Doubling Your Studio’s Income From $50k To $100k… In One Year – With Jim Stewart

Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 118.

[00:00:19] Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I am not here with my ball. Beautiful, amazing purple shirt, a cohost, Chris Graham. If you haven't been keeping up with the podcast or you're new to the podcast. I have been in Southeast Asia since about mid January with my wife just doing a workcation.

[00:00:38] And I will not be back in Nashville, uh, to be on a co-hosted episode with my cohost until the end of this month, February. So in this episode, I am just doing the intro outro and Chris is doing an interview on this episode, but just to catch everyone up who's been following this trip, I have then in Cambodia for the past week or so, my wife and I towards some of the temples out there, anchor watt, uh, the tomb Raider temple and a couple of other ones out there.

[00:01:01] And, uh, now we are in Northern Vietnam in Hanoi. And I'm recording this intro at our hotel, the lovely Oriental Jade hotel, which so far has not been the best. It's actually the first morning at like 6:30 AM I got a call from the front desk of the hotel telling me that there's a driver here to pick me up to take me to the airport.

[00:01:20] And I just was like, no, no, there's not, because I don't check out till Monday. And then the second night at one 30 actually close to 2:00 AM. The power cuts off, an alarm goes off on our entire floor and wakes every single person up on our hotel floor. So, uh. Our first two nights here have not been great.

[00:01:38] We'll see how tonight goes. But Hanoi has been amazing. The food here has been amazing. Uh, Cambodia was amazing. Just to go back a step there. Some of the most friendly people, my wife on our way to the airport, she was like Googling how to adopt a Cambodian child, which is apparently not legal anymore. So now she's probably gonna Google how to smuggle a Cambodian child out of Cambodia and adopt it.

[00:02:00] It's just, honestly, it's such amazing culture there. And, uh. We're having a lot of fun on this trip. Stale. Uh, we are flying out Monday to go to a Island in Southern Vietnam called Phu Quoc and you can make all the jokes you want, cause I've already made every single joke possible with that for Quoc Island.

[00:02:18] And so we're finally after like four weeks of travel, getting some beach time. So anyways, enough about this travel stuff on this episode, my cohost Chris, is actually interviewing. Jim Stewart, and if you haven't heard that name, it's okay. This is actually even better if you haven't heard a gym, because Jim is someone I met when he joined the profitable producer course a little over a year ago.

[00:02:41] He was in one of our accountability accelerator boot camps, which by the way, we just opened up registration a few weeks ago for the next one. So if you haven't participated in the accountability accelerator bootcamp, go roaster. Now, that is only for the profitable producer core students. So if you're not a core student, just go to the profitable producer.com.

[00:02:56] And you can sign up for that and then immediately sign up for the accountability accelerator boot camp. It comes with the course. If you are already a PPC student and you haven't done this bootcamp yet, please sign up because it is absolutely a game changer. But gem, I learned about him, uh, whenever he joined the chorus, joined the accountability bootcamp, and over the last year, he's actually joined up with Chris Graham for coaching as well.

[00:03:16] And Jim story's interesting because. For years. He's kind of stagnated around the 40 $50,000 a year point, which is great. It's a good living for most people in a lot of us would be happy to be there, but he has decided, Hey, I'm going to take this stuff seriously. I'm not happy with just, uh, staying stagnant year to year to year.

[00:03:33] I want to grow, and he has done just that in the last year. He has doubled his business and January last month, he's like tripled his best month to date. I believe that's what he says in the interview. It was his best month ever. Either way. So you're going to hear Jim story. You're going to learn kind of some of the things he's put into place to start, uh, making these changes.

[00:03:53] And you're going to get as always a lot of fun color commentary from Chris and stories, stories, stories, stories, stories. Cause Chris loves to tell stories. So I will let that be that and we'll move onto the interview. Now, here is the interview between Chris Graham and Jim Stewart.

[00:04:11] Chris: [00:04:11] Okay. Let me get my best Brian Hood in.  nation going and welcome to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Hi, I'm your  hostess with the most is Chris Graham. Aye. It feel so weird not having Brian here, but I have somebody else here with me and I'm super excited to introduce to you guys.

[00:04:30] It is Jim Stewart. Jim, you are a badass. We've been hanging out. I've been doing the business coaching thing with you. You're a mix engineer amongst other things from Cleveland, Ohio. . You've doubled your business in the last year. Tell us your story, man.

[00:04:44] Jim: [00:04:44] Well, I've been doing it. About 10 years, maybe seven or so of them. Like what I've considered full time, even though some of that hasn't always been the best full time work. I started out, uh, you know, I was like a lot of people. I wasn't musician in high school. I played guitar in a crappy band and went to a expensive studio and got a crappy recording, pay a lot of money for it.

[00:05:04] Uh, so I kind of, I figured that, you know, there's gotta be a place to figuring out how to do this stuff, to learn how to do it. And I found out about a place called the recording workshop down in Chillicothe.

[00:05:14] Chris: [00:05:14] Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like one of the only places on planet earth that I think is actually pretty cool when it comes to T learning recording.

[00:05:22] Jim: [00:05:22] That's the kind of place that I recommend to people if they want to do some kind of schooling for it to get like the, the foundational, you know, stuff down just because,

[00:05:30] Chris: [00:05:30] What does it cost? Like 70 K less than full sale.

[00:05:33] Jim: [00:05:33] Oh man, I think it was like, like less than five grand when I was there in 2005

[00:05:38] Chris: [00:05:38] so 78 K less than full sale.

[00:05:41] Jim: [00:05:41] It was nothing, and I mean that included living there.

[00:05:44] Chris: [00:05:44] Whoa.

[00:05:44] Jim: [00:05:44] It was like a two month program then. So it's like a trade school. You go and it's just all recording all the time. But I mean day one they say, this is a microphone, this is how a microphone works. And that's the sort of, you know, foundational stuff they do, but was really helpful. I did some kind of like early prerequisite college stuff.

