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 in OSX, I'll give you guys a little bit of a pro tip here. So control, click, and then go down to make alias.

[00:45:45] I like that little contextual menu pops up. You make an alias, and so an alias is like a shortcut to that file. So you could have a sessions folder on an external driver, your interim driver, whatever you happen to have. And then you could take that folder, make an alias of it, and then put the alias in your sort of like to do folders.

[00:46:04] You're starting to do CRM folder based thing, and then you can move that alias around anywhere you want, and it's like four kilobytes. It's really, really small. But now you don't have to worry about like, Oh, I moved the project into a new folder and now like it's moving it across drives and I'm waiting for it.

[00:46:20] It's a pain in the butt to the alias system really makes a whole lot of sense. I didn't mention this before, but all like my automated systems create those aliases for me, so whatever's going to be in my working on today folder, it's going to be much aliases. It's not going to be the actual session folders.

[00:46:34] Yeah, that's awesome.

[00:46:35] Jim: [00:46:35] The cool thing about that too is like you don't have to make an, the way I do it anyway. I just, I do a, an alias for the, the song project folder, like the song folder. Cause when I do revisions it'll be, you know, name of song J S mix. And then the next revision will be revision dot two either, you know, mix dot too.

[00:46:53] So it's like I don't have to make a new alias for that version of the pro tools file or whatever. It's just, it's the folder. It just all travels together and then they just move through the, the folders as I need to get them done.

[00:47:02] Chris: [00:47:02] That's amazing. The nice thing too is this system will scale with you as you continue to grow. Whether that means like I'm giving you a secret copies of my scripts to help you with that, or whether that means you have an assistant. That's what that means. Yeah. If, uh. You could also have an assistant. It's going through these folders and making sure like that you have what you need and it's an easy way for you to communicate rather than like, Oh, cool, I'm in my Google drive.

[00:47:30] with all my projects listed. Okay, the, I need to do this project today. What was it called again? Oh crap, let me search finder. Let me search my hard drives for this particular project. And so like my inspiration for this system, it came down to one thing. Minimize the number of clicks that it takes to run my business.

[00:47:49] That was it. With this, it's less clicks. Less clicks means less mistakes, less mistakes means more flow. State, more flow state means better work. Real simple.

[00:47:59] Jim: [00:47:59] And I have gotten an assistant Nate, he's awesome. I said, well, basically I just, I load the stuff I need. I say, Hey man, there's, you know, five songs in the to be prepped folder. Just whenever you know, whenever you come in next knock them out. So another cool thing is to like, you know, going to the potluck, like back to the  of course.

[00:48:16] And podcasts. I was like, just setting up limits for myself as far as like business time goes, I don't really work much past five if I can help it.  really cool. My girlfriend works around the corner, so we just drive. I dropped her off, come to the studio, I pick her up and we go home and have dinner together.

[00:48:31] Chris: [00:48:31] Amazing.

[00:48:32] Jim: [00:48:32] Nate will come in in the evening sometimes and he gets to work on his stuff. As long as he, you know, wraps up the prep work that he's got to do, or drum edits or whatever it is, you know, he can just, he has access to the room when I'm not here and he can get stuff done for me and then have, you know, free reign.

[00:48:49] Chris: [00:48:49] That's awesome. So you gave him like a, one of the things we talked about early on, it seems like a silly system, but is having digital locks on your door. So that must make it a lot easier with Nate and

[00:49:01] Jim: [00:49:01] He's got his thumbprint on him all the time. He can just get

[00:49:03] Chris: [00:49:03] Yeah. That's awesome.

[00:49:04] Jim: [00:49:04] Yeah, I've got, I've got thumbprint scan locks and I've got, um, there they're wifi enabled too, so I can unlock the door from home if I need to.

[00:49:12] Chris: [00:49:12] That's dope.

[00:49:13] Jim: [00:49:13] Yeah. Yeah. It's the best

[00:49:15] Chris: [00:49:15] Uh, we've got the gear sled alert, even for smart locks. What brand of smart locks did you get?

[00:49:19] Jim: [00:49:19] ultra lock with a Q at the

[00:49:22] Chris: [00:49:22] Okay.

[00:49:22] Jim: [00:49:22] and, uh, I think it's called the . It barely looks any different. It's like a really sleek looking doorknob and right where the. The shaft goes into like the actual, you know, turn part of the handle. There's a little bit of a clearer acrylic screen and that's where you put your thumb and it opens right

[00:49:37] Chris: [00:49:37] So I've got my studio at the house, and then I've got an office that's like down the street and we just got smart locks here. We got, there's a company called August again, another dear slid alert. Don't curse, let us for the locks. It's not out of your gear. This is business. Yeah.

[00:49:50] Jim: [00:49:50] It's cool, but it's not that cool.

[00:49:52] Chris: [00:49:52] The August locks or Canada kind of dope.

[00:49:54] They weren't that expensive. I think we dropped like 150 bucks or something like that on the smart lock pro with like their little hub. And so it's cool. Like you walk up to the door with your phone in your pocket and the phone, the block is like, Oh, here he comes and the door unlocks and you walk in and it logs.

[00:50:12] Like, Hey, Chris  showed up at the office at such and such time. It's crazy. So as far as the collaboration goes, I could, even if somebody wanted to swing by the office and like at some point I'll probably be letting, like my friends work on their demos and recordings and stuff here. There's not really that much gear here.

[00:50:29] Lying around. There's like an  in a mixed Bri. Oh, you can hint, you can hear Andy upstairs. Oh

[00:50:34] Jim: [00:50:34] he screaming

[00:50:35] Chris: [00:50:35] yeah. He does it a lot. It's amazing. There's a lot of screaming in here and at least 51% is me. Yeah. Like the smart locks are cool cause you can pull out your phone and if someone needs to get in or help you an assistant or you want to give somebody access, you can just be like boop and open the lock for them remotely or give them temporary access via an iPhone app.

[00:50:54] Freaking dope.

[00:50:55] Jim: [00:50:55] I have these little wise WYC cameras and smart blog so I can turn lights on and off. I can turn my speakers on and off and then the cameras too, because I'm in a shared space, you know, there is some roommates stuff. If one of the other guys says, Hey man, can I borrow whatever? I see. Sure. You bet the door I can let him in and then I can check to make sure he only takes the thing he has to take.

[00:51:18]

[00:51:18] Not that I'm paranoid or anything, but just making sure.

