tech, I think is a website. So go check that out. If you're bored, we've sabotage your own efforts today

Chris: [00:02:56] Yeah.

Brian: [00:02:56] cause everyone's going to go do that and do none of what we talk about today.

But

Chris: [00:03:00] Why did everyone stop listening to this episode at like two minutes and 47 seconds?

Brian: [00:03:04] There's a waiting list for it anyways. So even if you sign up now you, it'll be a few days to a week or two before you actually get it. But anyways, we're trying to actually help our audience today, not hurt them, and I think I just equipped my audience to potentially hurt themselves.

Chris: [00:03:18] That's funny.

Brian: [00:03:19] But I will say, man, sometimes you got to have a good balance, so it's good to have like work.

It's going to be building something. I think that's a big part of like keeping mental health is like working towards something that you find meaningful in your life. And I do not find that video games give me that at all. So video games, great unwind, end of the day, whatever. What we're going to talk about today is hopefully helping you build something that is more aligned to your passions and giving you purpose in life and for those who are struggling right now because of coven and the quarantine and stuff, a lot of the feelings we're feeling right now is if we have lost progress on, you know, the things that we're trying to work towards.

It hurts us mentally and someone that when this first all started, my mind went completely off of business by completely off of business and distracted me a lot for the right reasons. And I realized that I had just lost so much activity and what I was working towards was slowing down considerably. I'm just now kind of recovering from that.

So this episode, Chris, what are we going to be talking about related to this.

Chris: [00:04:11] Well, we talk about all the time, like one of the most common phrases you'll hear us say is working on. Not for your business.

Brian: [00:04:19] For those who have listened to us long time. You may remember this topic. We talked about it at great lengths in a three part series on episode 93 94 and 95 the episode series is called how you can work on your business instead of in your business. So if you're not falling along with what the hell that means, just go bins.

That series. I know you've got the time right now, so you don't have any excuse if you haven't heard it yet, but continuing what you're talking about, Chris.

Chris: [00:04:38] Yeah. So the idea we stole from the book, the E myth revisited by Michael Gerber. And Michael talks about this idea of how most small business owners get so consumed by working for their business. They never spend any time working on it, building out marketing systems, but you're not service systems, you know, building out analytic systems, metric systems where you're tracking your progress.

Brian: [00:05:01] We had a lot of that technical type stuff that we talked about on that series of episodes that I mentioned a second ago.

Chris: [00:05:06] Yeah, but it's super powerful stuff. It's the only reason my businesses have ever been successful is by having time. That I spent, that I carved out and said, I'm not going to do client work. Then, you know, when I first started doing this, I think it was Wednesday at noon and on Wednesday at noon, I'm going to work on my business, not for it, and that's when I started to build, you know, all my amazing Apple scripts that helped me run my business as quickly as possible and let me focus on doing the art that I love doing the creative stuff that I love doing and not have to be like, Oh, I'm going to read name.

These 12 firewalls before I master them, you know, boring stuff.

Brian: [00:05:44] If you want to hear more about Chris's story, make sure you go back to listen to episode two of the podcast where I interviewed Chris and learned his entire . At least up to that point, cause that was a couple of years ago.

Chris: [00:05:54] Yeah. But anyways, here's the rub guys, back in the day, back, pre vid, pre quarantining is you would have to schedule this time to work on your business, not for it. And for many of us. You got a little more time than you're used to right now, and

Brian: [00:06:11] the hell is Evelyn?

Chris: [00:06:13] I'm experimenting with some new voices

Brian: [00:06:15] Okay. You sound like an old and old gold rush guy going to mind for golf.

Chris: [00:06:21] Okay. There's gold in them there. Hills

yeah, so the idea here is when you worked on your business instead of for it, that's how you grow a business. And right now, the things that you would have worked on might be a little different last month than they are this month. So we want to do just an entire episode dedicated to what are some things that you can do that'll keep you sane and that will make sure that after this is all said and done, that you are poised to explode in growth.

Because here's the thing, every small business grows in plateaus. And what that means is, you know, you'll see this upward curve, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, and then all of a sudden you hit a plateau. I have to call it the plateau of hell. And you are trying to serve your customers and work on your business at the same time so that you can build systems or train people.

Or add new services or remove services or fire your bad customers, whatever it happens to be, so that you have time to be able to grow again. Then the business starts to grow. It's really uncomfortable. It starts to grow again, and then you hit another plateau of hell, and then you have to do things to make your business capable of growth again.

That's when the work on your business, not for it is the most important and usually what, what happens. Is most people, small businesses hit a plateau of hell and they get stuck there and it's awful.

Brian: [00:07:42] Yeah. Cause the problem with that is when you hit one of those plateaus, it's because you are at capacity and when you are at capacity in your head at least you do not have time to work on your business because you have so much shit to do in your business for your clients. And you know, a few months ago a lot of our listeners were in that spot where they are.

At a spot where they have too much work to go around. They don't know what to do. They can't grow any further, or they can grow. But they, if they did, they would just disintegrate because they're already mentally stretched as it is so much stress. They're dropping the ball left and right, and so they're at the spot where they just don't have any option.

But to just keep chugging along, working in their business on the client work that they've gotten. And there seemed to be no escape. While, I don't know if you've heard, but there's something out there called coronavirus. That has changed. Uh, the way we live life right now. And for a lot of us, we all of a sudden have a lot of extra time on our hands.

And not only that, this is one of the few times that the entire world is almost in the same boat right now.

Chris: [00:08:41] The things when you're in one of these plateaus of hell, it gets so difficult and what makes it so hellish is you do have time to work on your business, but in order to do that, you have to turn down paid work.

Brian: [00:08:53] Oh, that's even harder to do, man. Oh.

Chris: [00:08:55] Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's the worst to be like a great project or work on my business, not for it.

In the hopes of being able to take on more great projects in the future. Right now, you don't have that problem. You probably don't have the problem. Some of you still do.

Brian: [00:09:08] Yeah. Some people still do, and we've kind of had an episode. Series, a couple of interviews back where we interviewed a couple of guys who are just crushing it right now. So they might not be in a position to take advantage of this, but for any of those right now who have extra time on their hands, whether you are currently quarantine or you're listening to this a year from now and things have slowed down for you, this episode is gonna be relevant for you because we want to talk about things that you can implement now, when you have a lull in your schedule, a lot of us have a law or a very long low right now.

And uh, this will hopefully set you up for once the quarantine goes away and they start get back to normal, you will. He's poised to explode when this is all done, or if you're listening to this episode years from now that this will hopefully help you get out of this slump that you're in right now.