[00:06:00] I went to like a semester at the community college here in town and. Just kind, kinda was wandering, you know, and that really was a good place to go, just to kind of figure out like a direction and have some kind of formal education to seem a little bit more legit, even though, you know, looking back on it, I didn't need a certificate or anything from them to do anything that I'm doing.

[00:06:20] Like you guys always talk about, you know, no one has ever asked for my certificate when asking if I want to record or mix their record.

[00:06:26] Chris: [00:06:26] And fun fact, fun little tidbit. If anyone ever does ask. See your graduation certificate run

[00:06:32] Jim: [00:06:32] Yeah. Oh yeah,

[00:06:33] Chris: [00:06:33] as fast as you can run from that potential client because it will be the worst project you've ever had in your life.

[00:06:41] Jim: [00:06:41] It was a great, you know, like just. Again, figuring out like signal flow and just the basics quickly. You know, I could sit there and do it, but it was just like a good way to get into it. And you're recording bands by week two, so getting into a studio and actually doing it. I know there's plenty of schools where like, you don't even see another like a musician until like a year or two of your four year program.

[00:06:58] And that just seems

[00:06:59] Chris: [00:06:59] Man, I didn't even see a mic until year four. Oh, uh, yeah.

[00:07:05]

[00:07:05] Jim: [00:07:05] So I did that. I did the intern thing. I got into a studio around here. Um, it's called Metro sing studios back in the, you know, mid two thousands, started doing an internship, just kind of doing that stuff, helping out, cleaning up, setting up for sessions, tearing down for sessions pretty quickly was hired.

[00:07:21] It wasn't like a, a full time thing where I was getting paid a salary, but it was just like, if you do a session, you get 15 bucks, you know, 15 bucks an hour, whatever. Did that. The guy who I, uh, started working for. He left pretty quickly after that, so I kind of took over his clients and let's just do in that.

[00:07:36] Chris: [00:07:36] Very convenient.

[00:07:37] Jim: [00:07:37] Yeah, it was pretty nice. I mean, you know, within three months of starting an internship to get like some kind of regular paid stuff was pretty cool. That was a couple of years of just kind of slowly building that stuff up and doing that thing, and then that studio ended up shutting down. I started freelancing and other studio and was inevitably hired by that place and they shut down.

[00:07:54] And then, I mean, that was kind of the, the thing, you know, it was, it was 2000 it's 2008 or nine when the first studio shutdown 2011 when the second one shut down. It was right around the time where, you know, things weren't adapting. They were both bigger studios, they had councils, they had, you know, large year collections and just kind of weren't really figuring out what to do.

[00:08:14] To keep it going, and they both just went under. So I kind of scrambled for a second and figured out, you know, I got a backup plan. I started a just getting what I needed to do, the stuff I'd been doing and figuring out a place to track the stuff I couldn't do and my apartment, you know? Bought pro tools, rig abroad, bought a couple of little pieces and just started working slowly.

[00:08:34] I would, uh, like I said, I would track drums at a bigger studio in town and then take projects back to my apartment and just do overdubs mix there, which my neighbors, I'm sure, absolutely loved. You know, I'm making records in my living room and they're upstairs trying to sleep.

[00:08:47] Chris: [00:08:47] If you ever get a Grammy, you should definitely give them a shout out. Like, here's this. This one goes out to my, my ex neighbors. Thanks for not reporting me to the calves.

[00:08:56] Jim: [00:08:56] Also, sorry.

[00:08:58]

[00:08:58] But that was, I mean, that was a couple of years of my life was a, I was probably four years of doing a bunch of records and I, I mean, I kind of started getting a name for doing Cleveland bands. There's a handful of Cleveland bands that I would, I did records for. And you know, it kind of led to more and more stuff like that.

[00:09:10] So I was, I was pretty busy just working in my living room. I did a record for a band that got picked up by a small label in town. And that label had ties with a nother engineer who is a big time dude. He was out in LA for a long time. He engineered a handful pretty soon engineered, you know, a handful of big records like incubus and he's pretty seminal, like, you know, early two thousands rock records.

[00:09:35] And they wanted him to mix it. So he and I met up  exchange of files and he's like, Hey man, this, this stuff sounds great. Like, you know, the files are really well recorded. Where'd you do this? What are you doing? So I kind of told them like, Hey, I'm just working in my living room. He's like, Oh man, we got all this space at the place I'm at.

[00:09:48] Why don't you just build a studio here? So like, I kinda just hopped in on their lease and like sort of sublet a corner of this space. And like we shared some tracking spaces. I built this studio and literally the last screw of the last piece of drywall to finish the, the room to make it like an actual enclosed room.

[00:10:07] Uh, my phone rang and it was the, the building manager telling me that the building had been sold  and we had to figure out what was

[00:10:15] Chris: [00:10:15] Oh man. Oh geez.

[00:10:18] Jim: [00:10:18] little bit of a gut punch. It ended up working out because we had done the work and had a lease that the people who were buying the building really wanted the, the building for the aesthetics.

[00:10:26] It was like a, it was an old brick and, um, you know, like giant timber frame, like, you know, five story building, these old school sort of brick buildings and they really wanted to restore it and make it their headquarters. So they had a, you know, a pretty strong desire to vacate everybody instead of trying to deal with a seven year lease or whatever was left on the lease.

[00:10:45] So we use that as leverage and they kind of relocated the entire floor of people. So it was me and two other studio guys located us down the street, built out, you know, studio space. And that's where I'm at now. And then for about three years, just kinda making that whole situation work.

[00:11:00] Chris: [00:11:00] Nice man. Well, kind of catch us up to maybe like a year ago in your story, so you'd been working out of this space. You'd kind of an interesting arrangement where they were, I guess kind of walk us through that. So you've got kind of an arrangement with them where they bring in work for you that partially.