[00:51:20] Chris: [00:51:20] That's hilarious, man. It's funny that we never mentioned like shark tank on the show, but I went through a big shark tank phase of my wife and we would like stay up and watch shark tank episodes, and I forget the person's name on the show, but somebody eventually said. Something along the lines of, after a certain point, success just means sleeping better at night.

[00:51:41] And so those sort of systems, like they made you sleep better, it made you less stressed. And like that's true for all businesses. You know, those sorts of systems that give you an extra IQ point or two, it's one less thing to worry about are so much more important in the creative arts. You know, creativity is really sensitive to stress.

[00:52:00] If you're an accountant and you're really stressed. Still going to do probably about the same quality of work. If you're a creative and you're really stressed, probably not so much. Ooh. All right. So you reached out to me, we started doing the coaching thing. I'm kinda curious, tell me how that's impacted you.

[00:52:18] Jim: [00:52:18] Again, man, I mean, it's just like, it's sort of just. No. Well, we'll have a call once a month. We'll have emails and you know, whatever in between, but just having that, you know, confirmation or left turn direction has been really helpful. Just like a totally. I can get advice from lots of people and sometimes it's like, yeah, I mean do that or don't do that, or whatever.

[00:52:39] You know? It's like, but I mean, you don't really have much skin in the game as far as other than me continuing to have your services as a, as a business coach, you don't necessarily win or lose. If I win or lose. On like a, a life scale, you know what I mean? Like if you, if you give me bad advice and I fail, you'll probably be okay.

[00:53:00] It's going to be, you know, whatever. But so you can tell me like super honest stuff, like, Hey, here's the thing that maybe you should focus on way more. Um, you know, I, I've done some corporate work with a, a huge corporation in town that does quite a bit of audio stuff, and they were kind of like lightening up on there kicking me some works because things were changing and you're like, maybe.

[00:53:18] Push that hard because it pays double what you're, you know, my normal rate would be, and I just had a quick little meeting with the guy and I was like, Hey man, just let you know, like I'm, I'm pushing more towards this kind of thing. I'd love to mix all of your things that you guys are doing. If anything you can send me would be great.

[00:53:32] He's like, Oh yeah, totally. And since then I've been getting a couple of gigs a month from them, enough to like have a, a consistent Mount of income.

[00:53:39] Chris: [00:53:39] That's amazing.

[00:53:40] Jim: [00:53:40] It's not the most like, you know, creatively fulfilling audio work in the world. It's like jingles and e-cards and stuff like that, but it's really well done.

[00:53:49] And so it's quick and again, it pays, you know, double my normal rate and they're super happy with all the stuff and they're super happy to pay it. So like, that's not, I mean, it's something I've had for a while, but it's not something I would have like aggressively. Approached if you know you hadn't like pushed towards stuff.

[00:54:05] So having that perspective of things that like are kind of just in the sides and maybe focusing on those a little more has been cool and like just encouragement to like, this band is reaching out and it seemed like they might be kind of a pain and maybe use this kind of tactic to just let them know what's going on.

[00:54:19] Like I just, I just did that recently. A band reached out and they had obviously been through the ringer on working on these things and they wanted to try to another approach and it's like, all right. You guys have been through stuff that's probably a little bit of a red flag that you have these built in kind of, you know, your perspective is probably pretty shot at this point.

[00:54:35] You've already mixed your record.

[00:54:36] Chris: [00:54:36] You're the fifth mix engineer we've hired and no one's made us happy. Yeah. Yeah, like right, right.

[00:54:42] Jim: [00:54:42] Yeah. So it's like, all right, well if that's going to be the case, I'm going to quote higher and I'm busy. So you can always use that. It's like, Hey, like cause they, of course they pushed back, you know, they said, you know, is there anything else you can do for us? It's like, man, I'd love to, I'm really busy right now doing this rate, so this is the best I can do.

[00:54:57] And they came back to like, all right, cool. We can make that work.

[00:54:59] Chris: [00:54:59] It's awesome, man. We've talked about this a lot. I'm obsessed with letting the quote unquote market do the dirty work. It's tough to quote somebody, a huge rate when you play video games all day long, but when you're busy, when you've got a lot of clients, it's so much easier to just be like exactly what you said.

[00:55:15] Hey, I'd love to work with you on the price, but I can't cause I'm in huge demand right now. Sorry. That's sort of the worst part I think about our industry. Is it sometimes like you'll come across a band or an artist and want to work with them. Is he like them? He liked what they're doing and like what they're about.

[00:55:34] But if they can't afford you, it's just rough. Like you only have a limited number of hours in the day. And you can only say yes to so many people. And inevitably, like in my situation, when you got three little kids at home, anybody you say yes to, you're saying no to everyone of your time with every one of your kids.

[00:55:52] So you've gotta be really, really picky with that. But yeah, I love that man. Like I think you know, back to this idea of like, you know, the corporate gig that you've been doing more and more, I think good coaching. Whether that's me or anybody else is that one that coach asked enough questions to figure out like, Oh wow, that's a cool opportunity.

[00:56:09] Have you thought about it in this way? Or Hey, how do you feel about this? I think they at first had all asked good questions. And then second of all, like the insights that you get from good coaching, it should cover the cost of coaching.

[00:56:20]

[00:56:20] So like right now, and depending on when you're listening to this episode, you know, if this is from a year ago, it's probably more expensive, but right now, somewhere around 400 bucks a month is what most people pay when I'm coaching them.

[00:56:32] generally don't say yes to many people, and I'm not sure that they'll pretty soon, pretty quickly, within the next couple months be making at least $400 a month like it should pay for itself. But man, your story is so perfect first to talk about on this show, because I think that one of the secrets to success, I got this from Derek Sivers book, anything you want is that when he was growing CD baby.

[00:56:54] He would grow 100% every year, and I want to say he grew 100% every year, five years in a row. And for us in the service industry, boy may God have mercy on your soul if you grow 100% like every year without doing it right. I've done it wrong. I've grown a lot. I hit 50% growth in a year without raising rates one year, hardest year of my life.

[00:57:17] It was awful. No, this is back like I had just had our third kid. And having a third kid, your IQ drops like 47 points, like for three years, nine months leading up to, and three years after. So I got it all back like a year ago. So a Nora, he was like my muse. Now I have so much. She's such a creative kid. I just get so many, many insights when we're hanging out together.