Chris: [00:09:47] Totally. And I think one of the things that's important to keep in mind here, we talked about this last week, this idea of the . Records rush. I think it's coming . As a mastering engineer, you know, I'm thinking like, well, everyone's at home, the recording, it's going to take a lot of work and then eventually a lot of people are probably going to be ready for mastering right around the same time.

So, you know, there's like definitely quotes have slowed down over the last week or so for me, but I'm definitely keeping in mind like I need to be building out some new systems. I need to make sure that my assistant can help me with some stuff. If we do experience a massive increase in demand and now is the time to build those systems.

So we want to talk about a lot of the things that you can do when you have a law like this so that you're not losing anything right now. If you're just kind of sitting on your thumbs, you know, logging into a remote PC and playing video games eight hours a day,  you're not losing on something. You might actually, and many of you guys listening are going to make changes to your business.

You're going to work on your business, not for it, because right now. This. Quarantine is the single best time in the history of the world, and maybe for the next 100 years to work on your business, not for it. Your business might be made based on the work that you do right now. You might look back, many of you will and say, man,  what a terrible experience.

But I have so much to be thankful for because I finally build out the systems. I finally learned the things I needed to learn. I finally got myself around the people I needed to be around in a mastermind . Now I'm in a position to grow and to be able to handle it. I think when you're working on your business, not for it, your goal should be  be able to handle doubling your business next year.

Over the course of the next year, you got an plenty of opportunity that'd be able to handle doubling your growth right now. What's really hard about that is when you're trying to balance client work and doing the work that allows you to double over the next year. So we're going to talk about that. What are some of the things that we'd recommend that you do to work on your business?

Not for it. Brian and I joke about this. I joke about this with people. We're sort of a business podcast. It's not really a business podcast. We're more of a personal growth podcast disguised. As a business podcast, and so many of these things are related to that personal growth. That's an important part of growing a business, and if you're not doing the personal growth thing while you're doing the business growth thing, you eventually won't be doing the business thing anymore.

Brian: [00:12:11] All right, so first thing on our list here, and you kind of let it slip a second ago, is mastermind groups. Now, we've talked about this in the past on podcasts before, and we've really pushed our, tried to push how important this is, but for a lot of us, this is more important now than ever because everyone is isolated.

Everyone, whether or not you're isolated at home by yourself or with family or with roommates, it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, you feel more isolated than ever. And I would say almost everyone that I've met is in the same boat right now. So people want to connect with other people right now.

Now more than ever. So if you are not part of a mastermind group, put one together. This is a better time than ever to put a mastermind group together because everyone's looking for an excuse to hang out and chat and get to know people. And not only that, this is a great place where you can start to trade ideas and help sharpen each other.

What is the biblical quote? Iron sharpens iron.

Chris: [00:13:05] As iron sharpens iron. So one man sharpens another.

Brian: [00:13:09] Yeah. Mastermind groups. Anything to else to add to that, Chris?

Chris: [00:13:11] Yeah. You know, as you guys are doing mastermind groups, take this with a grain of salt  one of the downsides of a mastermind group is when it becomes a place to go commiserate instead of a place to mutually encourage one another.

Brian: [00:13:24] Oh God.

Chris: [00:13:25] Yeah, it can get tricky when someone's like, well, my dog died in my Jeep's not running well, and I was just planning on talking for 20 minutes about what I'm struggling with.

Well, you guys all listened politely on zoom video chat.

Brian: [00:13:39] That should be, again, if you're going to create a mastermind group, have a set of rules, have a rule master. Someone who is like the enforcer of those roles and has the ability to shut someone the fuck up when they are being bad.

Chris: [00:13:50] ours is

We love you, man.

Brian: [00:13:54] Yeah. Because if you have one complainant in the group, they can drag down the entire group and it can make it not worth it for anybody there

Chris: [00:14:01] Yeah, so one of the things Bureau fund does a really good job at, he's not always our time master when we're hanging out with the blammo crew, but a lot of times we'll do what's called happy crappy, and our mastermind group, and we'll go around the circle. It's not a circle, but we'll go around and you've got five minutes to talk about.

Brian: [00:14:17] more of a square in zoom.

Chris: [00:14:19] It is a square. We go around the square and you've got five minutes and the clock is running and you talk about what made you happy over the last week or month or whatever and what was crappy. And I think it's really good to have, you know, like a list of things that you're hitting, but mean you really got to have someone that's like, it has the gall to say, all right, cool.

All right, well, your time's up. Um, well you have one minute left or whatever, you know, let's move along. It's hard when you get someone that just wants to complain. And have everyone just say, Oh, that must be so hard.

Brian: [00:14:48] I personally wanted away with the happy crappy thing cause it led to too much complaining and so it was changed too. What's been working in your business this past week and what hasn't been working or what do you need help with, which I think is a much more productive way to approach that sort of thing.

Chris: [00:15:02] Yeah, I totally agree.

Brian: [00:15:03] You have flexibility around how you run your mastermind group. Just know that if it's not Branwell that it's not going to bring benefit to anybody, but at the same time know the difference between a mastermind group and a hangout group. Sometimes you just want to create a group of people that want to hang out and chat, no formal structure, and if that's what you want to do, set that up, but don't.

Don't create what you call a mastermind and then turn it into just a hangout because that's not serving anyone.

Chris: [00:15:26] Yup. And so, yeah, I think having, you know, roles and having timelines and you know, limits and stuff like that is great.

Brian: [00:15:32] And by the way, we talked about this topic ad nauseum at episode 79 it's called why mastermind groups are the number one best way to find and fix your biggest blind spots. Go listen to that episode if you want little bit more info about how to run a successful mastermind until you're on Chris, what were we talking about?

Chris: [00:15:46] Yeah. So one of the things that can be really great about running a mastermind group right now is if you get a bunch of time on your hands, this is a great place to, amongst friends trade sessions.

Brian: [00:15:55] Yes. This, I used to do this back in the day earlier in my career when, you know, there were people that I looked up to that somehow also looked up to me and we would just trade sessions with each other and see what each other was doing in our pro tool sessions to know like, Oh, so that's how you mix your snare drum, or, Oh, that's how you mix your vocals, or, Oh, that's how your guitar sound soloed out.

And that was a huge benefit to be able to see behind the scenes of someone to be able to break down a mix. And I think it's probably a little bit more common to do now than it used to be, but this is something that you can do with your mastermind group. Uh, if this is kind of the precedent you've set in the way, the way you want to do things, not everyone's willing to share their secrets, sorta say, but that was the way we did things and it was great.

Chris: [00:16:30] You know, as a mastering engineer that this can be a really useful idea as well. Um, if you're in a mastermind group, I don't think there should be a mastermind group of all mastering engineers that probably won't go well, but I have like a limited number, maybe two, three mastering engineers in a group or whatever.