[00:11:18] Or lately entirely covers your rent. Yeah. So kind of walk us through like, cause I think your story there is actually really, really interesting.

[00:11:24] Jim: [00:11:24] Yeah, so I mean, it's a back to the space real quick. It's like sort of like a Camino space. Um, we have a large shared live room. It's like 35 by 35 ish with some, you know, angles and stuff. It's basically just a large tracking room that three people share. So none of us have to burden the, the cost of, you know, this large space that we use 10% of the time.

[00:11:46] So because of that whole situation, there is a guy who was hired by the business manager of the space to drum up business for everybody, and our arrangement is if he brings me some work, they get a cut of it. A portion of that cut goes towards covering my rent. The first chunk of. Business that he brings me, covers my rent.

[00:12:06] Beyond that, it's like a percentage split. So I get a percentage, they get a percentage. He's been doing such a good job that I haven't paid rent. I haven't written a rent check in a year and a couple months at this point. So everything on top of that is gravy and I keep all of my, you know, anything that I drum up myself, I keep all of that.

[00:12:24] It's been a pretty cool situation just to have like, it's pretty consistent, you know, flow of rent coverage and then. You know, anything else I get to keep.

[00:12:34] Chris: [00:12:34] Yeah. Well, that's I think, a fabulously interesting story for everyone listening to the podcast on a couple levels. One, if you own a bigger studio and you're trying to fill it up, this idea, like there are so many people, like we've had this conversation a lot of like so many people on earth would just absolutely kill.

[00:12:53] With that scenario for like, Whoa, you're going to send me clients, you're going to be kind of my agent, and that'll  cover my rent. And then I can also bring in my own projects and I make whatever I want on those. Like, so I think if you want a bigger facility, you know, let's say you have a bigger live room, there's room for other control rooms in there.

[00:13:11] That's kind of a cool idea. You know, whether that's, you know, you have a giant room with a live room on the South end and another or no, a live room in the middle, and then a controller on the North end and another controller on the South end. And you're sharing that live room. Cause that's the funny thing about a live room is like almost nobody uses a live room every day.

[00:13:28] Unless you're scoring orchestras for movies, you're not going to do drums every day or unless you're like a drum studio. And so that, that's a tricky thing from a real estate perspective because you're going to be paying. W whether that's, uh, you know, your mortgage or your rent, you have to cover the expense of every square foot that you have and every square foot of space that you have makes it more risky that you're going to potentially run out of business because your expenses are too high.

[00:13:54] So I think some of the stuff we can extrapolate from your story so far is if you've got extra space, bring in somebody else and try to book them some projects. If this is something you're good at. And. Take a cut, like so that's really interesting. I'm sure it's a huge, huge win for them. But on the flip side of the coin, I think it's probably even a bigger win for you of like how many people like outside of LA, Nashville, and New York have anyone fighting for them, trying to bring them clients.

[00:14:26] I could imagine that there's probably a lot of people listening who could find a way to create a win win scenario with a local studio. It's similar to the one that you have with yours. Of like, dude, like, let me work here. You can send me projects and I will kick ass for you. And if we do more than a certain number of projects and more than a certain value of projects each month and my rent is covered and I can do whatever else I want.

[00:14:49] And obviously there's a lot, you know, that we could go into that this is for another time, but with the systems that run that sort of business, you know, obviously there's going to be a calendar involved in that. Obviously there's probably going to be. I have a huge spreadsheet of like, alright, well this project was, we brought in, so we're going to take our cut on this one.

[00:15:07] And then he brought in this project. So that's all him. But you know, there's an awful lot of administrative work to take care of there. Anyways, let's keep talking about your story man. Cause this is fabulous in the interesting, and I think for most people listening, the most interesting part is that you were kicking ass a year ago by any measure.

[00:15:25] You were doing great. And this year you're doing twice as good. And I want to talk about that because that is the dream for every single person listening. But there's also like nightmares as part of that dream, which seems like you've avoided my, yeah, so mostly avoided.

[00:15:44] Jim: [00:15:44] you know, they're still there. So I always kind of joke that I, I've been accidentally running a business for however many years. When I got into this, I never wanted to own a studio. I never wanted to be. The owner of a business that was never like, I wanted to make records. That's all I really cared about doing was like, I want to be involved and if I can make a living making music.

[00:16:04] Great. Oh, that's awesome. About a year and a half ago or so, I realized that that just wasn't like I w I was running a business and I just wasn't doing it well. I know I just like, I had kind of like fallen into this thing by default because I'd work at a studio, I'd close, I'd work in a studio, would close, I would, you know, try to do all these things.

[00:16:21] I just had to do it myself because nowhere I could go would reliably, I just couldn't guarantee a place to work, you know? So I had to figure it out on my own, and then all of a sudden now I have a studio space, I have a business and I'm just not running it effectively. So I was kind of just like, you know, sort of limping along.

[00:16:40] I mean, I was fine when I was kind of just sorta like trudging along down the same path, make it about the same. I'd have a, you know, three to 5% growth every year. A couple of years, like a year, I'd slip a year, I'd have a little bit better, but like, that was kind of it for a couple of years in a row.

[00:16:53] Chris: [00:16:53] You hit a ceiling.

[00:16:54] Jim: [00:16:54] Yeah, I had a ceiling.

[00:16:54] I just kind of felt like, you know, here's where I'm at. There was a sort of a cap on like the local studio hourly, and I was kind of like, you know, I was right around there just like everybody else. Like, Oh, that's what people charge. That's what people will pay. Sort of thing  like about a year, a year and a half ago.

[00:17:09] Like I said, I was kinda just like, it's gotta be something else. I gotta be, you know, I got to start focusing on another side of this thing. And that's kind of where I stumbled upon Brian's six-figure  studio, you know, of course I did the profitable producer course.

