Having Your Best Year Ever, Despite The Worldwide Pandemic | With Jake Rye

Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 146.

Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm here with my bald beautiful, amazing purple shirted for ride cohost. Christopher J. Graham, Chris, I do man.

Chris: [00:00:33] Was like probably the best intro you've ever given me. liked that. That made me feel really good about myself.

Brian: [00:00:40] I also want to point out that you took that intro better than you ever have. Usually you have the height man voice after I do that. And it's super obnoxious and I want to punch you in

Chris: [00:00:47] Yeah. I should cut that out. I'm doing good, man. How are you doing?

Brian: [00:00:51] I'm doing awesome. Other than the fact that my life looks the same every single day, months of quarantine has felt like years at this point. And we were chatting before the episode, like, Hey, wait, can you talk about the intro today? And I was just thinking through my life has nothing interesting happening at this point, there is nothing worth talking about, and I feel like there's some truth to that for everybody right now.

Chris: [00:01:14] Okay, this is going to be kind of vulnerable with me, but there is something going on right now, you know? Well, everyone that's listening to the podcast with any regularity knows, I've mentioned PTSD, like a million times.

Brian: [00:01:24] If anyone listens at all, they know what you're talking about. There

Chris: [00:01:26] So I got diagnosed with PTSD, right? When covert hit lots of revelations and learning new things about myself.

And I started a new type of therapy called EDMR.

Brian: [00:01:39] is that where they electrocute you.

Chris: [00:01:40] That's what it sounds like, sort of, but problem, and this is fascinating. This is like the gold standard in PTSD treatments. And this past week was the first like intense EDMR that I did. So with EDMR, it's based on this idea that when you have trauma in your history, that it has something to do with how your right and left brain don't interface well, and the trauma memories are stored differently.

An EDMR is kinda dope. It's a, basically like a Dario treatment. And the idea is as your eyes move from left to right or your awareness moves from left to right. Either because you've got headphones on hundred, because you're holding like little vibrating thingies and each hand that as you rehash your trauma from years past that it starts to move those memories into longterm storage instead of in your trauma centers.

And it was, I'm not going to get into too much detail, but it was insane going through this therapy this week. So I'm pumped about that. It was a shocking amount of like self-understanding walking out of there.

Brian: [00:02:44] Person I've heard that's gone through this and the person I know that has gone through this has had very similar things to say about it. I don't know the science behind it, but it's interesting,

Chris: [00:02:51] It's crazy. I'm fascinated by it. So I'm like fully excited about slash not excited. Cause it sucks. Like it is, uh, it's grueling.

Brian: [00:02:59] but it's good that you're sharing this stuff because I feel like most people would not share this part of their life, especially to a podcast full of thousands of strangers. But this is important. Like mental health is a huge part of having successful business. If you're not willing to put in the work with mental health, it's going to show up in other areas of your life and or your business.

So this stuff is crucial as an entrepreneur because our mental health is closely tied to our business, which is closely tied to our families, which is closely tied to all other aspects of our lives. So we have to take this stuff seriously.

Chris: [00:03:28] Well, and here's the mind blowing pieces. We kind of start to bring this banter to a close

Brian: [00:03:33] Banter is that what it is advantage is the hardcore conversation

Chris: [00:03:36] it's a hardcore conversation. Yeah. We're past banter.

Brian: [00:03:38] early in the episode,

Chris: [00:03:39] But what I am learning about trauma, mental health, et cetera, is I've been in conversations with a bunch of people. Mark Eckert, a podcast alum is one of those guys.

Brian: [00:03:49] I just got the phone with him before this called a day, actually.

Chris: [00:03:51] I freaking love that guy. We had an extensive talk about this. And one of the things that I've been talking to people about is this idea that music is medicinal, that when you've got weird stuff going on in your brain, that music, it does something, it does something amazing.

And it helps you process that and disassociate from where you're at, just associate meaning go somewhere else in your own mind.

Brian: [00:04:13] I wonder if that works for metal. All I've been listening to lately is metal. And like, it's gotta do the opposite effect if that's what you listen to.

Chris: [00:04:19] It might. Yeah. That's one of the reasons that I don't totally understand metal, but I think my point here is I've mentioned this before. I think there are so many people. Who are doing music for a living who are running music, businesses who are doing it because music scratched an itch or related to their mental health.