[00:57:39] It's odd. But so the point of me saying this is that I think my goal for everybody is to help them prepare for 100% growth. And I think if you prepare for 100% growth in the next year, you've got a really good chance of actually doing it. If you could handle twice the business that you currently have, you've got enough time to work on getting more clients and cloning the clients that you already have.

[00:58:04] And man, you've done such an amazing job of that over the past nine months. I remember when we first started hanging out, you were charging about how much per song were you charging back then?

[00:58:13] Jim: [00:58:13] Oh, two 50.

[00:58:14] Chris: [00:58:14] About two 50 yeah.

[00:58:15] Jim: [00:58:15] Yeah. That's two 50 song.

[00:58:16] Chris: [00:58:16] And now you're charging about 500.

[00:58:19] Jim: [00:58:19] Yeah. Um, I mean, it's been a kind of slow, like just kinda, you know, inching out with that stuff. Um, but when we first started talking, like my goal was consistently 300 a song that was like my, you know, my new rate was three inner song I would call people and it would  most people kind of like  we're okay with it, but it's our shy away a little bit.

[00:58:37] And then. I started, you know, using some of those things where it's like, all right, this might be a little bit tricky. Let's, let's push that a little bit more. I, I'm noticing things, it's like, that might be potential irritations or red flags or just like, all right, this might take a little bit longer, so I'm definitely gonna push.

[00:58:50] That started pushing like 400 a little bit, and then again, just pushing into 500 and it's like, alright, that's, people are paying that. That's, that's the new rate. Now was a pretty quick jump to nine months ago or so was when we started talking about that. That was like, my goal was 300 a song. It's like, all right.

[00:59:08] I'm past that now and consistently hitting a given your 300 song as a given and now it's pushing it more into 500 consistently.

[00:59:14] Chris: [00:59:14] Well, and for anyone listening to this show that's thinking like, Oh, I'm an amazing producer and I want, and this guy sounds great and I'm going to send Jim lots of projects. If it's a year from now, it might cost a lot more than 500 and it should, if things continue to go well, like you're going to attract more of the right type of people.

[00:59:30] And again, letting the market do the dirty work. If like, I'd love to work with you, but I have to not work with somebody else if I'm going to work with you. So I can't charge less than this. I think for you, like one of the most fun things with coaching you was, I remember when we had the conversation, I think it was our first call about the $500 like a song goal.

[00:59:52] And I remember like kind of seeing the fear in your eyes a little bit. And like, walk me through that if like when you're thinking about growing your business in that way. What was scary about that?

[01:00:03] Jim: [01:00:03] I've always been the kind of person to like immediately negotiate against myself whenever I've quoted stuff before, you know, it's like, well, my rate is this, but, and I always interject the, but let me know what you guys are thinking. Let me know what you can do. It's always, it's always something like that, you know what I mean?

[01:00:15] It's just, of course people want to pay less, you know? It's just one of those things. So I got away from that and just said like, here's what I do. There's always been a fear. I don't know. There's just like that thing you guys say, like walking past a small pile of money for a bigger pile of money. It's like, I'd rather get, I'd rather get some of your money than none of your money.

[01:00:33] That was my mindset a lot of the time, and it's just like. Maybe I don't, maybe I don't need, you know, your $150 project because I'm busy now doing that. When I, when I should, could be doing something else or if I just asked you for it, you'd probably would have paid it because you know, you like to thing that I did or whatever.

[01:00:49] But there's definitely that fear of just like, you know, people getting put off or, you know, I just didn't want to lose the job or whatever. So quoting too high to scare people away, you know, just didn't want to put people off. And I'm sure I've done that since then, but it's like. Okay. I'm not the right guy yet.

[01:01:04] If you guys got some, you know, maybe in a couple of years you'll be more ready or something.

[01:01:09] Chris: [01:01:09] I'd love to ask you something else about that. Along the same lines, I think one of the scary parts about raising. Is, I think there's a healthy percentage of people that should tell you you're too expensive. And I think you should ask yourself that question. Like what is a healthy percentage of people that say you cost too much?

[01:01:24] Optimizing for the most business growth has something to do. Like you're going to have to get nos from people. You're going to have to have people that say, Oh, we can't afford that. And the scary thing for me about raising my rates, I'm curious if you feel the same way, is that when you raise your rates, you're afraid someone's going to be like, y'all, bro.

[01:01:41] You ain't worth that much. Like, yeah, that's intense. That's super scary. Walk me through like that process is you raised your rates, like how did you kind of process that fear? How did you deal with it? What was that like.

[01:01:55] Jim: [01:01:55] That's the big thing is just like. You know, I'm charging this much and there's definitely dudes out there who have way more cred. They know like actual credits, actual gold records, plaques, all that stuff who are charging the same or less. You know? It's like, why do I get to to charge that much when these guys who have done records that I love or whatever, like, I mean, I know Billy Ducker was pretty open on the podcast when he talked about that thing.

[01:02:18] Like he's cheaper than me and that makes me feel weird, you know, like not always, you know, I mean, he does like a indie rate or whatever, but like. That's crazy to me. So it's like, well, how can I justify doing that if that guy doesn't, you know? So there's definitely that fear of like, you know, imposter syndrome stuff, just not being good enough to, to warrant the rate that you're asking people.

[01:02:37] A big part of getting over that obviously like, you know, you, you encouraging to to just try that. Kaylee, my girlfriend just saying, just do it. And she's, she's just like, she's no bullshit. You know what? Why wait? Why are you dancing around? Just asking for this much money? Like, just do it. You know? She's like that.

[01:02:51] Chris: [01:02:51] That's awesome.

[01:02:52] Jim: [01:02:52] Yeah. Just like. She's like, I'll, I'll write an email. I don't care. I'll just, I'll be your intermediary. I'll just say he's key cost this much. And she would charge more. I think if she, you know, she would just keep quoting more. And then the mastermind group too, like those guys are always just like, no. Um, I remember when we first started talking, I said, cool.

[01:03:08] Hey, I got this gig. I'm going to charge the guy 300. And the one guy's like, did you, did you miss type 500? Did you mean to say 500?

[01:03:14]

[01:03:14] like that, that kind of stuff where they're just like, no, do it. Yeah, you're totally got it. So those, you know, like people around that are encouraging that stuff is, is really helpful.