That can be a really kind of useful thing to, to say.

Brian: [00:16:48] Well, if you want to be super strategic about it, your mastermind group could be of, let's just say synergetic. Partners, people that can use each other's services. So a mastering engineer, partners up with a mixing engineer who partners up with a tracking studio who was also someone that does session musician work or whatever.

You make a mastermind group of people that can all work together. Maybe throw a videographer in there and a graphic designer in there, because again, all of these business issues we have are similar. That could actually be a really powerful mastermind group, and we've kind of talked about that in the past, so I won't belabor that anymore.

Chris: [00:17:18] Yeah. What I would say to other mastering engineers for people that want to get into mastering is this is a great opportunity to say to somebody, Hey, I love the record that you released last year. You think I could get the unmastered mixes on that? I'd love to see what it would feel like if I'm at

I'd love to see what it would feel like if I, if I mastered it.

And this is kind of how I got into mastery in the first place, is I talked to producers and asked them, Hey, can you give me unmastered mixes of records that are already done? And it was nice cause I can listen back to what the mastering engineer did on that and see if I thought I could do a better job.

So that's a great place if you've got nothing but time on your hands. There's a lot of room to sharpen yourself, to sharpen your skills. Bye. You know, taking on extra projects that there's no way they're gonna like pay you for remastering the record, but you might get a lot better. And I remember when I used to do this, it was really fun.

There was one producer in particular, you had produced a song for  amazing artist. He was a pretty, well, I think he might have a Grammy, but this is years ago. And it was great because I would listen to the master that a really legit national mastering engineer had done. And to see if I could beat it. And I remember having problems in the low mids and just being like, wow, what is he doing down there?

How is he making it that tight? Well, keeping it still warm. It was a huge part of my education, much more important than audio school to have like, okay, that's the benchmark. Can I beat it? Can I get anywhere close to it? Do I know where I'm strong and where I'm weak? By comparing my work to work that's already been done by somebody else and for us as mastering engineers and mixing engineers, there's a lot of room to be able to experiment right there and a lot of time to do it right now.

Brian: [00:18:55] I was gonna say the time things to aspect now that we didn't have, you know, six weeks ago. So let's move on now. The first one was mastermind groups, and those are just some specifics within the mastermind group that you could explore. The second thing on our list, and this is something we talked about extensively last week, is planting.

Seeds. And because we talked about this last week, we won't go super in depth here, but there's a few extra things we want to mention within this that is very relevant right now, given how much time we have in our hands. And so for those who are not aware of what what we mean by planting seeds, that just means that just like crops, if you didn't plant seeds four or five, six months ago, you didn't not have crops to harvest.

Now, you made a really good quote last week, which is now is not the time to harvest. Now's the time to so. Or plant seeds. And so by planting seeds, again, if you want to know more details about how you can do that, go listen to last week's episode. That just means things like connecting with people, adding value, being a Go-Giver, certain things like that.

But this week we wanted to point out that now if you have the time, it is a good time to start doing free test mixes or free test masters if you have more time than money on your hands right now. Be willing to do similar things, right. That like that. Like I'm doing a free test master today. I rarely ever do the free test masters.

Usually I just don't, people feel me to master it. You can pay me for it cause I just don't have the time on my schedule. But I'm willing to do it right now just because it's been a like and, B, I have some extra time, so I'm willing to do things that I wouldn't have done three, four. Actually just even a month ago.

So doing free tests, I mean, free test makes us are much more labor intensive, obviously. So if you're someone that just does not have that much time in your hands, you probably can't spare that right now. But again, most of us right now have a lot of extra free time. And to offer someone to do a free test mix right now, it's not going to take anything away from you.

It's going to give you experience, is going to help you get your foot in the door with somebody. And again, planting seeds because they may not even have money right now. To hire you, but when this thing, well, it was over, which it eventually will and they have money and all these new songs I've been writing, then you may get that paycheck when it comes time to harvest.

Chris: [00:20:50] Totally well, and I, I would echo back to what I said just a little while ago. A lot of people. Get focused on doing free test mixes of free test masters for projects that haven't been released yet. But if you want to plant seeds , you know, remixes or remasters, quote unquote, for fun. And then showing people what you did is a great opportunity to plant a seed where they're like, Oh my gosh, you did a much better job than our guy did.

Glad we let you try that. So that's something to kind of keep in mind. The other thing to keep in mind as you're doing it, plant seeds strategy, is that there's a chance  to go with our planning seeds. It's a time to plant, not to harvest. You know, analogy here is that there's a pretty good chance that the soil is much more fertile than it's ever been.

And what I mean by that is that people are alone. They're sad. They feel disconnected and a little bit of service, a little bit of love goes a long way longer than it usually would. First of all. Number two, there's a lot of people out there that are recording for 12 hours a day cause they get nothing else to do right now.

I would imagine that the solo singer songwriter record , the number one record being made right now.

Brian: [00:22:02] Which is if you go back to the episode, uh, two weeks ago. I interviewed Joe from the online recording studio. That's basically his niche, and we talked about how he doesn't have a niche, but when I kind of explored into it further, he actually is a singer songwriter and niche focused studio, and he is crushing it right now for that reason.

Chris: [00:22:19] Yeah. So one of the, this fertile ground idea is, let's say you planted a seed, you know, you added value, or you, you know, attempted to encourage or, you know, otherwise serve. Somebody who's working on a record that's solo singer songwriter record under normal circumstances might not be done until next November.

But under current circumstances it might be done in three weeks. So you got to keep that in mind like people have more time and so helping people might go a lot farther now. I think it will and almost every case, and it would under normal circumstances. So the sort of planting seeds thing is really interesting.

Brian: [00:22:56] One more thing to talk about when it comes to planting seeds now is a better time than ever to follow up with every single one of your past clients. . So you have a lot of past clients, so you may have to do it on a mass mailing list scale, but now is if you can one-on-one reach out to every single one of your past clients and just check in on them, see how things are going, what are they up to right now?

I'll tell you right now, I have a lot of meetings right now, like one on one calls with people without a doubt, without fail. We talked for like five to 10 minutes about what we're doing in life with like coronavirus. That's a common thing. It's like so much. Deeper conversation than just the normal weather conversation or other small talk.

It's like a pretty substantial smalltalk. So you have a reason to reach out to everyone of your past clients and see how things are going. And I've even had a few smart businesses and business owners that have reached out to me to see how am I, how I'm doing on a personal level. And. Those people are getting conversations with me.