And so, of course, well, why wouldn't you do this all the time? If it's helping you to making you feel better and that's, as I'm learning more about my own PTSD, that is a hundred percent why I got into music was that it made me feel better. Made me feel healthier.

Brian: [00:04:50] I think that's why I got into metal. I think metal probably fed any trauma that's hidden away in there and just keeps it alive up there. That's what metal does. It's the opposite effect. All right. Let's jump into the chat we have today. Today. Chris has one of his friends. And what am I assumed to be friends?

And one of my current and past students, Jake rye, Chris, tell us about Jake. Right? Real quick.

Chris: [00:05:09] Okay. So Jake is this incredible producer and mix engineer. And Jake heard on the podcast. I was doing free business coaching sessions. If you've applied for that, stay tuned. We're 142 applicants deep on that.

Brian: [00:05:24] Cuddle luck with that.

Chris: [00:05:25] I'm trying to catch up, but Jake and I did a session and we both like started crying and it was beautiful.

And we became fast friends talking about some of the stuff that we just talked about.

Brian: [00:05:36] Wow. That's so unmanly guys, come on, joking.

Chris: [00:05:39] So unmanly, and we also just found out like this morning that we both were super involved in this organization called young life.

Brian: [00:05:46] What you've talked about in the podcast quite a few times in the past. Yeah. This is a huge part of your, uh, early twenties. What age?

Chris: [00:05:52] Well, basically 17. I started doing young life when I was 17 and I was a volunteer leader for like 15 years and did a bunch of music stuff.

Brian: [00:06:00] old dude.

Chris: [00:06:01] I am old, but ladies and gentlemen, my friend, and now yours, Jake rye.

Jake: [00:06:05] Hey, how's it going everybody?

Brian: [00:06:06] Well, dude, I am stuck to have you on here and learn a bit about your story. I know I've seen your name somewhere, and then you told me you were a PPC student. And I was like, that makes so much sense. It was a PPC that you joined, right?

Jake: [00:06:18] Yeah, I did a second cohort or second round.

Brian: [00:06:21] Sweet. So that was you're part of our accountability accelerator boot camp.

Was that it?

Jake: [00:06:24] Oh yeah, man.

Brian: [00:06:25] Yeah. Well, we just did our, like our sixth or seventh one this past month. We wrapped that up, but I'm glad to have you on, because Chris told me a lot about you and your story is super, super interesting. And I think the part I wanted to talk about first is the environment that we're all in right now.

We are all four or five, six months into quarantine right now COVID is like all time high cases as it is every single day. It's the new, all time high.

Chris: [00:06:48] Actually it's down a little bit right now.

Brian: [00:06:50] You're talking about daily, new cases. I'm just talking about total cases in general. Anyways, we're all in this situation where we're fighting tooth and nail to keep our businesses open.

Some industries are failing abysmally, like hotels and restaurants, and some are just treading water. And the studio world seems to be on this weird place where I hear some people that are having more success than ever right now. And we have some people that are struggling more than ever right now. And I think Jake, right now, you're in a situation where you're on that first camp, where you're actually excelling right now.

And I want to hear a bit about what's going on in your business right now, and then kind of backtrack that and see what's the difference between you right now, to where you are now compared to people that are currently struggling. Try to reverse engineer your success right now.

Jake: [00:07:29] Yeah, man. Well, I started off this year, really spending a lot of time thinking about, and this is in January before we knew COVID was coming here to the States.

Brian: [00:07:37] That was back when the Australian wildfires were the top of the news. And we were thought, that's going to define the year. Yeah.

Jake: [00:07:44] was the first thing on the 2020 checklists. There was the wildfires. I started the year off just having a lot of meetings. I do a little bit of traveling to different cities to meet with different groups and artists. And I started getting meetings put together and going and meeting people and just planting seeds for the year.

I do this every year. Just getting stuff on the books, getting commitments, starting conversations, all that kind of stuff. 20, 20 January kind of goal stuff. I just started working and I was busy and it was already booked. I had been planting seeds last year and just working hard last year on projects. And so it was kind of like trying to stay once this all started trying to stay in the middle and not get too panicky and not get too high, too low.