[01:03:22] Chris: [01:03:22] That's awesome, man. I think in a lot of ways, like I want to address this thing you mentioned about, Oh, Billy Decker charges less than you do. That is fascinating. And you look at someone like Billy whose systems are so dialed in, he's gotta be so ridiculously fast.

[01:03:36] Jim: [01:03:36] Oh my God, I've seen him in port files into a template and it's done. Like it sounds, it's unbelievable.

[01:03:42] Chris: [01:03:42] that. I believe that also maybe a possible app that I'll come out with at some point too, but I think some of the intensity is that there's a temptation here to look at everyone else who mixes and assume that makes you as a commodity. A commodity is like wheat is a commodity. Beef is a commodity.

[01:04:04] Beef generally is about the same, like if you buy it at the Walmart down the street from me, you buy steak. It's pretty much exactly the same as if you buy it, Kroger's down the street, or if you buy it at the grocery store in San Francisco on the other side of the country, it's about the same. So the price is about the same.

[01:04:21] Gas is the same way. Gas for your car generally costs about the same, you know, with some variability depending on like what neighborhood you're in, but it's not like it's going to cost $4 a gallon. In one community and the next door it's going to cost $1 a gallon, and the temptation is to look at mixing and to say all it's commodity and mixing should cost this much per song.

[01:04:44] Here's the problem with that music, depending on how you look at it, and I feel pretty strongly about this, but we're ended of the like the metaphysical realm here. So lot of room to be wrong. I think it all styles of music and each band, each artist speaks their own language. It's like a completely different language.

[01:05:02] Is that the difference between French and Spanish or French and English or whatever? And if I'm an artist and I'm thinking about hiring a mix engineer, I want to hire the person that I feel is fluent in my language. It's really dangerous to hire a mix engineer that's not fluent in your language. Like, you know, I've had it like a bunch of gospel and RNB music that's done really well.

[01:05:23] That's, you know, one of the projects that like number one in billboard. Another one of the RNB projects, I think like hit number four on, on it's billboard, RNB chart, I forget what it's called, but like RMB guys typically have a frustration with like, man, you know, I hired this mastering engineer before who specializes in rock, and it just, I wasn't happy it was, well, yeah, it's a different language.

[01:05:43] You know, there's a D, especially in the low end, there's a completely different thing that you're doing and communicating. And if I don't speak or if the mastering engineer or the mix engineer doesn't speak that language, it doesn't understand it. It's going to be a nightmare of a project. So if you are taking your music seriously and you want it to be as best as it possibly can be, and guess what?

[01:06:03] There are a lot of people that do that. It's the most important thing they're working on. It is literally their legacy. And so when they're hiring someone to help them bring that baby into the world, a midwife is essentially what you are as a mix engineer. And same for me as a mastering engineer. We're helping these song babies be born.

[01:06:22] You want to pick somebody who speaks that language, you want to pick somebody that is easy to talk to and easy. Like when you say, Oh, you know, I want to use this song as a reference that the person isn't like, Oh, I've never heard of them. Like in a best case scenario, like, Oh dude, I love that song, man.

[01:06:36] Like, Oh, I'm totally with you. Yeah. The way the horn sound on, you know this Stevie wonder song. I get that. That's what you're after that, that type of spread. Okay, cool. Cool, cool. I, I can make that happen. So my point here. Is that every mix engineer in the world speaks a different language or should, because every band speaks a different language.

[01:06:57] You can't look at what other mics engineer's charge and say, Oh, I should be the same, or I should be less, or I should be more, you know, Billy Decker speaks like really dope country EAs. Really, really good at that. You have a different language. You are a freak when it comes to like this indie rock thing.

[01:07:16] Am I right? Take that compliment. Yeah. So,

[01:07:20] Jim: [01:07:20] Yeah, you're

[01:07:20] Chris: [01:07:20] yeah, so when you're talking about a, about a band, like, you know, you've worked with the Wellsley arms,  spoke that language and I would imagine that that's why they worked with you on there. Like, like debut album, right?

[01:07:32] Jim: [01:07:32] Great. Yeah.

[01:07:33] Chris: [01:07:33] Like this was a big deal. This is a really big band that's got a ton of fans and you spoke the language and that's why they hired you.

[01:07:41] You proved that you were fluent versus, uh, like. The flip side of the coin that's like, Whoa, all audio guys are about the same and you know, I'll do a good job and I'll do it for a good price is totally different than like, I understand what you're doing, I get what you're doing, I know who your influences are, and I want to like, let's hang, bruh.

[01:08:01] Like there's something really, really cool about that. I think that's why I get frustrated when people want to standardize what makes it should cost. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not, or what Adrian, what mastery in Chicago? I think mixing is more sensitive to this of like do the language is so, so, so important.

[01:08:19] And if you are the only person in the world that speaks Justin Bieber's language, you should cost UN obscene amount of money. And that's totally okay. Like there's no industry standard pricing, like it's all over the map because music cannot be standardized. And if it does, count me out like I'm not interested.

[01:08:42] Jim: [01:08:42] yeah, right.

[01:08:43] Chris: [01:08:43] Well, let me kind of ask you a couple more questions as we kind of start to wrap up. So you talked about your fear and raising your rates and  I think like the most proud of you I've been is when you've had the courage to quote these higher rates. And I think what happens for somebody in your situation is you get enough of the pieces of the puzzle put together, you get enough of the tools, you put them in the right order, and you start to be in a position of taking risks and being comfortable with rejection.

[01:09:13] And I think it was really when you started to lean into that, and I think probably all the guys in your mastermind group would agree with me here, that you started to lean into that fear. And push and stretch and grow. And when you get those yeses on, like the highest quote you've ever sent out, you know, per song, it starts to affirm in your own mind, Oh wow, okay, I'm worth more than I thought I was.

[01:09:36] the path here is not to just quote five X, it's to move it up a little bit at a time. And so there's sort of two pieces there, like your starting point, what's your rate at now? If your rate right now is like $50 a song, you're going to have a hard time jumping to 500. Like that's going to go really poor, which is an argument for when you launch your business or you launch a new niche service that you provide.

[01:09:57] Like starting to hire can sometimes be much better in the long run. And there's obviously a lot to think about there as far as like you start too high and you have no report, no portfolio, and you never close anything. That's a mistake. But then I think the flip side of this coin is the frequency that you are comfortable stretching and saying, huh, I'd love to work with you.