They're staying top of mind with me, and so there's no reason why you can't be the same right now. Staying top of mind, checking in. You may be surprised that how many of these things turn into projects in the very near future, if not immediately. But again, this is about planting seeds, so you just falling up, staying in touch, keeping like just tapping on and say, Hey, how are you doing?

How are things going with you and your family? Just that alone is seed planning activity because it shows that you care about them. If you truly do care about them and be, it keeps you top of mind so that when they do have music ready to record, they're going to come to you or they're going to hire you for mixing or mastering or whatever it is that you do.

Chris: [00:24:17] Totally. I can. Yeah, no 100% agree with that. And that brings us to our next point. Things that you can be working on, not for, for sure systems, systems, things that make you move faster. And we're going to talk about that in a couple of different ways. But one of the things to kind of piggy back off this followup idea , if you haven't jumped on the CRM train now, might be a good time to do that.

It is a customer relationship management software.

Brian: [00:24:47] It sounds super boring as shit. It's not. It's amazing. Go back to episode seven of the podcast. It starts CRM. Billion dollar companies use a software, and so should you. That's the episode title. We put that out way back in 2017 but still relevant now.

Chris: [00:24:59] Yeah. It's a lot of work, or at least it was for me with my business. Well, let me take that back. My business would have probably been one of the biggest pain in the butts to set up for a CRM. Of any business I'm aware of in our space just because what I had been doing before, the kind of high volume, low price thing meant that there was a lot of people that I had to add into that CRM.

But I remember the first time I got it set up and all of a sudden it didn't just sort my inbox based on emails, but it's sorted it based on leads based on the individuals I had worked with in the past. And I could see, here's the number of people I've had conversations with. There's a number of people I've, you know, worked with and gotten paid by.

There's a number of people I've done a free mastering sample for and on and on and on. And it was amazing to kind of go through and be able to say, show me a list. I use close.io. It's not closed.com big fan. It's probably the most expensive one you can get or damn near close to it. There's probably one or two that are more expensive.

But it was amazing cause I opened it up and was like, you know, basically. Total close using a smart filter. Show me everyone I've ever done a free mastering sample for  and it showed me everybody that I had sent a specific type of email to that contain, you know, certain keywords in the subject. And it was amazing for me to be able to be like, well, show me everyone.

I've done a free mastering sample for in the last three months who never responded to me.  okay. Send a followup email to all of those people like it was amazing, and then just start getting responses back and to see immediately my income went up. Just communicating that, Hey, I'm present. I'm thinking about you.

Didn't forget about you. I'm not a big enough grownup. None of us are to keep track of every person that we should be following up with and making sure that they know that they are still on our radar. So spending the time to set up a CRM right now can be really powerful, especially not just because it can help you now.

But because of how it can help you once this is all over, when you integrate this into the way that you run your business, it can make a humongous difference, especially when that giant fish shows up an amazing client that you forgot to keep in the loop that you forgot to follow up one year from now.

Your CRM will help you with that.

Brian: [00:27:11] Yup. That was one of my favorite features. Back when I used, I used to use it as well, I'm the one that actually got you into it.

Chris: [00:27:16] Yes, it's true.

Brian: [00:27:17] It's called smart views, and you can just say like anyone who I've worked with more than six months ago and then I haven't heard from since then, populate in the list and dynamically updates every single time someone matches that criteria.

It's incredible. I moved to pipe drive. They have a very similar thing where they have advanced filters where you can actually create your own filters that are very similar to that, and it's much more affordable than clothes. So if you are one of those people that wants that sort of functionality and you don't quite have the budget for clothes.com go check out pipe drive.studio.

That's my affiliate link. And if you go to that, it'll give you a 30 day free trial with no credit card required. So something to keep in mind if you're going down to the CRM train. But yeah, highly recommended. Those filtered lists is one of the easiest ways to keep up with these sorts of followups that I've ever seen.

Chris: [00:28:01] Yeah. It's pretty dope. Well, let's talk about one of my favorite things in audio bead. This is a great time to work on your speed as a mix engineer or mastering engineer or an editor or whatever. I want to talk a little bit about what that means when you're growing a business in audio that's some kind of audio service or any kind of service business.

Inevitably, if you're the one providing the service, how quickly you do this service has it huge impact. One, the faster you are, the more you make per hour and two, the faster you are, the more time you have to work on your business, not for it. And three, the faster you work, the more time you can spend doing human stuff, talking to your customers, getting to know them, becoming genuine friends with them, which incidentally helps you do a better job.

Brian: [00:28:50] And that's one of the things that you do better than probably any mastering engineer I know, is that you are willing to actually have human to human interactions. Talk to them on the phone, have conversations, add value in additional ways that most mastering engineers don't do. And it's not because mastering engineers don't want to do it.

It's just typically because mastering engineers have a lot on their plate because they have, typically, from what I've seen. Hands down across the board. They have not invested in systems for speeding up their process. And so they did not have the time or mental bandwidth to devote to each customer because he got so much other work involved with that customer for a generally lower average price per project.

So you are just talking about when you invest into speed mixing or speed mastering, that you are able to actually devote more time to the customer and less time to the project, if that makes sense.

Chris: [00:29:37] Yes, totally. And one of the things I find with that is if I get into a meaningful conversation with somebody, it's helpful because I pick up vibes.

Brian: [00:29:45] What are vibes, Chris?

Chris: [00:29:47] It's a feel, it's like a.

Brian: [00:29:49] Yeah.

Chris: [00:29:49] You get to know them on a personal level, and there's some sort of, this sounds kooky, but like soul connection and that influences how you work on their record.

And it's not like they're telling me like, well, I really like them warm and vintage you in a really lucky, you know, negative 15 loves, you know, it's not that stuff. It's their vibe. Their record should reflect them as a person. And having a conversation to me really helps me as I'm making decisions about how I want that record to sound in mastering.

And I think it, over the long run, it makes you know, the revision process a lot easier, or in many cases, completely unnecessary. I have a lot better shot at delivering a perfect first master if I've had a conversation with somebody, especially if it's an album.

Brian: [00:30:30] So moving on. So far we have, the first thing was talking about matters. For my groups. The second thing was talking about planting seeds. The third thing we just talked about was working on systems or anything in systems you still wanted to chat about before we move on.

Chris: [00:30:41] Yeah. There's one last thing. So the way that I built my systems is I came up with a folder of 25 songs from 25 different artists that I thought represented. The people that I typically work with, and when I was building systems, what I would do as I would again and again and again, master those 25 songs and tweak the way that I was approaching my systems.