And I'm focusing more on just working on the work that I'm doing because. I had people to make happy and people to, you know, take care of and then just continuing, you know, to not be like, Oh no, here it comes. I'm going to close everything and cancel everything, but just trying to have a barometer and then try to adjust accordingly without panicking or being too high or too low about it.

Brian: [00:08:39] When did you say, I've talked about this in the podcast before? So if you haven't heard this, I felt like everyone somewhere around mid March to early April, everyone had like a full week where I called it their ocean week. When was your ocean week?

Jake: [00:08:51] Yeah, March 30th, ish. I was finishing up an EAP with a band and I said, okay, this is the last thing I'm going to do. It was attended, you know, but it was just getting the point where they were talking about the shutdown in Michigan and what was going to come. The governor's coming out and saying, Hey, we're going to do this.

We're going to do that. And so I finished that and started making calls, looking at the calendar and saying, okay, who's coming in, who am I mixing? You know, that kind of stuff. And I started figuring out how to move some of the mixed work forward on the calendar. And some of the production work back on the calendar and people were super understanding and flexible.

And then I had a ton more of mixed work come in and it was just kind of this, it still is. It's this game of kind of juggling everything.

Brian: [00:09:31] But didn't you have, you were telling me before the interview, you said at one point you had a lot of projects that were potentially dropped or something came up to where it felt like you might be losing out on a lot of work.

Jake: [00:09:41] Yeah. Well, I mean, I think initially you're going to have that, Oh, crap moment of like, what are we going to do? What's this going to be? How long is this going to last? There's just so many questions. And obviously there's still a lot of questions for a lot of people, but. More or less. I just said, okay, I'm going to take these projects here.

I'm going to talk to everyone, get a moved, you know? And like I initially thought, okay, yeah, I'm not going to have an income. We've got, uh, an emergency fund built into this business. That's been there for years and I've never had to use it, but thought, Hey, I'll get, this is the time to use it. You know what I mean?

So it's one of those things where it was just kind of holding the scales and trying to figure out which side was going to be heavier. And then adjusting to that. And it never really got as bad as I thought it was going to be. And then it just exploded and it's been crazy busy ever since.

Brian: [00:10:25] So I've seen some studios and some of these people were my students where they had. Yeah. Months of work does cancel on them because it was in person work. You said you might've had a period there of uncertainty and you shuffle some stuff around, but you were telling me before this interview kind of what's going on in your business right now.

And you're welcome to share like how many clients we're working with or how many songs are you doing a month or whatever. And now I think that surprised me is you said that. All of these sessions are in person. They're not remote production. They're not even just mostly mixing work. Most of your work right now, you said, was in person production work.

And to get some details on how you're doing that, if there's any pushback from clients that you have to help them coach them through, like, how are you able to run successful recording sessions and August, 2020 with over 5 million U S cases of COVID.

Jake: [00:11:09] All right. So what I did was I sat down and I said, how am I going to approach this? And I've taken it one client at a time, and we have conversations beforehand. We talk about masking. We talk about sanitation and we talk about this stuff. I have the Michigan office guidelines, my wife. Has a business in town as a therapist and I'm in her office right now and she's following these guidelines.

And so I'm just literally saying, okay, what are you doing? And I'm adopting her practice that she's having. It's a good practice of just taking care, everything. And I have somebody coming in and cleaning the studio every week, doing sanitation I'm providing. Wipes and Lysol and I was able to score some stocks of that at Sam's club, before the hoard got to it.

And you know, I'm just one of these people that's like out. I try to be out in front of everything. So a lot of it really comes down to just the conversations with the groups, what they're comfortable with, what they're not. I have separate environments in the studio. So if I'm working on a tracking session, I'll either have the band.

If it's overdubs, have each member come. Two at a time or one at a time. So they're not running into each other, or if it's a group of people that have kind of I've been quarantine or living in their community together, like I just had a group of five that came in. I wasn't in the room with them almost at all the whole time.

I had the live room set up. I preset everything, all the gear, all the mix, everything was run ahead of time. If I was going to walk through, into the control room, I would put a mask on and tell everyone to leave, walk through, set stuff up, move things, tell them to come back up. I would go back in the control room, shut the door, talk through, talk back.