[01:10:18] That one, I'm okay with a no. . Here's this rate that makes me uncomfortable.  three what do you think? And unless you're comfortable with that, no. Unless you can put yourself in a position emotionally we're comfortable with that. No, you won't raise your rate. And speaking from experience here, there are chapters in my life when like this is an issue for me.

[01:10:40] your growth, I think is a lot of times determined by your courage to experiment with higher rates. Now that being said, this is different for somebody with no leads.

[01:10:49] Jim: [01:10:49] For sure.

[01:10:49] Chris: [01:10:49] Again, you want to build this part of the system first as you want to have a lot of leads so that you can experiment with pricing and start to push it up.

[01:10:56] man, like it was really like from the bottom of my heart gym, like it was awesome to have like that first call. Talk about that rate and then as we've done subsequent calls sessions to hear about how that's going into see you go from like, okay, I'm terrified but I'm going to do it too. I did it and it worked like.

[01:11:18] Whoa. Oh man. Like, so you doubled your business in 2019 and I don't know if you've thought about this yet, but you mentioned before the call, like January has been your best month ever, right? How much larger was this January compared to last January?

[01:11:34] Jim: [01:11:34] Like 247%.

[01:11:37] Chris: [01:11:37] So if you look at a rolling 365 day period of what your revenue was, I bet if you opened up your bookkeeping software.

[01:11:46] I bet that you are in six figures for the first time right now, brother.

[01:11:50]

[01:11:50] Jim: [01:11:50] we'll see.

[01:11:52] Chris: [01:11:52] Let's circle back. Let's talk about that more off air. But I have always been a big fan of having a scoreboard, so you know how you're doing. And I'm a huge fan of rolling scoreboards. So when you look at like, well, 2019 I did this, Hey, great, but like. How much different was that than what you did from July 1st, 2018 to July 1st, 2019 did you grow in that period or like, Hey, as of December 31st midnight, December 31st you had grown an obnoxious amount over the previous yearly period, but now if you look back 12 months to, you know, today is February 6th if you look at February.

[01:12:34] You know, fifth or what am I doing here? I'm like losing my brain from frame. If you looked at like February 6th last year too, two yesterday, February 5th this year, that's 365 days. Like where are you at now? I would guess. And that you are sitting pretty in the six figure home studio club.

[01:12:52] Jim: [01:12:52] If not, I'm very close. I think like total revenue. Yeah.

[01:12:55] Chris: [01:12:55] Let me talk about this a little bit cause we talked about this a little bit before hand. It's scary to even have this information out there. Right? It's scary to like know, like your competitors are like, Hmm, are going to listen to that. But I think one of my take homes, what I've learned from this podcast is that being generous and being open, like secrets are totally overrated.

[01:13:17] The more open I've been, the more my businesses have grown

[01:13:21]

[01:13:21] and I think that that's probably a universal truth. That's what the Go-Giver would say hands down, but I think that there's also a benefit to this to you as well. You having this information out there is I think a good thing because it lets you, as you, as you send out more and more quotes, I'm sure you're going to get people hitting you up that are listening to this show right now.

[01:13:40] Jim: [01:13:40] Yeah, I hope so, man.

[01:13:41] Chris: [01:13:41] You can just say, Hey, like I'm a, I'm in demand. Like I know I said I was $500 a song like last week, but like, uh, I had 10 people, you know, submit albums and like if I send a $500 quote out to all of them, they all say yes, like, my life will be miserable. So. Man, I'm five 50 or I'm 600 or I'm six 20 and like that's one of the things that's kind of cool too.

[01:14:04] We talked about this when we were talking about you raising your rates is this idea of, I think this is what you did. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you had like, what was it, 72 songs that you needed to mix? My thought was like, what if he just said, Hey, I cost more because open and honest truth. I have 72 songs I have to mix right now.

[01:14:25] I'm crazy busy. I could fit you in. I would need a lot more money to make that worth my time at this point. No offense, not saying I won't be cheaper in the future, but right now, demand is high. And here's the thing about commodities. Commodities. When they run out gas, for example, the price goes to the roof.

[01:14:43] When there's scarcity, the price goes up. So your skill is not a commodity, but you should in some ways price it based on supply and demand. So like I used to do a ton of rush mastering projects. I have not been able to take on almost any of those over the course of the last year. And I almost always say no, unless it's like a return customer.

[01:15:03] Somebody I know really well that's not gonna like get too crazy right before they release date. But if somebody comes to me and is like, man, I have to have this tomorrow and I know and I trust them and I'm slammed for the rest of the day, I'll quote them something crazy high because in a situation like that, the additional stress in the potential chaos that could bring to my life.

[01:15:24] Like, I got to know I'm not gonna like take a bath on sweet. I, you know, worked four times as hard and I made 20% more like no way. If I got to work late, like I'm going to charge you through the nose for that. And that's okay. And I think for you, having those 72 songs and being able to have the truth to just be able to say, look, I'm swamped.

[01:15:47] It's going to cost more. Sorry.

[01:15:49] Jim: [01:15:49] Yeah, I've done that thing too. It's like, Hey, right now, this is what's going on and it'll cost you this much. If you want to wait a month, you can pay me, you know, a slightly smaller right now. And I'll just, I'll push you back until then, you know? But I, I, it's not going to be before a month or six weeks from now.

[01:16:07] Like that's when you're going to get in.

[01:16:08] Chris: [01:16:08] totally. Well, and there's a fascinating component there of if you go to ups and you want to ship a package. There's different prices depending on how fast you want it, right? So that's one dynamic of how you price something. Another dynamic is whether you pay in advance or not. I mean, there's just a lot of levers there.

[01:16:28] There's a lot of leverage when it comes to raising your prices. And I think the most important piece is just building your comfort zone there. So I've said this story on the podcast before, but ah, great point. To illustrate this  in 2008 my wife and I. We're living in her aunt and uncles house, and I was running a production company out of there.

[01:16:47] Very nice finished basement. And then we started shopping for a house in 2008 and we ran into, there's a lot more to this story, but we ran into this guy, the Scottish pastor at a Christian coffee house in our neighborhood and Gahanna Ohio at the time. And I'm going to do an impersonation of him. I do it in love.

[01:17:06] He sends passed away, but he said something that changed my life as we told them, you know, we're trying to buy a house. You know, it's, this is right in the midst of the economic collapse built around the housing bubble. And I mentioned him. Yeah, we're trying to find a house. It's been tricky. We're living at her aunts and uncles house.