[00:17:22] Chris: [00:17:22] That's awesome.

[00:17:23] Jim: [00:17:23] I kind of went back and forth on it a lot, you know, I'm like, this is, it's a pretty good investment into, you know, this whole thing.

[00:17:28] And I was unsure about it and I think he had a sale and I was like, all right, I'm just gonna I'm going to grab it. And I did that. And to be honest, I didn't finish it. I got like, I got almost to the end and I kind of like just started falling into other stuff. But what it did do was it, it kinda, you know, it.

[00:17:44] Help me figure out a lot of foundational stuff that I should have had in place so long ago. Stuff that you guys talk about on this podcast all the time. All the foundational tech, all the foundational, just things that should have been in place to run a business effectively. That I was like, I had a website that didn't do anything.

[00:18:00] It like had my name on it and like there was no, like it had an email. There was no conversion. There was no, it was nothing, you know, it was just whatever went through that whole thing. And then I ended up doing the, um, accountability bootcamp as well as part of the pivotal producer course. Through that, I ended up meeting a couple of guys, one of whom, you know, Stewart Richardson.

[00:18:18] Chris: [00:18:18] Love Stewart.

[00:18:19] Jim: [00:18:19] Such a good dude. He's awesome. And we, we did our, you know, part of that was to have like a weekly meet up with the guys in our team, and that kind of turned into a mastermind group. That, actually, it was another guy who was part of that, who started it and he ended up stepping back because his, his focus changed.

[00:18:34] The steward recommended me for this mastermind group after we had done that thing, and the guy who started it and a couple other guys sorta just backed off. So it kind of ended up becoming, you know, my sort of thing. So I added a bunch of other guys and that was super helpful. You know, just having a weekly meetup of other, other guys to kind of keep you, keep you in check a little bit has been super awesome.

[00:18:54] But just like doing that stuff and listening to the podcast and kind of just trying to actually focus on running a business instead of just sort of haphazardly going through the motions has been unbelievable.

[00:19:05] Chris: [00:19:05] Yeah. Having a mastermind group like that. Well, we haven't talked about it on the show an awful lot lately, but you know, I'm still hanging out with my mastermind guys and it's so healthy to like sit down with a bunch of guys that know you and know like. What you don't do great and what you stall on and what you get stuck by and can just be like, Chris, what are you doing?

[00:19:24] Like stop it. So yeah, like having a mastermind group like that is like essential. I love your story of like you had an idea of what it was going to be and then it kind of morphed and then it morphed again and then it morphed again. That's normal. No one says like, I'm going to do a mastermind group and this is exactly what's going to look like, and then it just sticks that way.

[00:19:41] It changes and it's almost like, at least for me, it's almost like the opposite of Murphy's law as a mastermind group. You've got guys in your life, and at least my experience with it has been, it's an exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it, and not everything I needed, but really essential parts of my story.

[00:19:59] And I'm sure your story too, of guys just sort of like holding you accountable, but also, man, I think back to when my wife and I first got married, we started going to this Bible study. And it was this a family Mike and Kimmy chill coat that we were just obsessed with. They would put on a bunch of  young married couples would show up and like, I'll never forget, I promise there's a point to this, but I'll never forget.

[00:20:21] We were having like one of our first hangout times and somebody just sort of opened up about like how messed up their fights were in their marriage. And like EV, there's like, I don't know, probably five or six couples there, and like we all went around the circle and everyone was like, us too. That's exactly what we do.

[00:20:40] Oh my God, we're not crazy. Oh my gosh, this is normal. Woo. Okay. I can take a deep breath. And it was so encouraging to kind of have that feedback. It's like, Oh, our marriage isn't like rotting at its core. We're going through some pretty normal stuff, and you don't know that until you start to compare stories with other business owners and your own business journey of like.

[00:21:00] Man, like at any given time, there's going to be a bunch of fires, so to speak, and to have other people either be like, Hey, you should put that one out. Or, Oh gee, I've got though. I've had this fires for 10 years. Same ones you've got. Don't worry about it. That's no big deal. And man, it is just so encouraging when you've got a group of guys, they're a group of peers that you can kind of band of brothers with or brand of sisters with.

[00:21:22] Ideally, if you've got like a good mix of people there, a good mastermind group shouldn't be all the same people. Same types of people. It should be a wide variety and a wide variety of styles of thinking and a wide variety of skills.

[00:21:37]

[00:21:37] Jim: [00:21:37] I think that's one of my favorite parts about our group is like we're all in kind of different, you know. Different stages. We're all doing different stuff. We got, you know, two mastering engineers, Stewart, who is, you know,  production mixing guy. There's another dude named Michael Estock who he just kinda does, his dream scenario is like full production by himself.

[00:21:57] He gets a, like a singer songwriter to lay down a scratch vocal on acoustic guitar scratch Oakland piano, and then he cuts everything else himself and just puts the track together. Yeah. It's the best.

[00:22:07] Chris: [00:22:07] I used to kind of be my dream a long, long, long time ago.

[00:22:11] Jim: [00:22:11] Yeah. You know, he'll, he'll record bands. He's texting me while he's recording a band. He's like, man, I just, I just want to be by myself. Just, you know, it's so much easier.

[00:22:19]

[00:22:19] Oh no, he's, he's incredible at what he does, you know, and like he's just, he's got that thing and it's just, it's funny cause in the past year and a half, we've all kind of sort of, you know, gone down this path of like, all right, this is what I'm doing better ad like, this is what people, you know, know, he says his favorite projects are the ones that he does his thing on, you know, so that's like, he's a guy and I'm focusing on, my thing is another guy who's like a, you know, a composer for film and stuff like that.

[00:22:39] And he's going down his road a little bit deeper and it's just really cool to have, you know, different perspectives on stuff. And it's like business therapy.

[00:22:47] Chris: [00:22:47] Yes. Oh man.