I set up speakers and if I needed to stand in the doorway to direct them with the door open, they were like at least six feet away. So it's been just super being a super intentional, super conscious of everything. And it's stressful as heck. But I get to run my business. And so far it's been really good.

So on top of that too, I am doing some remote stuff a little bit. I'm working with a band from San Diego right now, and I'm doing remote drum tracking, telling them how to do it essentially. And approving takes and approving sounds over meetings, you know, online and it's working. Okay. They're pretty happy with it.

So that mixing is all remote. You know that you get the multi-track, you mix it. You talk about it, use file. Pass the, send your stuff.

Brian: [00:13:09] Shout out to file pass. Get your free trial file. pass.com.

Jake: [00:13:12] I mean, it's the right way, man. There's a right way and a wrong way. So anyways. Yeah. I mean, so I mean, it really comes down to being as mindful and being tough about it. Like I have people take their temperatures before they come. I have, I took my temperature, you know, like my son got a cold from he's back to preschool day camp.

It's, you know, those are open here in Michigan and. He came home a couple of weeks ago with a tummy ache. And I closed down the session that we're supposed to have. And I talked to the band and then we waited it out. Three days, four days, we got COVID tests. He was negative. We were good to go. And then we're back to work again.

It's not black and white. It's just adjusting to every, everything that comes at you. And just so you can survive and keep doing what you love and taking care of people.

Brian: [00:13:52] Are you having to convince bands that it's safe or are you having to train bands that basically, are you having to pull them into your studio? Are you having to like put walls up to make sure that they are being safe because they're not cautious enough? Which side is it on or is it mixed?

Jake: [00:14:05] A lot of the in depth projects where it's an epi or three songs, or even single, some of these conversations have been going on for over a year. So these people we've built relationships. There's momentum coming in. So they're done. They want to be here. So I don't have to have any conversations. It's more like, Hey, you guys understand there is a pandemic, right?

This is what we're going to do. And I send over a list of this is the process. This is how we're going to handle this as a group, please pass this on. Let's all adopt this mindset and let's go into the session this way and be as mindful and protective of each other as possible. You'd be amazed. It's been really cool.

I did a live thing with some brothers. They all live together, the drummer and the brothers do, and it worked out awesome. You know what I mean? They were all in that room. I was in this room. Communicated how we did and you do the best you can. You know, there are people that work down the street in the office, they're going to run into each other, coincidentally, every once in a while, but you're not exposing each other to each other so close.

We're not hugging and all the camaraderie I miss it, you know, but like at the same time we figured other ways to celebrate when stuff is good, you know? So like yelling louder, virtual high fives in the air, like elbow bumps, you know, it's like all that kind of stuff. So it's been good.

Brian: [00:15:10] Jay, can you give us a little bit more of an idea of what's in that document that you're sending bands that contains like guidelines and stuff in it, just so our listeners can kind of get an idea of what you're putting in there.

Jake: [00:15:18] Yes, I can afford it to you. I'm in Michigan. So it's Michigan guidelines. So keep in mind that every state's different. So you got to kind of say, Hey, this is what they're doing in Michigan. So, so if you're in Indiana, if you're in California, follow your state's guidelines, it's really the office guidelines is all it is because I'm not a physician.

I'm not, you know, taking fluids or anything, you know, on that. There's no bandaids, a studio's just an office with microphones and more space actually. So, I mean, like, look at the office guidelines. I mean, if they're going to come at you, if someone's got disapprove of you doing what you're doing, Just engage them in conversation.

It's one of those situations where if they're not comfortable, don't pressure them. Just say, all right. When would you like to reschedule? Don't let them get off the phone without at least having the conversation about the reschedule. Because if you do, they may just go home and start playing Xbox again and forget that they like to make records.

So this is the world we live in right now.

Brian: [00:16:11] So that document, you mentioned Jake, is that just a PDF or is that like a Google doc or is it just a copy paste in the email template? How are you actually sending it?

Jake: [00:16:18] It's not the onboarding or anything. That's already way we're beyond that. So it's just in a, Hey, you're coming tomorrow or you're coming next week or whatever day you're coming. Here's what we're doing. So let's just a copy paste.