And by doing that over and over and over again, I could track, Oh my gosh, yeah, that was the fastest I've ever done these. Oh my gosh. These sound a little bit better than they did last time. Oh my gosh. Like I'm moving right along here. I can start to use this on future projects. So right now is a great time for you to come up with, like what are the 10 songs that you mix as a mix engineer that you can start from scratch so you've got them.

No plugins just stems. You walk in  move as fast as you can. There's no client, there's no ego involved. It's just. I want to do a great job. I want to do it really, really quickly.

Brian: [00:31:34] So you're just talking about setting benchmarks. This is like your benchmark test where like you are running through the 10 songs or 20 songs or whatever it is. They're like a mixing engineer. I would never do 10 songs that takes forever. I would do one song and that's my benchmark, but something that's going to take you one or two hours maybe if you have the time and to see how you can knock things off that total time that you clock in.

And I think that's actually a really good idea, which is having a set thing you run through every day or week, whatever it is that you're working on these systems. And I like to have checklist. I'm a big checklist person, so if you find that there's a more efficient way to set something up or to label something, or you find a shortcut that works better, or you find a better tool or plugin that does something or something in Zapier that automates something.

Or if you're an Apple scripts wizard, like he find that, Oh, I can. Safe, 30 seconds here on each of these tracks. If I just automate this one thing with Apple scripts or with Zapier or whatever, now you start realizing every time you go through this, that's one less thing I have to do. That's one less thing you have to do.

And then the ultimate thing is if you can get rid of 99% of the trash involved with mixing or mastering, which is the stuff that, when I say trash, I just mean the non-creative tasks that anyone could do. You get rid of 99% of it by. Some of it with automation and tools, and then the rest of it with a checklist that your assistant does and all you're doing is showing up, opening something, making the critical decisions that only you can make.

And again, this is beating a dead horse. We've talked about this so many times in the podcast, but if you can do this, this, this is a huge part of speeding up your process when it comes to mixing and mastering. I love this idea of having this benchmark, this test that you've run through and you've timed yourself on and you're trying to get a personal best every time, and not only you're getting slightly better at setting things up, but you're also getting better at the systems.

So part of it is going to be the fact that you just know how this works and you're going to naturally get faster. And that's kind of a false positive. But part of it is just saying, Hey, this is my system. And by working with these tracks, I'm taking out variables so I can focus on the system. And then when I take this to new things in, there are variables.

I can work out new system approaches to factor in variables. So that they don't come as a surprise. There's always some sort of way to handle a variable that pops up. So again, I like your idea there, Chris. All right, let's move on here. Now we've got mastermind groups, the number one, planting seeds, number two, systems number three thing to work on during this whole quarantine situation.

Now on to number four, and that is. Online presence, building out your online presence. God, this is something that people in the audio world seem to struggle with this more than anything else.  I'm looking not just at like an anecdotal view. It's almost at this point, statistically significant amounts of people.

We have over 6,000 people on our Facebook community. I've got tens of thousands of people on our mailing list. I have thousands of customers in my paid courses. I've talked to hundreds, if not thousands of people in group coaching, and I see what people look like online almost every day. Or I see what people don't look like online because they have no online presence at all.

So if you have downtime right now, I can't think of a better way to spend that time then to work on your online presence. And there's several factors involved with online presence. When you think of that, you probably have a certain thing in mind, but we're talking about specific things in here. The first on this list is your website.

First thing that people are going to see in most cases when it comes to online presence, especially now because everyone is doing everything on the internet. And so what happens is they hear about you through some thing, whether you're having conversations with them on Instagram, where if you go back to Joe's episode a couple episodes ago where the online recording studio, that's their main.

Lead generation platform is talking to people on Instagram and they're going back and checking out his website. But people go to check you out either via conversations they've had with you and they click your in the profile, or they hear about you in some way and they Google your studio name and the new show up in the results.

Either way, your website, if it's not the first thing that shows up, it should be the first thing that shows up, and most people have terrible websites. But they haven't put any thought into, and even the people that have gone through my free website course, which I have a free website course at recording studio, website.com is the URL for that if you want to take it.

Even people who've gone through that still have terrible websites, it may be visually okay, but they haven't put any thought behind how people are perceiving them online. What are you doing to speak to your target customer? How are you positioning yourself? Are you publicly posting your prices online?

Which is something we say as a huge no-no here.

Chris: [00:35:41] Yeah, completely. You know, one of the things. Uh, I have a couple of thoughts on this. I think the worst thing you can do as an audio engineer in person is show up in front of a client  a white Hanes undershirt that you bought from Walmart that has a hole in it, in a coffee stain, and your gut is hanging out the bottom of it just a little bit.

That's like the prototypical like stereotype of audio engineer. Who's just like, uh, actually, uh, L yeah.  you're wrong on, on several points about your own music. And I'm going to explain to you why I a true musical wizard and correct like that sort of awful I social condescending nerd doesn't get along well with musicians and then wonders why his business isn't doing well.

Your website shouldn't be the equivalent of that white tee shirt with a hole in it, in a coffee stain. It should look good. And I think a big piece of this is, and I've been thinking about this a lot, Andy J pizza told me something a couple of weeks ago that I just hadn't been able to get outside of my head with his creative career path, a book and system that he's been working on.

And this idea comes down to, do you have a one sentence resume on your website? I think this is really important in a lot of different ways, but I think having one sentence that tells people. Why you are worth working with is really important. And that one sentence shouldn't be a list of all the different services within audio that you happen to provide all of them.

It should be.

Brian: [00:37:17] Let me tell you a good one real quick. All on recording studio.com previous guest, two episodes. Go Joe. I've mentioned him a couple of times in this episode already. When you hear their, uh, their one line resume that's on their site, which is also their headline, this is a good place to put it in my head.

It's the same thing. Bring your songs to life. Do you think that's a good one or not?

Chris: [00:37:35] I think it's good. I don't think I would classify that as a one sentence resume though.

Brian: [00:37:39] How so?

Chris: [00:37:40] Well, that's a value proposition.

Brian: [00:37:42] Okay, fair enough.

Chris: [00:37:43] You came up with a one sentence resume for our podcast in that one sentence is, what is it like. The number one business resource and the recordings, studio industry or whatever.

Brian: [00:37:54] If that was the way our voiceover guy sounded, we would never have a single listener on earth. Our dues sounds like a genuine badass.

Chris: [00:38:01] He does, man, I want to hang out with that guy someday.

Brian: [00:38:03] That's not it. I dunno. That was a bullshit line. I just pooped out because we were the only business resource in the recording industry.

Chris: [00:38:10] It was great when we launched it because it was true cause it was the only business resource in the industry. And I think what makes that so great is that it follows a format. The number one blank.  blank. And I'm not saying that you should literally on your website, say the number one blank and blank, but you know, Mark Eckert's website is a great example of like we talked about Mark Eckerd all the time.