[01:17:22] We have to move out in June and we're going to move into this other house temporarily, and we're trying to buy a house as quickly as you possibly can. And he said something. He said. And forgive me if you're Scottish or Irish cause there's my accent's terrible and it's a little bit of both. Even though he was Scottish, he said, well Chris, my father always told me, when you're buying a house, if you're not embarrassed by how much you offered,  offered too much.

[01:17:45] And like it was a transformational moment for me of like, Oh, being embarrassed can be good. And that immediately applies to our conversation as well. Of like. There are some times if you're not occasionally embarrassed by how expensive you are, you're doing it wrong. You should be occasionally, at least somewhat embarrassed.

[01:18:05] And I think for people they tend to grow faster, tend to have a higher level of tolerance for like, Oh my gosh, like 500 a song. Uh, Billy Decker charges less than that. Like your tolerance for that had a lot to do with your growth. Over the last year, you doubled in size. Everyone listening to this podcast right now with a few exceptions,  wants to do that and I really think, honestly, like through our conversations, like this has been a bigger piece of coaching for me as of late, is talking about like doubling in a year.

[01:18:41] You know, this two X three 65 is kind of how I've been referring to it in my own mind.  I really think everyone's goal should be to double in size in the next year. And if you build the systems that you need to do that, you have a much better shot at doing that. Then if you plan for no growth, which is what most people do, and then so they don't have any systems, and then they grow and then they get miserable.

[01:19:05] Jim: [01:19:05] Yeah. Like I plan to maintain. It's like, all right, that's going to be where you're at. The other best part about doing all that was I worked less than the previous year.

[01:19:14] Chris: [01:19:14] That's amazing. That's the way to do it.

[01:19:17] Jim: [01:19:17] That's the way to do it.

[01:19:18] Chris: [01:19:18] In the early two thousands that's not how I grew up. Chris Graham mastering.

[01:19:20] Jim: [01:19:20] No, me neither at all. I was working every of the hours.

[01:19:24] Chris: [01:19:24] Yeah, I just worked more and more and more and more, and then I'd automate something that I work less and then I'd work more and more, and then I'd automate something else and I'd work a lot less, and then I'd work more and more and more and more and more. And then it was this like stair-step thing.

[01:19:39] Eventually what would happen is I would plateau on the amount of work I could handle. And then I would build a new system, so I'd move a little bit faster. Maybe the uploading was improved, or maybe the, the way projects were set up for me, the way projects were prepped would improve and then suddenly, like the total amount of projects I could take on that year at that price went up and then I would pretty quickly hit that ceiling again and then I have to figure out what to do.

[01:20:01] And it wasn't until I started really messing with pricing where it was like, Whoa, like. I can much more dramatically affect my income by messing with pricing than I can with systems ultimately. And like that's uncomfortable for me to say cause I'm like the systems guy, right? I'm like the how to make it, you're more efficient dude.

[01:20:20] It's like sort of becoming the brand for better or for worse. I think a piece of that to keep in mind, I think like this is kind of the, the thought I want to start to bring this to a close on is that when you raise your rates, math is your friend.

[01:20:34]

[01:20:34] Jim: [01:20:34] Right?

[01:20:35] Chris: [01:20:35] And I mean that not in that you need to do the math, but that the impact of the math is really, really good.

[01:20:40] So, and again, this is only applicable if you have a, a decent amount of projects per month. I would say like, okay, so I say five projects per month coming in, or let's call that 10 leads per month coming in and 10 quality qualified leads. People you actually would want to work with. If you raise your rates 10% and you've got 10 leads coming in.

[01:21:01]

[01:21:01] And let's say at this point, all 10 of them say yes on average. It's pretty rare, but there are guys out there that do that. 10 leads come in, they send up proposals. All 10 leads say, yes, you raise your rates, 10% in one of two things is going to happen the next month. All things being equal, you're going to do 10 projects and you're going to make 10% more and you're going to work the same amount of time or erased it rates 10%.

[01:21:27] And one person said, ah, it's too rich for my blood. I'm out. So now you have 10% less projects, only nine projects, but because you raised your rates 10% you make exactly the same that second month that you did in the first month, but you work 10% less. That math gets fascinating. If you raise your rates 50% and you get 50% as much projects as normal, you make twice as much per hour, and you can either.

[01:21:56] Work half as much, or you can take on twice as many projects.

[01:22:01]

[01:22:01]

[01:22:01] This is fabulously interesting and you want to have systems that are helping you manage this like in place because eventually, like it's a combination of these two things. It's systems and it's raising your prices. And the third thing that you also absolutely have to have is you have to have lead flow.

[01:22:18] You have to have lots of leads coming in for this to work at all. If you're in a situation where it's like you're only limited to local projects, that gets really, really dangerous because you might cap out the market and you were experiencing this before early in your career of like, Oh crap. Like I'm only working on local projects and all the local guys, I'll charge the same.

[01:22:35] Jim: [01:22:35] Yeah. And I've worked with, you know, at a time, I worked with 75% of the popular bands in town, you know, something like that. And it was just like, okay, so he's got to wait for one other, one of those bands to make a record and like, you know, it's whatever.

[01:22:50] Chris: [01:22:50] ceiling's pretty low. When that's your market, you eventually, we talked about this a lot. You eventually have to make the jump to strangers. You got to figure out how to get people that don't know you to hire you. That's the trick.

[01:23:02] Jim: [01:23:02] And it's been cool to see. I mean, because a lot of times a lot of those things were like, you know, it was a friend of a band or, yeah, there was like a, you know, one degree of separation. It was like, this guy know this band that I worked with or whatever. And it's like, now it's starting to be like they don't know any of the people in the band.

[01:23:17] They've just heard of the band and now they want to work with me. So it's like, that's even more of a thing that's like, we have no friendly connections. We don't know any of the same people. You just happen to hear a record that you liked and now you want to hire me from that. It's like, that's where like some real, you know, stretches can be made as far as I'm concerned.

[01:23:33] That's when I, I've really like kind of stretched that, that thing a little bit. Uh, the, you know, asking for more and kinda, you know, having a little bit more stipulations, you know, more money, less revisions, like those kinds of things.

[01:23:45] Chris: [01:23:45] Well, something interesting happens there. Yeah. I see you experiencing a lot more of that. My gut says like, yeah, you're going to get a lot more strangers that are just going to cold call you and be like, yo, we listened to this record. We want you.