[00:22:49] Jim: [00:22:49] Like a mastermind group. It's just like business therapy, man.

[00:22:51] Chris: [00:22:51] Yeah. More therapy for all of us.

[00:22:53] Jim: [00:22:53] One guy will play devil's advocate, one guy, I'll be like, Hey, uh, I think you shouldn't do that.

[00:22:57] The other guy's like, Oh no, I told you, you totally should do that. Absolutely. You know? And it's just like, all right, cool. You know? And just get some perspectives on stuff. And.

[00:23:03] Chris: [00:23:03] That's awesome man. Well that's super duper healthy cause I really think  growing up, I think my thought of like what does a healthy community. Like, Oh, we're all unified and we all believe this exact same things. We all think the exact same ways. And now as an older person, I'm like, Ooh, no, no, no, no. You need like people that are comfortable with confrontation  and that have a different perspective.

[00:23:27] And it's when you get a bunch of people like that together where there's a safe environment to disagree and a safe environment to sort of like. Share that's essential. And it is like a therapy thing of not only seeing like, Oh, other people have problems too. I thought the I, for some reason, I think his audio engineers, we all on some level sometimes believe that we're the only ones with issues.

[00:23:50] Yeah. Like a mastermind group can solve that in a lot of ways. But I love what you're saying. I love this idea of like you've got different people. It's not like, like for me, worst case scenario would be a mastermind group full of mastering engineers.

[00:24:03] Jim: [00:24:03] Right?

[00:24:03] Chris: [00:24:03] Like that would not be a good move.

[00:24:05] Jim: [00:24:05] If I could join a group of a bunch of dudes who are just trying to mix  records, it's like. That's not great. And unintentional side benefit of a, of a mastermind group like this is we can all work with each other on different things. You know, like Michael doesn't like to mix stuff. So I've been mixing stuff for him.

[00:24:21] You know, like Jake, the composer is, you know, he's doing a lot of composition stuff. So he'll come here and track drums sometimes or like, you know, there's all these kinds of relationships that can happen from that. Like, I didn't know all these guys when we got together, they were, you know, friends of a guy that I did know or like, we kind of put it all together and now.

[00:24:36] Some of those dudes are working together and it's just like, it's been a really cool thing because we all have different sort of focuses and strength and stuff, and we can all benefit from each others experience.

[00:24:48] Chris: [00:24:48] I think success comes from having multiple perspectives. This piece of like having a mastermind. I cannot imagine being successful without a community like that. I can't imagine how anybody could pull it off. I'm just not smart enough to do that. I need a group of people to be like, Hey, uh, really cool that you did that, but you're blind is a bat on this issue right here.

[00:25:07] You need to address that. It's really, really healthy there. But then taking the course, like you mentioned with Brian's thing. Is, there's also a lot of blind spots that that's going to fill in a lot of gaps. All of us are self-educated. You know, whether you went to full sail or the recording workshop or you've never been to recording school or what.

[00:25:26] All of us are making this up as we go, especially in business world. We're all kind of figuring out like what are the unique ingredients in a successful business for me, all of us are different. All of us have different skills. All of us are in a different location. All of us have different tastes. Every single person's business should look completely different, are mostly different from everybody else's.

[00:25:50] And this whole like build yourself a niche thing is really that. It's figuring out like what are you equipped to serve in? What can you do for people that nobody else can do? How can you help them in ways that nobody else can help them? And it's frustrating because in our industry there is a spirit of like.

[00:26:09] Well, will you just look at what the, the big guys have done and you just emulate them 100% one-to-one. Totally. What I did, biggest mistake I ever made was just like looking at somebody else. Ed cash, I've mentioned this before, who is a freaking stud muffin. He's amazing. Looked at his career as a successful producer and was like, I'm just gonna do everything he's done.

[00:26:28] like there's a lot of problems wrapped up in that. And my friend Andy J pizza, who's upstairs from me right now. It was on last week's episode. Loves to talk about, you know, this idea of it's an open world. It's kind of like a video game. You can't just like start playing the video game and go right to the boss, like right to the villain and take them on.

[00:26:46] You don't have the tools to do that yet. And so I think what a lot of people do is they like, I'm going to do a career in audio and this is what I did. Oh, that guy produces mixes and plays the instruments, helps write the songs, like he's coaching all the things. I was like, Oh, I'll just, I'll start doing all of that now.

[00:27:04] Rather than like this sort of video game illustration that Andy uses, like, well first I'm going to go get the sword,

[00:27:09] Jim: [00:27:09] Yeah. Right.

[00:27:10] Chris: [00:27:10] then I'm going to go get the helmet of truth, or we know whatever, whatever happens to be. Then I'm gonna upgrade this sword. Then I'm going to get the armor, and then I'm going to like practice my ability to shoot my bone arrow from a long distance and still make Hills.

[00:27:23] Then like a long time later, then I'm like, okay, I think I'm ready to take on these bigger projects. And it's a timing thing. And Andy got into this last week and I've been thinking about it all week since we did that. The interview about the importance of timing and all of this, and man, I really feel like you've been really lucky and that your timing has been really good and the things that you've been there for your experiences have been really, really good.

[00:27:48] Even though you're build a studio and it closed. As the last screw goes in, like there's a lot of grit there, man. A lot of people would just quit.

[00:27:56] Jim: [00:27:56] What are you going to do? You know? I can't, like, that's how I eat, you know? Yeah. I gotta keep going. Keep going on this. One of the things just down. Yeah, I mean just, it's definitely, you know, something you got to stick with. I know you're talking about Brian's course a little bit in, you want to go into that a little bit?

[00:28:08] Chris: [00:28:08] Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:09] Jim: [00:28:09] I know you guys talked about like the, the podcast being an advice buffet. I kind of feel like it's sort of, that is, I mean he, he lays down all these things that I, again, filling in blind spots. I had no idea to even even think about doing, you know, all these, like the pixels and just like all this again, foundational stuff and like these followup procedures and just tons of things.