I talked with him earlier this week. I love this guy. His one sentence resume, it's the first thing on his website. Mark Eckert. Dot com E. C. K. E. R. T. all I give a shit about is producing and developing indie pop artists. Bam. One sentence resume. So you, you see that and you're like, Oh, cool. You must be awesome.

And I know exactly what you're all about. And if I'm a perfect match for you, I am going to voraciously consume your entire website.

Brian: [00:39:02] Well, I love Mark's headline. I don't see how it's any different than Joe's, because you could literally just say, all I give a shit about is bringing your songs to life. It's kind of the same. Thing. He just has more flavorful language here than Joe. But if Joe's audience is singer songwriter, they had the song they want brought to life that speaks to that type of person in the way they probably resonates with them.

Chris: [00:39:20] I see what you're

Brian: [00:39:21] Just know your customer because Mark's customers are like indie pop people that are probably have a sense of humor. And so him saying, all I give a shit about. I get what you're saying though. It's to me it's, this is just part of positioning and copywriting is writing stuff on your website that appeals to your target customer and a succinct, an understandable way that doesn't require paragraph of shit being read before they understand it.

That's the mistake people make is either non-descriptive, non-scalable websites or they have a very descriptive. Overly descriptive websites that are trying to tell you every single detail about every single piece of gear that they have and how they went to audio school and how their grandfather was the one who you get what I'm saying here, this is just how most websites are, and so if that is you, if any of this we're saying about you is sounding like you right now, just stop it.

Go work on your website.

Chris: [00:40:07] Yeah. And by working on your website, I think the most important thing is not have this amazing paragraph. It's a sentence. One amazing sentence.

Brian: [00:40:16] So my favorite sites don't have any large amounts of copies the most. I'm looking at Mark site. He has a couple of small paragraphs, but that's it. Everything else is big ass tax that just talks about bullet pointed, this is what we do and why you want to hire us, and you're either in or you're out, and if you're out, go the fuck away.

If you're in, you're part of the club and we love you. That's basically his chest of his website.

Chris: [00:40:35] Yeah. You're either in or you're out, and I think bad websites are like, don't leave. Don't leave. Please. We might be able to help you. Please stay on my website.  it should be exclusive. I love that. So let's move on to the next thing. One of my favorite parts about online presence is when somebody searches your name.

What's the first page in Google search results look like? This is huge. So if you Google Chris Graham, mastering the first page looks dope. The first page of Google search results, it looks dope. It's not like, Oh, there's one. The result, it's actually me and the rest are not me. The whole freaking thing is me.

Usually, depending on where you're at.

Brian: [00:41:13] Oh yeah, I didn't even think about this. So yeah, if you Google Chris Graham mastering right now, it's not just Chris Graham mastering.com it's his full online. Presence, which matches this section really well. You've got his website. This is your, your results might vary differently because Google kind of personalizes it based on your search history, but first thing is Chris Graham mastering website.

The second is Chris Graham mastering his Facebook page that shows 104 five star ratings. Then you have like a whole slew of videos with Chris Graham's face in it with some funny thumbnails. Then you have another Facebook profile, but it's the same one, but it just shows it up twice for whatever reason.

I'm not sure why that's the case. Oh, it's literally just the result of your reviews. So it's your Facebook reviews page, ranking on Google under your name. Then it's your YouTube channel. Then it's an interview with Chris Graham of Chris Graham mastering on medium.com. Then it's your Twitter, then it's your Yelp profile.

Then it's the recording studio rockstars interview. You deal with lids Shaw. Then it's the six figure home studio interview I did with you on episode two of the podcast that just goes on and on and on and on and on. Then your better business profiles. So do you want to talk about an online presence that is a strong online presence?

It's not. You three results down and then the rest of it, some other guy named Chris Graham, like you own those keywords.

Chris: [00:42:22] That's a lot of work to do that.

Brian: [00:42:24] We got a lot of time right now, so.

Chris: [00:42:26] If you're going to hire somebody to work on your music babies, are you going to Google them first? Yes, of course they will. If they don't, they're silly and you don't want them as customers anyways. So you need to be sure that when people Google you, you look dope. And to be honest, like my Google search lots could look a lot better.

I don't have a Wikipedia entry. If anyone does that, please make one for me.

Brian: [00:42:49] Yeah. If you Google just Chris Graham, you get the actor instead of you. You just get some dudes IMDV profile and some guy with a head shot.

Chris: [00:42:56] Yeah. So there's a lot of work that you can do to make yourself look better. Back in the day, in the 80s if you wanted to look dope, you bought a sweet suit. Today, if you want to look dope, you gotta have dope social media profiles. You gotta have dope Google search results get, have a dope website

Brian: [00:43:11] And you can't use the word dope.

Chris: [00:43:13] and you can't use the word dope.

Brian: [00:43:14] All right, so we've covered the online presence thing pretty well so far. That's the fourth on our list. Now we have one more unless we end up adding one at the end randomly, which we tend to do. That's the fifth thing on this list, and that is learn new shit. You have so much time on your hands right now.

Go learn something new, improve yourself.

Chris: [00:43:34] You have time to learn new shit. That's awesome. That's so cool. What a blessing. Oh man. Like, I'm embarrassed to say this, but like I've watched movies like Shawshank redemption, you know, movies are like someone's in prison. And I'm like, this is eternal optimist to a fault. And I've thought to myself many times while watching movies like that, I was never in jail, man.

I would learn so much new stuff. How to

Brian: [00:43:57] Well, we, we kind of are in jail right now. We are all essentially living under house arrest right now.

Chris: [00:44:02] Yeah, and that's a lot of time to self-improve. I gotta tell you what, man, through this whole covert thing I've gotten cut. I am doing so much yoga.

Brian: [00:44:12] I can see you way less than me right now. This is the first time in our

Chris: [00:44:15] Yeah. Fatty.

Brian: [00:44:15] known each other. I'm not fat. You just lost a lot of weight.

Chris: [00:44:18] That's true. That's true.

Brian: [00:44:19] It's the first time in our history of being friends that you've weighed less than me. So kudos to Chris Graham right now.

Chris: [00:44:25] I'm the strongest. I might've been, maybe not ever, but I'm the strongest. I've been since high school for sure. Right now

Brian: [00:44:30] And you're taller than me too. You're a couple inches tall. I'm like, I'm six feet, but you're like six two or how tall are you

Chris: [00:44:35] I'm six and three quarters inch.

Brian: [00:44:38] really? I feel like you're taller than that.