[01:23:59]

[01:23:59] I think part of the interesting component with that

[01:24:04]

[01:24:04] is when you are trying to convince people who know you for people who know people who know you to hire you, that's one dynamic.

[01:24:13] There's not a ton of social proof, you know, that could be in the form of reviews or just buzz around town. But when you have external proof of your skill, that starts to get interesting. Oh, he did this record. Oh, he's got all these reviews. Oh, like he is friends with this guy and this guy endorsed him, and this guy's a badass.

[01:24:31] That starts to get interesting because it affects what you can price when you've got that external proof of your skill. It's so much easier to raise your rates than when you're like, no, no. I promise I'm really, really good. Oh, more this  Oh no. All the hot keys and pro tools  seriously, when you're trying to sell yourself like that, versus you're letting the market do the dirty work and you're saying, Hey, we'd love to work with you.

[01:24:59] Um, but I'm swamped. Here's your options. Mmm. And there much more expensive than what they would have been a year ago. It gets interesting because that's a fly wheel and a fly wheel is like, and most engine, there's a, there's a big heavy wheel in the engine itself. If you open up like a lawn mower, a car, an older car specially, you can see this huge piece of steel that's spinning.

[01:25:22] And it's really, really heavy. It's purpose is that once that engine gets going, you get, uh, I'm going to get sciencey here. You get angular momentum on this flywheel and the flywheel wants to keep spinning. It's like a giant fidget spinner. You get that fidget spinner rolling and like, you can't just like slam your finger into it without it, like hitting you a little bit.

[01:25:43] Like it takes a lot of force to stop it in. What you're describing with your career right now is your flywheels running, man, the word on the street is that you're good. Your credits are sending you referrals, credits on records and stuff. The word around town is good. People are talking to other people in cities way outside of Cleveland about, Hey, there's this guy, he's super dope.

[01:26:03] You should talk to him. He's worked on this record and this record and this record and this record. That fly wheel is spinning.  would have a very hard time stopping it at this point, and so you can just run off that momentum. In the same way that a fidget spinner just keeps right on going because that momentum is built up and it's just, you can hold it in your hand and that energy is just like there.

[01:26:22] It's electric, it's like electricity. So man, like you're there and I can't wait to see what next year looks like for you. Man.

[01:26:30] Jim: [01:26:30] It's funny, man, cause like, you know, even doing this, it doesn't feel like that yet. It doesn't like, yeah, I know you're still, you're talking about like the podcast growth, you're talking to your mom. I'm like, does it like, it's just like, here's the numbers. Well, it doesn't quite feel like that yet, you know?

[01:26:42] I don't know. It's just one of those

[01:26:43] Chris: [01:26:43] I think that's normal.

[01:26:44] Jim: [01:26:44] Yeah, I think so too.

[01:26:46] Chris: [01:26:46] There's a little bit of impostor syndrome in there, and there's a little bit of like, I'm gonna like kind of self-promote here a little bit, but when I'm like talking to somebody about coaching. If they're in a situation where it's like if their day rates $400 or a song is $400 to them.

[01:27:01] That's really interesting to me because that's a unit. It's about what coaching costs.

[01:27:07]

[01:27:07] And so if I'm like, well, if I can get them one more unit per month, and this makes a whole lot of sense, we should absolutely do coaching, and for many people yourself included, you'll sit down and I don't feel like I'm necessarily super special in this.

[01:27:21] Like I know a lot of things and I've read a lot of books and thank God, remember most of it, but generally speaking, outside looking in, it's pretty easy to see someone's blind spots if you know enough of their story. If you ask enough questions like, Oh man, maybe you should try this, maybe you should try that.

[01:27:37] Or most importantly, I think he's recognizing someone's superhero ability. Most people don't know what their true strength is.  that's why I get coaches for myself. I've had a number of coaches. Graham Cochrane. There's another guy named Evan that's been a code coach for me. I've got plenty of yoga coaches that are pushing me in a group setting, but when you have a coach, they can start to spot your gaps.

[01:28:02] Andrew superhero abilities, and when they start to kind of point those out, mastermind groups are probably the thing that's the most similar to coaching, but when they start to recognize their superhero abilities and the gaps in the, and the bottlenecks. That's where it starts to get interesting because a small tweak on a bottleneck in your system or in your mindset  have huge impact.

[01:28:22] And most importantly, this is where it's so exciting. Like growth, I think is the most exciting thing. The freedom that having to have a small business provides is great. I love it. I'm obsessed with it. As a dad, it's completely changed my life and changed my family dynamic. But man, like the growth itself is its own reward.

[01:28:40] And the beauty of. Sitting down with a mastermind group or a business coach, or taking a course and spotting one of these gaps or these bottlenecks and changing it is, it's like that G chord that I learned in seventh grade. You can build on it. You can be like, Oh, now I know a G seventh chord. Oh, now I can do it with a bar chord.

[01:28:58] Oh, now I know it in second position. You know, is, is there a second position for G

[01:29:02] Jim: [01:29:02] I don't know. I'm so musically illiterate.

[01:29:05] Chris: [01:29:05] It depends on your tuning.

[01:29:06] Jim: [01:29:06] Well. Yeah, but that stuff, I mean like  been self employed for however many years, but have never really had like, you know, it's like, yeah, I can not work this weekend, but I won't make any money this weekend and then I'll be scrambling or whatever. It's like now it's like  I'm going to take a week off and Kayla and I are going to go on a vacation or I'm going to take it.

[01:29:22] You know, I've got a dedicated day off every week. I can just, I don't have to worry about, you know, freaking out. Like, if I don't work that day, I'm not gonna make any money. It's like, it's getting to the point where it's like, this is a thing.

[01:29:32] Chris: [01:29:32] That's amazing.

[01:29:32] Jim: [01:29:32] I'm more comfortable taking that time off and working a little bit less.

[01:29:35] Chris: [01:29:35] So you're growing and each time you grow, it's like you get a new brick and that brick goes into the foundation of your life, not just your business, but your life. And then you get to build on top of that brick with each additional brick that you learn. And here's the thing, the more bricks he got, the faster you get more bricks.

[01:29:54] It's that flywheel thing of like it gets easier if you're constantly growing and you get to build these things into your foundation. When you figure out like what works in a proposal, you know, or what sort of system that you like, this system that you're using to manage how you do projects, you save time every single day that you come into work as a result of that system.