Brian: [00:16:28] Cool. So Jake said, he'll send that to us. So if you want to see what he's saying, just for you can kind of model that after your own stuff. Again, look to your own state's guidelines or your own country's guidelines, but you can see that on our show notesPage@thesixfigurehomestudio.com slash one four, six that's six figure on cbo.com/one 46.

So Jake, one of the things that surprise me. When Chris, tell me about you, is that you're actually, you said that you're actually doing much better this year, financially. So then you were last year, right? Is that the case?

Jake: [00:16:54] Yeah. I mean, last year it was great. The year before it was great. This year is. Some growth that I hadn't seen in a while.

Brian: [00:17:00] So despite the fact that we have a worldwide pandemic right now, you still had a record year for your studio or had substantially better year, which is incredible. So I actually want to go back and talk about some things you've done to set that up, because you mentioned earlier in this episode, you said that some of these projects that you're closing right now are relationships that you've been spending the last year or longer.

Developing and building. And then you also talked about the beginning of the year, how you went around and set up meetings and met up with people. I want to go back as far as we can and kind of talk about what's led to this record year for you despite COVID happening. But I really want to know a little bit more before we dive into that, even about these yearly, the things you do in January.

Cause this is interesting to me. I've never heard a studio doing this. I've heard some business owners doing this, but I've never heard of a studio owner doing something like this.

Jake: [00:17:46] Yeah. So ultimately for me, I have some values that are superimposed me and one of them is mentorship. The other one is community. And I really love trying to look at this more as how do I build relationships with people versus how do I convert them into money? Money is something that will be there. If I believe that if I treat people, I kind of respect that I want, when someone contacts me, if someone contacted me trying to convert me, I automatically am like, yeah, that's cool, man.

So tell me about, well, I don't, I just want to know, like, I just feel like every person has, could potentially going to be a friend of mine at some point, we're going to connect on something and we're going to be bros. That's not physically possible because there's so many people, but I just try to look at it more of, okay.

I like this band's music. They're cool. They're in the scene with this other group I'm working with in grand Rapids, Michigan, for instance, they're friends. So there's already connection there. I really do genuinely like their music. Cool guys, I'm going to send them an Instagram message and nine times out of 10, especially in the past two years, I get a reply of, Hey man, let's get coffee.

And so there's no conversation about anything other than, Hey, let's get coffee. And then from there I go and meet and we have coffee, we just have this conversation. And if they really like the work that I'm doing and through this conversation, and they like some of the bands I've worked with, we do a single, they hire me.

It's not free. I mean, it's my full rate. And from there we do more and almost every time we do way more. And sometimes for years together, I drive two, three hours, I'll set up meetings and one coffee shop. All these people will come in and we'll meet. And then I'll do three or four meetings there. And then like, I'll go to another city, like sometimes bands through referrals and to tell their friends about it.

And then I'll see someone comment about a record that I did. And they're like, Hey, really love this. And I'll be like, sweet. I'll do a little back, you know, a little wet, right. It just kind of looked up, you know, who are these dudes? All their pictures are cool. Let's listen to music. Well, I like this music.

I'm going to contact them. So for me, it's more like, I like what they're doing. I see something that I could do with them. That would be good. I can see, I have a vision for that. And then they seem cool. So let's hang out and see if we're bros. You know what I mean? So it's very relational and you know, I'm pursuing them and a lot of times I'm learning more and more, especially in the indie music community that people don't want to pursue you.

They want to be pursued. They want you to contact them. They want to know that you like what they're doing. They want to know that you're interested in what they're doing. They want to know that you care enough to put time in and have a conversation with them about it. For a while. I was doing everything, doing a combination of this style of work and doing a lot more like traditional, like follow up with spreadsheets and everything.

I still keep track of everything. Like everything gets its own place, you know, and it's all folders and organized. And I use all of the processes that you, you know, that you teach in the course too. But I'm also kind of using just some of the old school, like get to know people too, you know, it's kind of a combination of the two it's genuine.

It's not fake, you know what I mean? Like I have to values say that if I'm going down that path or I'm just not interested and I'm just to get work, it's like, kind of like, I'm thirsty. You know what I mean? It's not even a good head space for me. I feel terrible. I feel gross. You know what I mean? And some people, it works for them and I'm not criticizing it as long as they can be genuine and be authentic in that space.