Chris: [00:44:40] Well, I put a lot of effort into making sure that you feel that way,

Brian: [00:44:43] I think you walk on your tiptoes. That's

Chris: [00:44:44] I probably do. I probably do.

Brian: [00:44:47] But anyways, learn new shit. So Chris, we have some things on the list of things that you should be considering when it comes to learning new shit once it's super Uber specific and the rest are pretty general.

Chris: [00:44:58] Okay. Yeah.

Brian: [00:44:59] Do you want to talk about this first thing, Chris, when it comes to learning new shit?

Chris: [00:45:02] This first thing comes with a warning. Stay tuned for the morning. Learn how to build conditional forms.

Oh dude. Conditional forms of the bomb. My whole business is built on conditional forms. My website's on WordPress. You might need WordPress. You might not. I'm not saying everyone does. And there's a plugin called gravity forms.

Aye love gravity forms. It's amazing. It's a plugin and it lets me build crazy, crazy, crazy forms and I can add different plugins to gravity forms to make the forms do different stuff. A conditional form is a form that you can say, uh, you know, question one, do you like vanilla or chocolate? And then in the form on the back, and you can say, if they say vanilla show another question.

If they say, chocolate show a picture of chocolate ice cream.

Brian: [00:45:49] It's basically just a flow chart. Like if then sequence flow chart.

Chris: [00:45:52] It's a bunch of if then statements. Yeah. Those are super duper useful from a business standpoint because you don't want to hand somebody a form. We're an old school PDF. A lot of back in the day, you would send someone like your mixed prep PDF or your master prep PDF, and it's this monstrosity of a document that most of it doesn't apply to that person,

Brian: [00:46:12] Yep.

Chris: [00:46:12] but they see it and they're like, I don't want to read this because it's long.

Brian: [00:46:15] It's a block of text, which no one reads blocks of texts anymore unless you're reading fantasy novels.

Chris: [00:46:20] Bingo. With a conditional form. You can make it the absolute bare minimum length to the person that's filling it out. It's crazy powerful. And you can also do crazy stuff like, Hey, if they answered yes to question 17 send an email notification to my assistant. If they don't, if they answered no, then send an email notification to me.

You can hook it up a Zapier and gravity forms and a lot of other, you know, form building software and say, Hey, if they answer this, then add a text file in this Dropbox folder.

Brian: [00:46:49] Yeah. I mean, we don't have to go into details with this. Just if you want to learn more about this, go learn how to do conditional forms. I'm going to push back though.

Chris: [00:46:56] Yup. You just should.

Brian: [00:46:57] This is a massive distraction and huge waste of time for most of our listeners. I'll tell you right now, I didn't even really want to have it on this podcast just because like what happens is we gave you all these things that you should be doing right now because you have time and some of these are hard things to do that you don't want to do, and so what you're going to do is you're going to naturally gravitate towards the shit that sounds fun to do.

So if you're like a technical minded, engineered type. The one that talks like this, that crust made fun of a second ago and keeps pushing the glasses up. If that's you, this is going to be more harm than good for you because you're going to ignore the stuff that you really need to do in your business and you're going to be doing this like tweaking shit for all 12 customers that come to your website per month.

If you have zero customers right now, this is not the thing for you to actually build out. If you are the type of person that has a lot of work coming in, maybe so maybe that's the case.

Chris: [00:47:44] Totally true. One of the things I would say here is the temptation for a lot of people is when they get into conditional forms is they make the forms so complicated. Take a lesson from my mistakes. What gets fancy gets broken. Keep it simple

Brian: [00:47:59] What gets fancy gets,

Chris: [00:48:01] that that's actually much more catchy. So, okay, next one. This one's pretty obvious reading.

Brian: [00:48:08] Oh man. How long have we been talking about reading this spot? Episode

Chris: [00:48:11] We might actually be a reading podcast, not a business podcast.

Brian: [00:48:14] And again, just in the category, just to keep people where we're at, learn new shit. That's where we're at. Number five, learn new shit. We talk about books more than probably any podcast and we're not going to really talk about this point. You know this by now. If you listen to podcasts at all, if you are uncertain about books to read, go listen to episode 100 where we talked about our top 16 life changing books for business owners.

So there you go. Go read. Anything else to add to that, Chris, you better not have anything else to add to that. Chris.

You've got time right now.

Chris: [00:48:42] you see

Brian: [00:48:43] A third thing on the list is get a coach. Get a business coach. If you want one, go hire Chris Graham or get one of us free coaching calls. This might be a good time to start exploring your business in depth personally, because again, we can only give.

Pretty overarching generic advice on this podcast. If you want anything personal that is tailored specifically for you, the spoke business advice, then coaching might be the move for you. And if that's you, it's not necessarily the cheapest way to approach things, but it could very well be the most effective thing because if you start trying to play all the shit we talk about in this podcast, you're going to have wasting so much time that it had been cheaper to pay for a coach to teach you what you specifically need to be doing right now instead of spinning your wheels for six months.

Wondering when nothing's working, Chris, you're talking about Domino's. When we talk about this before the call, half of coaching is making sure your dominoes are stacked in the correct order so that when you push the first domino over, the rest fall down. And if you'd start trying to tackle one of these other things we talk about in this or any other episode before you're ready, you might be working on domino four and you've skipped three other dominoes.

So when you push that first domino over, what happens? Nothing. Yeah.

Chris: [00:49:49] Yeah. Well that's the big thing. I think everybody at some point should hire a business coach. Maybe that's me. Maybe that's somebody else. But the thing to keep in mind,  a good business coach costs absolutely nothing.

Brian: [00:50:02] That's a good point. Yeah.

Chris: [00:50:03] A good business coach  pay for themselves pretty quick.

Brian: [00:50:07] It's the whole value versus cost thing. People tend to focus, whether it's looking at file passes monthly prices or whether looking at one of my courses or whether they're looking at a business coach or any other person they're hiring, they start looking at the cost involved with that instead of the value they get from applying what they learn or from using that tool.

And there's a huge difference in cost versus value in most cases, on a stable good business. The value you get out of something. Is way higher than the cost that you pay for it.

Chris: [00:50:35] Yeah. You know, like for me, you know what I'm doing. These free coaching calls, which by the way, you can get one go to Chris, grandmaster.com/coaching

Brian: [00:50:42] You always say it too fast. It's Chris Graham mastering.com/coaching you always mumble your way through

Chris: [00:50:48] I appreciate that. You're a fabulous human being for correcting me on that. So if you want to go apply, one of the requirements is there's a quick one minute video just saying why you're interested in some business coaching, but if I think you need a business coach, I'll tell ya, if I don't think you're ready yet, I'll also tell you I am absolutely not interested in ever coaching anyone.