[00:28:28] I was like, God, that's such a simple thing that I have never even thought about before. There's also other things that I, I just never, it never really worked in my foot. Like I, I still don't use a CRM. And I, you know, that's one of the biggest things that Brian preaches is like, get a CRM. And I just like, I haven't, I haven't like fallen into that routine yet about doing one and like, I've tried it a couple of times and like, it just.

[00:28:49] I just keep  doing other stuff and keep working and I'm sure you know, someday I'll probably get onto it, but you know that that course was definitely sort of, that for me was a little bit of an advice buffet. Just filling in the gaps in my knowledge that I think I, I felt like I needed and trying to focus on some things a little bit more.

[00:29:04] Chris: [00:29:04] That's awesome.

[00:29:05] Jim: [00:29:05] I still haven't like totally figured out what my thing is as far as like. Here's your specific, you know, zone to focus on. But I feel like people are kind of telling me a little bit more like I'm getting hired way more to do mixing. So, and that's kind of where I've been wanting to focus. You know what, I wasn't sure if that was going to be the thing that's like, all of a sudden this year I've gotten, you know, a handful of out-of-town mix only projects.

[00:29:30] It's like, alright, that focus is starting to take shape a little bit. And hopefully that's where, you know. My clients are telling me to go, I guess. So that's kind of where I'm stuck. I'm trying to push anyway.

[00:29:41] Chris: [00:29:41] That resonates with me. Like I see you doing that. Like, and this is kind of funny, like as we've been doing the coaching thing, like I try to ask good questions, but I also try to voice gut responses. And when you talk about. The mixing thing to me, my guts like, mm, mm, yeah, Jimbo, get it. Like, like, that just makes sense to me.

[00:30:03] And I kind of have this like picture in my mind if like, you know, five years from now, for some reason, I don't know that you'll still be in Cleveland, but we'll see whatever. But I just kind of have this picture of like, I see the space you're working out of and you're killing it, and everything is just like the Grammys are on the wall, so to speak, you know?

[00:30:20] Literally. Yeah, man. So let's talk a little bit more about. Brian's course and sort of the change that you saw as you took that course.

[00:30:29] Jim: [00:30:29] It was just like a total mindset shift, you know, from again, passively accidentally running a business. I would just, anything that I ever did as far as getting work just kind of happened. It just fell in my lap. I never, I never put myself out there. I never promoted anything or advertised or anything like that.

[00:30:47] It was just like. I, you know, I was working at a studio initially and I would get a couple of clients like that because if you own a studio or if you're listed as a studio, people will just call, you know, it just, it just happens. So that kind of stuff would happen. I would get these gigs like that, and then I would start to take over, or at least help out on, you know, gigs for the guy who was actually being hired for being the guy, you know, the dude who was like the head of the studio, he was getting gigs because of who he was and not because of the fact that it was a studio.

[00:31:13] I'd help him out on stuff and then like, you know, maybe finish up a, a record for a band, and then they'd be like, Oh, that's awesome. This, you know, this sounded cool. And then another band would hear that I, you know, mix that record, whatever, and what kind of that sort of, how stuff started to spiral. For the better.

[00:31:27] I shouldn't say built, build up, not spiral. But that's how that started happening was, you know, branched out on my own. And people had heard that I cut down a couple things and it was sort of that sort of thing for a while. And I kind of just, you know, relied on that, you know, somebody else will hear this record and it'll come and it's like it did, but it, it stopped.

[00:31:44] There was a lid to that amount of, of work happening, you know, it would just be like, I would do, I would do pretty much this much and no more. And on a good year it would be, you know. Like $50,000 gross. That was like my kinda like sealing and it's like, all right, I've got to figure out something to kind of like shake this stuff loose and stop, be so stagnant and everything.

[00:32:05] And that's kind of where, again, where I stumbled upon Brian's course and just like that whole mindset shift of trying to, you know, be in charge of it and actively run my business and actually care about what's going on and, and pay attention to, you know, how people are visiting my website and what's kicking them away.

[00:32:21] And. It wasn't a terribly difficult thing to do. It was just being aware of what's going on and trying to focus on those things that are either drawing people in or pushing people away. The course just made that whole thing more present, I guess. You know? It just, it made it like.

[00:32:35] Chris: [00:32:35] You're able to see how you looked to people on the outside.

[00:32:38] Jim: [00:32:38] Yeah. It's almost like you don't know what you don't know. You know? It's just like climbing a cliff and there's like the plateau and you're like, all right, that's, that's the top. And then you get there and there's a whole nother set of things that you didn't even know were going to be there. And it's like, Oh, okay, so here's all this stuff I didn't know.

[00:32:52] Now I, you know, now I have to focus on that stuff. So that's what I've been trying to figure out and just be more cognizant of. Totally rebuilt the website.  more on top of. All the things I'd follow up with bands after we did a project and get, Hey, hope you guys had a good time. If you wouldn't mind leaving me a review.

[00:33:09] You know? And it's just like that stuff totally, totally works. And it's like the simplest stuff that I never would have thought of.

[00:33:17] Chris: [00:33:17] I would imagine too. So like I, to be totally honest, I love our podcast and I love it cause it's just me hanging out with Brian. Like that's my favorite part is us just being friends and spending time together. But my frustration with the podcast is in a lot of ways, a podcast is not a good place to get all of your information.

[00:33:37] It's a terrible place to get all of your information. And so one of the things I think that's beautiful about Brian's course is it's a different medium. You know, a medium. It's like, you know, radio is a medium. TV is a medium. Cinema is a medium. I'd call video games, and medium podcasts are a medium. When you switched to a different medium that's, you know, possibly more written.