More power to them. For me, this is the space that works for me. And it's working in a way where I'm able to have lots of people I'm helping a scene, grow. People are being heard in ways they hadn't been heard before because the recordings are great and we have a lot of fun and everyone just kind of feels like they're part of something.

It's really cool.

Chris: [00:21:08] That's awesome. And you know, as you're talking about this, I'm continually thinking about young life and you know, my history with young life and your history with young life. For those of you that aren't familiar with young life, young life is a nondenominational Christian organization that essentially tries to tell kids that are not in church about.

Jesus and young life basically saved my life. When I was in high school, I was headed down a terrible, terrible path and became friends with a guy named Nate Palmer. And Nate was my quote unquote young life leader. And as I've been struggling through the PTSD stuff, Nate has been the number one guy supporting me.

More than 20 years later. And Nate is still a good friend that I trust who helps me distinguish what of my thoughts and ideas and behaviors are utter crap. And what's the right move for me as a man. What you're describing as far as your business model goes, it looks an awful lot like John life, it's a relational approach.

And that's one of the things that makes young life so interesting is in a lot of Christian ministries, the ideas like, you know, go to a beach, throw a Bible at somebody and then run as fast as you can.

Brian: [00:22:17] I was going to say, it's you see the street corner, people that are basically turn or burn. They're more focused on shoving something down your throat than they are about building a genuine relationship with you and young life. Their entire approach is about, we'll tell you about that. Stuff later, but we're going to build a relationship first.

And I was thinking through the same thing. This is a powerful approach to this because in your business, when we bring this back to studios, now, if you can combine that genuine thirst for a relationship with someone, with the metrics and tracking that I teach in the course, that's the best combination you can't teach the side that genuinely wants to connect with someone.

I can teach you strategies to do that. You can teach followup techniques. You can teach ways to. Cold email or reach out to people, but you can't teach this genuine desire to be someone's friend. And I think that's why you both of you excelled well in young life because you genuinely care about other people.

And that's, I feel like so many people I come across in the audio world don't get that they are so self absorbed. They don't even understand it. They don't know this, but they're so self-absorbed about finding ways so they can be successful that they are absolutely ignoring. All the people around them.

That would be fantastic friends, fantastic resources for someone to go to with problems or issues or someone, or first people to come to them with problems and issues to be helpful with. They ignore the fact that the relationship could be there. If they would go after it instead, they're focused on how do I turn this body over here into a dollar bill.

That's all they care about. And I really do equate that to those. Coroner preachers who are like hitting people over the head with Bibles, tell them they're going to hell that doesn't work either.

Jake: [00:23:52] System that I've held. And me trying to really understand myself and understand my values. They don't drag me around by the neck. You know what I mean? I don't want to end up down some path. I don't want to be down and then be drugged back because my values are saying otherwise,

Brian: [00:24:06] Talk about that because I think most business owners never think about or talk about or decide what their values are. Everyone has values. I don't think I've ever formalized what my values are, but I obviously have values or else I wouldn't be doing things like this podcast. I wouldn't have successful businesses.

I wouldn't have friends or family. I wouldn't have a wife if I didn't have values of some sort, but you've mentioned them multiple times. So this is something you. Have put a lot of thought and effort into making sure this is the word intentionality. You have a lot of intentionality behind your values, and I'd love for you to talk about, about what led to you putting so much and your values and tying that to your business.

Jake: [00:24:42] I've had a few mentors growing up, both business and personal. And one of them being a young life leader who really kind of pulled me out of a ditch when I was a kid and dusted me off and told me I was. Was important and coming from a background of touring and coming off the back of that, I was challenged by a close friend of mine to kind of sit down and write out what my values or what are the things that are deciding principles of how I'm going to live.

My life. What's most important. I was thinking about talking to you guys, you know, thinking about, okay, what are these values for me? And like, I've got a list of them and my wife and I go through this sometimes and we'll talk about them. But most of them really like figuring out what you're doing values are just by answering some questions.

And I had some stuff written down as a cool, if I read them off. Yeah, first starting by just saying, okay, I'm in this moment right now. This is where I exist. Taking an inventory of like, where am I at right now? You know what I mean? I'm sitting in this chair, what's my life. I'm married. I have a son, I have a house and a mortgage and car payment.