It isn't going to immediately pay for my services with business growth.

Brian: [00:51:13] Either way, they're going to get a little mini roadmap from you right.

Chris: [00:51:15] Yeah, absolutely. So next thing, you got a lot of extra time on your hands. And you know, one of the things that's been interesting is I've been doing the coaching thing is all of my best coaching clients. I have one thing in common.

They already took your course,

all of them. And to be honest, like when somebody reaches out and says, yeah, I listen to podcasts. I haven't taken Brian's course, but I'm interested in coaching. That's usually a red flag for me. Don't say no to all of them, but I do often press them on that because it's a much more efficient path to take your course and then to explore some of the finer points that are harder to cover in a course.

It's made for a lot of people than it is to cover, you know, an individual strength or an individual struggle. It's better addressed in coaching.

Brian: [00:52:02] Yeah. The specific, of course we're talking about is the profitable producer course, which you can get by going to the profitable producer.com the thing about that is we cover a lot of the low hanging fruit, the stuff that everyone should be tackling first. The things that people tend to ignore it and avoid, even though they either know they should be doing it or they just didn't know at all, and they now can put these things into place.

If you skip that before, go into Chris, he can help you with it, but the problem is. It's just a lot of stuff you could have learned elsewhere and done inside of a course in a little bit of a cheaper format and at your own pace, and you're not paying for coaching on these basic things. You can go straight for the more serious stuff that it takes.

More of an individual handheld approach.

Chris: [00:52:39] Totally. So if you guys haven't taken Brian's course yet, you know, like we've been doing this podcast together. When Brian makes money in a course, I don't see a penny of that. And that was by design. And from the very beginning, I have never, ever, ever heard a complaint about Brian's scores, but I have heard many, many, many people point to it as a life changing experience.

So check it out.

Brian: [00:53:02] And also we're about to start the next accountability accelerator boot camp. So if you want to get it on this next one, we're about to start. Make sure you go join now because it's an eight week program. Everyone's stuck at home right now, so you've got eight weeks to do this. Nothing we assign you in this bootcamp is going to be things you have to leave your home for.

It's all coven proof. Or it's all  safe. Go to the profitable producer.com and you can learn more about how those bootcamps work and how of the teams work and the scoring works in the competition side. It's a lot of fun.

Chris: [00:53:29] Awesome. Brian, in a world that is socially distance, it is a pleasure and a joy to hang out with you and make a podcast episode.

Brian: [00:53:37] Yeah. I miss you, buddy.

Chris: [00:53:39] You too. Well, hopefully summer Nam will happen though. I doubt that it will.

Brian: [00:53:43] If the Olympics were canceled in San Fernando is going to be

Chris: [00:53:46] Yeah, man.

Brian: [00:53:48] I'll see you by next Nam

her name.

All right, Chris, any final things to leave listeners off here when it comes to working on your business during this quarantine?

Chris: [00:53:57] Yeah. Let me see if I can find a Mike Trapp quote here.

Brian: [00:53:59] I like ending episodes on Chris Graham. Mike drops.

Chris: [00:54:02] So this whole social distancing thing, this whole quarantine thing is rough. And I think what makes it so rough is it feels like we're losing stuff. It feels like we're missing out on opportunities. It feels like we're just sort of hanging out in a mud puddle, not moving anywhere, and just sort of soaking in the juices.

I think that you can find a lot of relief. By investing in yourself. I finding a way to know that you are bigger, better, stronger, faster, smarter, all of those things. When this is all said and done, so my charge to you guys is spend the time growing. Don't worry about the video games. Like if you need to blow off some steam, great, that's fine.

But growth is where you're going to really look back at COBIT and say, man, that was instrumental. That was an advantage. That was a blessing in disguise.

Brian: [00:54:49] And here's the best part. There is no fear of missing out right now. Your friends are not out there partying or doing anything right now. So that whole FOMO aspect is a non issue now. So the issue is now just getting yourself to start doing the things that need to be done. Did you know you need to do?

And hopefully this episode is a kick in the ass to start doing those things.

Chris: [00:55:08] Totally. And kind of last piece on that, I said something on the last episode that I think it really rings true to me. I feel like this rang true to the people I've been coaching.  is an opportunity to experiment. With your business. If you try something new during coven 19 and it fails, it's Kovats fault.

If it succeeds, you get to keep it. So go try something new. Go learn a new skill, go grow. So try something else. Gosh, I really,

Brian: [00:55:36] Good. Good, good job.

Chris: [00:55:38] Oh gosh.

Brian: [00:55:39] I'm just going to, I'm going to do it. Here we go.

Chris: [00:55:40] I was trying something new.

Brian: [00:55:42] Goodbye y'all.

Chris: [00:55:44] Okay. Huh? All right. See you guys.

Brian: [00:55:50] So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Before I let you go, there's something I've got to mention and that is my other business file, past.com pretty much anyone listening right now, you're stuck at home. Any work you do with your clients is going to be over the internet.

What better time to sign up for file pass? And move all of your collaboration into the cloud in file pass makes the entire process so much easier than whatever you're using right now. If you're mixing engineer or you're mastering engineer. You can use file pass for your clients to upload files directly to their project without any login, any accounts to deal with you send him a link.

They drag and drop the files directly into their browser and then they stay in file pass until you delete them. No expiring links are in that mess you mix or you master their songs, upload and file pass. Send your client another link and they can stream the lossless WAV audio. From any device and leave timestamped comments directly on the files.

No more long phone conversations, no more long email threads. All of this is handled from their phone, from their computer, any device with internet access, and then all of their comments turn into a nice and neat little checklist for you to work through. As you're going through the revisions in your doll, and then whenever you have the final mixes or the final masters, you just upload the file pass, add a charge to their account, and then they cannot download those files until they have paid you.

And once they pay, it automatically unlocks their download. You get instantly paid, they instantly get their files. It's a win win. Just go to file, pass.com for your free trial and you can thank us later for making your online collaboration process infinitely easier. So that's it for this week. Thank you so much for listening.

Until next time, happy hustling.

Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home stereo podcast. I'm your host Brian Hood. I'm here with my bald, beautiful, amazing purple shirted gray sweater cohost, Christopher J. Graham. And fell a little down today cause it's, it's coronavirus and uh,

Chris: [00:57:43] I don't like this. You gotta you gotta pep it up. My bra

Brian: [00:57:46] wow. The news has got me some blues man.

Chris: [00:57:49] w are we done? Is this for real? Are we doing this?

Brian: [00:57:51] No, God.

Would the worst start ever to a podcast.

Chris: [00:57:55] Yeah. Oh.

Brian: [00:57:57] All right, here we go.