[01:30:17]

[01:30:17] You save IQ points because you're not overwhelmed with like, we don't know who, whom, who's due today. Oh, like when you don't have to worry about that stuff, it makes you smarter. It makes you better. Well, you know, like you look at just the skill of mixing or the skill of mastering experience will make you better, but Mandy's bricks will make you much, much better over the long term, or you can just kind of longterm, longterm.

[01:30:42] I did a Brian there, you walk in and you've got these bricks. And you start to starts to flywheel on you, and that's, I mean, you're right in that sweet spot of like, are you going to do 200,000 in 2020 maybe? We'll see. You're going to have to change a lot. You're going to have to learn to grow a lot, not the least of which is your rates, but Jim, dude, thanks for hanging out, man.

[01:31:03] This has been great.

[01:31:04] Jim: [01:31:04] Thanks for having me. Like I said, I've been, I've been a fan and a customer of both of you guys for a little bit. I do file passes and Brian's course and you know, all this stuff so.

[01:31:13] Chris: [01:31:13] Yeah, man. That's Butler too. Don't forget about bounce

[01:31:16] Jim: [01:31:16] Yeah. I got bounced Butler too. Sorry. Yeah,

[01:31:19]

[01:31:19] I thought that was implied.

[01:31:20] Chris: [01:31:20] It was implied. Yeah, man. Well dude, I appreciate you, man. You're a blast to hang out with. Next time we do a coaching call, let's try to do it. Columbus, Ohio.

[01:31:28] Jim: [01:31:28] Yeah, man. I'll make the Trek down.

[01:31:30] Chris: [01:31:30] Heck yeah, brother. Or maybe even in Cleveland. I'm supposed to go up there for a show here next month, so we'll see what we can make happen. Awesome, dude.

[01:31:36] One last thing. Where can people go to learn more about you?

[01:31:39] Jim: [01:31:39] Jim Stewart, recording.com which is a Brian Hood original.

[01:31:44]

[01:31:44] Instagram is Jim Stewart rec. Those are two I'm probably, you know, most active on just the website and the Instagram. Yeah.

[01:31:52] Chris: [01:31:52] How do you spell Stewart?

[01:31:53] Jim: [01:31:53] S T. E. w. a R. T, the right way.

[01:31:55] Chris: [01:31:55] The right, I feel your pain there. Cause as a gram my whole life I've always gotten like a G, R, a. H. M. what are you talking about? Don't you eat the crackers? You've seen the word so many times.

[01:32:10]

[01:32:10] Oh man. Well, Jim, good hanging out, man. This was great. Appreciate

[01:32:13] Jim: [01:32:13] Yeah, no problem, man. Thanks.

[01:32:15] Chris: [01:32:15] So you're.

[01:32:22] Brian: [01:32:22] A podcast. Thank you so much for sticking around to the end here. As always, you can find links to the show notes by going to the six figure home studio.com/one one eight or whatever episode number you're listened to. But this one, if you want to see the show notes to all the links, links to the profitable producer course links to the accountability accelerator bootcamp or links to Chris's coaching or Jim Swartz, a website.

[01:32:42] Or any of the books you mentioned, any of the other resources we mentioned in this episode. Just go to the six figure home studio.com/one one eight and there will also be a link to our Facebook community where we have a dedicated thread for the specific episodes. So if you have any questions for Jim or Chris or even me for that matter, you can just go to the six figure home studio.com/one one eight look for that link to the dedicated Facebook group thread.

[01:33:04] Uh, and if you're not a member, you can join for free. And we'll be in there answering questions if you have any. And again, in March, we'll be hopefully looking to start our next accountability accelerator bootcamp. We usually wait till we have about 75 to 80 registrants before we actually set the specific date for that.

[01:33:18] So if you are at all interested, just go to the profitable producer.com if you're not a student yet. And you can request enrollment information there. And if you're already a PPC student, just log into your account and there is a, a way to join that within the Academy there. You can ask Jim or any of the other people, a lot of the people in his mastermind group were people that met up from that accountability accelerator bootcamp.

[01:33:39] Every single AAB. It is the best part of the program. Hands down, everybody involved. It is their favorite part of the program. The people they meet. Uh, the, the stories that I hear from people, the, the . Amount of surveys we get at the end. We have everyone take a survey and give us how much they've earned from taking AAB, how much they have improved their systems or their business.

[01:33:58] Any other stories that come out of that. We get some of the most amazing stories, and I should probably do a better job of keeping up with people after the AAB because Jim, I didn't realize Jim had done so well in the last year, and what happens a lot of times is people join PPC. They join a B, so the profitable producer course and accountability accelerator book and the join, those two things, and then they get so busy with work and things are going so well that I don't hear from them again until a year or more later and find out they've doubled or tripled their business.

[01:34:24] And now they're working with label artists and maybe they're working with major labels, or maybe they're working with a big name producer. This happens so, so, so often. So I would love for you to be the next person to have a story like gems where you double or triple or quadruple or 10 X or business depending on where you're starting from.

[01:34:39] And the best thing you can do to get started with that is to join our next accountability accelerator bootcamp. It is a hell of a lot of fun. And if you're on the fence, just literally go post anything in our Facebook community and you will see plenty of unbiased comments from people telling you how much fun they had with it and how much it helped their business.

[01:34:55] More importantly, next week's episode is going to be another interview. I'm not gonna talk to you about it yet because I haven't heard the interview yet, but, uh, the person that Chris interviewed is one of his good, good friends, somebody that built and sold or help build and sell a company to Disney. So I don't know what I can and can't say about monetary amounts and what they sold for.

[01:35:15] Um, I will wait to hear the interview, what they disclose, so I can talk about that in the intro and outro of that episode. But just rest assured, listen to next week's episode. It is going to be damn Goodwin. So as always, thank you so much for listening and making it all the way to the end because that's just the way you are.

[01:35:29] You're a completionist. Until next time, happy hustling.

[01:35:36] Jim: [01:35:36] That's kind of where, again, where I stumbled upon Brian scores and just like the whole mind shit, mind shift mindset shift. James,

[01:35:47] Chris: [01:35:47] Yeah.

[01:35:47] Jim: [01:35:47] don't make me say mine

[01:35:49] Chris: [01:35:49] Mine. Shit. Let's keep it in. I love it.

[01:35:55] Brian will too. I promise that'll be his favorite thing.