And my wife has a business too. And just kind of looking at that. And then as people like how we feel, and right now, And from there, just kind of saying also to inventory of your skills as an audio engineer or producer mixer, really getting a grasp on, okay, where am I at right now? Am I really as good as I think I am?

You know what I mean? Like, because I feel like that value and being able to step out and really talk to people about what you do and invite them into a story together to make something you kind of have to know if you really are good or not, because you don't want to be necessarily selling your skills.

You want your portfolio to do that for you. So you don't want to be telling people that, Hey, I'm really good. You want your portfolio to say, Hey, if you like this, let's talk about how we can do this too. You know? And so what I like to do is just take that inventory of like where you're at in life, where you're at in career and all those kinds of things and say, okay, let's be realistic about this.

So if you're living in reality, it kind of forces you to make decisions that are grounded in the weight of where you're at. Does that make sense? Well, is that eating truth for breakfast and surviving? Not getting sick. I mean, that's what it is. You know what I mean? Like just dealt with this with a client where I had to say, okay, I'm not able to give them exactly what they want.

Let's solve the problem together. Not all right. See you later. I'm done. It's like, no, what's the problem. It turned out being that we weren't communicating well, we had a phone conversation. I did what they needed and everything's good and they're super happy. And I'm their friend that took care of them.

I'm a good guy. So in that situation for me, five things for me right now, I'm just going to tell you guys, they're in the order of importance, right where I'm at right now. They may not be the importance in the right order that they should be in, but this is where they're at right now. Most important thing to me right now because of COVID and protecting and everything.

And I'm a, I'm an Enneagram eight, so we got three, eight. So you're on the show right now.

Brian: [00:27:19] One points here. Great. 24,

Chris: [00:27:22] Well,

Brian: [00:27:23] I can't fucking math. There's 24 points here.

Jake: [00:27:27] Yeah, well, like I'll lay out some of my values just to give an example. If anybody wants to do this, I just, I realized first family being mentally and emotionally available, me being available to them that way, providing stable home life. I have a three year old. I don't want him to look back in 2020 and go, Whoa.

I went through a pandemic. He's three. He doesn't know what that is. I want him to have a good time. Be healthy. Grow learn everything he needs to learn, have fun. And then also, you know, earning enough money live without being afraid of losing my way of life is a fear that I have. But that's also part of that family, the value right now from a faith standpoint, intentionality being grounded with a group of family or friends, like a community vacay for me, it's church and people in my church.

And these people can speak in and encourage me. And they can also kick my butt when I'm being dumb. You know what I mean? And it's no different than having a community of mentors.

Brian: [00:28:16] I was going to say, even whether you're religious or not, this is important to have a group of people that can kick you in the ass when they need to, if it helps you get through a tough time or help you get past something you're stuck on. That is an incredible part of having a successful business and or life.

Jake: [00:28:30] I think culturally and with social media right now, we're literally in a confirmation bias vacuum. You know what I mean? And like having people outside that to ask you a hard question that says, Hey baby, you shouldn't be doing that. What do you think about this? You know what I mean? So that's good value.

Number three for me is how I'm just maintaining and keeping up with the tasks at home, taking care of my house. Second kind of stuff, value for his personal growth, trying to invest in myself so I can be a better person. Having mentors, reading books, getting intentional rest, making sure that when my iPhone says go to bed, I go to bed. Yeah, it's 10 30 and I try to be falling asleep by 11 every night. Cause my son gets up early and I want to make sure that I'm asleep before he wakes up at like six. You know what I mean? So, you know, and then also have, you know, I said having mentors, reading books, getting intentional, resting, physically active eating, I eat.

And I actually do intermittent fasting for me being in a chair for 10 to 11 hours a day. That's a good way for me to not eat as much. And then also like keep my, um, myself just like. Feeling good. If I eat three meals after working 11 hour day, I feel kind of yucky and it's also good. Just practicing, being mindful and kind of monitoring my emotional state every year.

About October seasonal, effective disorder kicks in for me, I live in Michigan. The sun kind of goes away for like three months. You know, I got a schedule and a plan to react to that too, because that affects my family. It affects my work. It affects everyone around me.