[00:33:59] You know, you're reading more books or another medium, possibly. You're watching more videos depending on, on what that happens to mean. That can let you look at things from different angles.  I think that's where the most growth comes from. Is your ability to look at a problem from a lot of different directions.

[00:34:16] Some of that's, you know, kind of front loading your brain with a bunch of information from podcasts. Another part of that is front loading your brain by reading a bunch of books, taking a course that's for you and your niche is really, really helpful too. And we'll talk a lot more about this in a minute, but having somebody.

[00:34:32] Who is on some level, an expert in your field, asked you good questions and help you figure out where those gaps are is super, super valuable too. So let's talk more about that. So you took Brian's course business was going really, really well. It was a big mindset shift for you. At some point, I want to say it was like maybe, well, April of this last year you reached out, you were interested in doing the coaching thing with me.

[00:34:56] Tell me about why you were interested in that.

[00:34:59] Jim: [00:34:59] Well, like you're saying, I mean, it's, you know, the podcast being just like a dump of information. I would listen to it and I kinda was like, Oh man, this is, this is incredible. This is such a, such a good thing. And same thing with the chorus, like this is such an incredible thing. But then I was like, I was like overloaded, you know?

[00:35:13] And I was like, I got to do all these different things. And I started like. I kind of just got even more scattered for a minute. You know, it's like mixing, you get like a, a whole new set up of whatever, and you change your entire approach. And then it's like, you can't make anything sound good for a little while until you like, you know, refocus on stuff.

[00:35:28] And that's, that's kinda what it felt like. It was just like, right now I'm thinking about a million different things I have to do to improve all this different stuff that I've got wrong. And I felt like super scattered.

[00:35:37] Chris: [00:35:37] Yeah. That's really interesting. I think the hardest part of everything, all this type of growth, and you're, you're talking about this now, is you learned a bunch of new things, but then the most important thing you can possibly do, most important, like this is not advice buffet. This is, I believe, to be universal truth, and you will only hear me say that like once every 75 episodes in the show.

[00:35:59] Is that you have to put them in the right order. You have to prioritize them. You have to say, well, this thing is the most important thing. This thing is the second most important thing. This thing is the third most important thing, and here's the catch. The order that you need to do all that stuff in is different for everybody and gets more and more different, and one more unique, the bigger your business gets.

[00:36:19] Jim: [00:36:19] Sure, yeah.

[00:36:20] Chris: [00:36:20] So that to me is the most challenging piece of. And so there's a book. I don't recommend anyone reads it unless it, this sounds super, super, super interesting, but there was a book called mastering the Rockefeller habits that one of my mentors, I mentioned him before, Mark fixed airy, gave me Amazon cake.

[00:36:37] Chris, you should read this book. Honestly, I wasn't ready for it yet. It was for like much larger companies than what I was running with a bunch of employees. But he talked about what John D Rockefeller used to do. He would have, he called it one of five. And you would build a to do list and you only had five items in that to do list and all of them were do or die, and then you'd put them in the right order.

[00:36:58] And then whatever was number one you kept working on until it wasn't number one anymore. And the frustrating thing about building a business, sometimes you'll get partway done with number one and number one is no longer the most important thing because it's done enough. Maybe you've got like your quote form done on your website, but you haven't figured the CRM backend yet.

[00:37:20] And at that point it might be more important for you to work on getting more cold traffic, or it might be more important to build your portfolio, or who knows? They get totally depends on where you're at, of like what now number the number one thing will be.

[00:37:32] Jim: [00:37:32] Yeah.

[00:37:33] Chris: [00:37:33] And boy, yeah, masterminds are helpful for that.

[00:37:36] Courses are helpful for that. But I think what makes a course even more helpful is just letting you know, like, here's all the most important things for most people. You need to be aware of all of these. It's kinda like chords. I'm a guitar player at heart. That's the only reason I'm talking to you guys today.

[00:37:50] The only reason I got into audio was I love the guitar. All kinds. Nothing is cooler than a guitar in my mind, but when you learn a chord, I remember like in seventh grade I learned how to play a G chord and it was cool to be like, man, I'm going to be using this the rest of my life. Like, like I will hit that G chord so many more times and now I have it as a tool in my toolbox.

[00:38:10] And I think that's one of the things that makes. Of course, like Brian's so valuable is that you know what all the tools in the toolbox are. At the end of the day, you can start using them. And that's super fabulous and fantastic. And for me, like the business coaching thing that I've been doing over the course of the last year, when people have, you know, reached out, they filled out my application at Chris grand, mastering.com/coaching by the way, one of the most important things I've asked him, I was like, well, have you taken Brian's course yet?

[00:38:37] And if they say yes, I'm much, much more interested in exploring coaching with them. If they say no, usually I don't say no to everybody cause everyone's situation is different. But that usually is a little bit of at least a, we'll call it a little baby orange flag. It's like, Hmm. And for better or for worse, like people that have taken Brian's course, I think have had more success as I've coached them.

[00:39:02] Then people who have not taken Brian's course yet. Let's talk about that. So it's a, it's about nine months ago. You've taken Brian's course. Things are going really, really well. You decide, do you want a business coach? We started talking. Walk me through that process. Why did you do that?

[00:39:18] Jim: [00:39:18] Again, I just felt like the course was awesome and gave me a little, like you said, a lot of tools in the toolbox. It was just like kind of when to use them and which one did you know focus on or where to focus first. And that's kind of where I just felt the garden. I got this stuff and stuff starting to kind of pick up.

[00:39:31] I'm still not really sure. A lot of the things I'm not sure where to put my energy or even, you know, if I have all this stuff that I'm supposed to be considering right now.

[00:39:39] Chris: [00:39:39] Oh yeah, yeah.

[00:39:40] Jim: [00:39:40] I think like that was a big part of the, of why to reach out. It was just a, you call it and vice buffet versus personal chef? No, the podcast is probably like the big, like golden corral buffet has got everything and then like,

[00:39:52] Chris: [00:39:52] Let's go with Ponderosa. Okay. It's the Ponderosa buffet. I don't like golden corral. Not a fan.

[00:40:00] Jim: [00:40:00] And then like, you know, the, the chorus was a little bit more specific, you know, it was like, maybe like, just wa like, just American food buffet, you know? And then the business coach thing is like, all right, here's what you're going to get. So I think that was a big thing. Like  the first time we talked, I was like, all right, my problem at the time was just like, too much stuff.

[00:40:17] I think when we started talking, I had 70 plus songs to mix.

[00:40:21] Chris: [00:40:21] Oh my gosh, I forgot about that. Yeah, you told me that on our first call and I was like, Oh dear God.

[00:40:27] Jim: [00:40:27] that was like, my problem wasn't necessarily like finding work. It was just managing the work that I had effectively.

[00:40:32] Chris: [00:40:32] Yeah.

[00:40:33] Jim: [00:40:33] So one of the big things we started doing was just building systems and make a system to kind of track.

[00:40:39] The progress of a ban, a song, a session, whatever, through my process, you know, so I developed, you know, based on your system was a like a folder system that just says, all right, all these projects here are in the tracking stage. These ones here need to be prepped. These ones here need to be mixed. These ones are waiting on approvals.

[00:40:58] These ones are down. I need to print, you know, 24 bit mixes or whatever to send to mastering. This folder, they're all done. So the whole point is just to try to move those things through the, you know, through the folders more effectively. Again, I, I like, I'm like trying to count. I'm like, Oh, I have another, I forgot about this band.

[00:41:13] I got five more songs to go. I forgot about this band I've got. So, you know, it just, it just kept building up and now it's like, all right, yeah, I can get a glance of where I'm at and I've got a, I schedule each of those things and just kinda, I'm going to try to knock out mixes.

[00:41:26] Chris: [00:41:26] Yeah. That system. It's a system that I use and you've modified it for your own workflow. A little more about that. The basic idea here is for us in the audio world, especially if you're mixing or mastering, you've got a session file, right? That's associated with the project, and then you probably have a, a folder that contains a bunch of project folders depending on your door.

[00:41:45] That also contained session files. So you know you've got a band that you're working with and then you've got five folders within that folder, each for one song, and then that folder gets moved around depending on where in the process it is. So like when I walk into work today, I will see a folder called to master and in to master.

[00:42:04] There will be, actually, let me just kind of pull it up and I'll, I'll kind of read off. We don't really haven't been doing a whole lot of tactical stuff like this, and I get a lot of questions on this. So within that folder, I'll kind of simplify it. I've got one period quotes. It's people who have sent me files to listen to, to give them a mastering quote.

[00:42:19] Then I've got two dot samples, and that's people that want to sample, and then I've got three dot paid, and then within paid, I've got people who want advice before mastering. That's called the advice folder. The next folder is called waiting. That's people were kind of waiting to hear back after advice.

[00:42:35] The third photo we've gotten there is called three dot schedule. And so all my projects started the very top of my folder system cause I sort them by name. So one dot quotes will be the top two dot. Samples will be right below that. Again, if I'm sorting by name in OSX or whatever you happen to be using, the third folder is three dot paid.

[00:42:54] And then we've got a couple of folders in there. And then schedule is projects where it's like, Hey, these are ready to go. You need to let the client know when they're going to be getting them back. And then I've got my fourth folder is called scheduled, and the fourth folder, and this is kind of long and drawn out, but the fourth folder, I've got a system that creates folders automatically based on the due date of the project.

[00:43:15] So like I'm looking at it for Friday, there's a folder called two dot 14 dash Friday. Today is the sixth so I've got some specific projects that are due on that date. And when I select, we're going actually more into this, and we've gone into and coaching. But I'll select a client's folder within my schedule folder for the folders called their email address dash.

[00:43:37] And then there's like a project ID that's unique to each project and then dash, and then there's the project name, and then dash. And then the number of songs are in that project. I'll run this little script that I wrote and it'll basically say like, Hey, when you need to be done with this, uh, how about Friday the 14th and I'll click that button, it'll email the client and say, Hey, you've been scheduled.

[00:43:56] And then it'll move that folder. Into the Friday folder or if necessary, create the Friday folder. And then so when I show up, I can look at my scheduled folder  pick today's date and anything in that folder needs done today. That's it. And then below that, I've got like a working on folder. That's stuff I'm working on today.

[00:44:17] And then I've got like a bounce folder below that, that's six dot bounds and then seven dot scent. So working on. All the projects I'm working on today. Bounce all the projects that need rendered, that need, like export it and then send all the projects that need uploaded and send to clients. And as you guys probably imagine, all the bouncing and sending and all that stuff is all automated.

[00:44:37] Like I push a button, it happens, I make sure everything sounds good, push another button. Everybody gets their files like it's great. I'll probably build apps for you guys at some point to do all those things. Other than bounce Butler. But yeah. So you built up this system and this kind of helped you to track, it's essentially a CRM.

[00:44:57] It's not a F. yeah, it's a, it's a really small piece of the CRM cause you're tracking like where a project is. You could have a follow up folder if you wanted to as well.

[00:45:06] Jim: [00:45:06] Sure we were talking, you know, like getting a dedicated thing. Or, you know, Monday or whatever. Those things that are kind of like project management ones. Well, you pointed out the issue with those is moving the, you know, marking the thing as done in the app and then doing it again in finder and it just makes more sense to do it and find her as its own thing.

[00:45:25] Chris: [00:45:25] Yeah, I mean, I love that system and some of you are probably like, wait a minute. That sounds like moving a lot of files around, especially if it's huge production projects. You can also use aliases.

[00:45:34] Jim: [00:45:34] That's what I do.

[00:45:35] Chris: [00:45:35] Yeah. So in alias, if you're