Brian: [00:29:50] What did you call it against seasonal? What

Jake: [00:29:52] Seasonal affective disorder. Sad.

Brian: [00:29:54] is that an actual thing or is it just someone wanted to come up with something that had the acronym sad?

Jake: [00:29:58] It's a thing, man. It's kind of like a mild depression that hits ya. Cause it's directly related to sunlight. So you start, you know, usually bump your vitamin D get a little more active, go to the gym, maybe a couple of times a week and try not to eat hamburgers every day. Try to eat a salad, that kind of stuff.

Brian: [00:30:13] I think I hit this during quarantine, cause I wasn't going outside.

Jake: [00:30:17] you need sunlight.

Brian: [00:30:18] might've been my burnout issue that I had a few episodes ago.

Jake: [00:30:21] People like, if there's anyone listening to this that lives in like Finland or Denmark, like Northern countries.

Brian: [00:30:27] Iceland specifically, cause you don't have sun for three months a year.

Jake: [00:30:30] Yeah. I mean, like, I'm sure they know what I'm talking about. I mean, in Michigan, we're pretty far North and it's like obvious. It's like, Oh, you kind of feel it just come in. And you're like, Oh, the sun went away and you just start kind of feeling crappy. And then you're like, okay, it's time to change my life.

To adjust to this. So that's the thing. Number five is business management. Well, set goals, take care of people, build relationships, do amazing work, manage money well, and stay out of debt.

Brian: [00:30:53] This is the interesting thing about this conversation. This has gone completely off the rails of what I thought we would talk about, but in a good way, and I feel. Don't even have to really dig into the history of like how you got to where you are, because here's the thing we kind of undersold Jake at this point, Jake, I don't know if Jake's willing to share financial numbers or even like a benchmark of like where you're at, but Jake is very successful where he is right now.

He's doing really well. He's working with label projects. He's working with bands that a lot of people would be stoked to work with, but. I don't even think we need to really dive into how you built these relationships with these labels bands, because I feel like you just detailed all of it right there.

Right? You have a genuine focus on relationships. You have values that drive you forward the day, week to week, month to month, year to year, you stick to these things, which is most important. And you're intentional about all of this. And I think that gives me so much insight into how you operate your business.

That. This is why Jake is successful while someone else might not be right now, someone that is not intentionally going from town to town in January to meet up with artists at coffee shops, you know, string them together like a series of dates, you know, like people are not doing this sort of work instead.

They want to sit in their cave. They want to tweak their knobs and compressors and, and play with all their toys and figure out a way to find clients online. Whereas Jake is out there hustling, not even hustling, but just intentionally connecting with his potential clients and clients. That is the key to this.

This is such a relationship business, and Jake is dominating the relationship game right now.

Chris: [00:32:20] Completely. Yeah. You know, I think one of the things that's so tricky for a lot of people. They came into COVID-19 and changed everything. That's hard, Jake, because he has been building relationships and is being consistent and has been driven by values rather than validation or dollar signs. Yeah. Well, I think in a lot of ways, the dollar signs are validation.

I think for a lot of people, there's a weird drive to just want to be able to tell people that you do music full time and that in some ways is sexier. Then the money you're saying I'm untamed, I'm exotic, I'm special. I'm one of the chosen, you know, type of thing. And I get that. I get the appeal to that. I really do.

I've struggled with it, frankly, what Jake is doing. Just, it seems like it seems healthier. I'm astounded by how similar to young life it is. And it's so similar to young life.

Jake: [00:33:15] I think those values, you pick them up when you're a kid young life. I think I was 15 when I started going meeting with other kids and doing that. But like, I, I look at this and I look at my grandfather and I look at my dad and they've mirrored that to me my whole life. And I didn't even know it. Yeah.

And I mean, it's kind of like, I don't know. I really love this job. I love all of it. So I gotta do what I gotta do to make it work because I love it. I want to do this until my ears don't work anymore. So for me, like when I look at this, this is I'm living my dream right now and I have been for years and I'm still living it and I want to keep living it.

And I'm very content in it. And if I do anything else, it's going to be something completely different. Whether it be helping my wife with her nonprofit or something has nothing to do with music. You know what I mean? So for me, this is like, I don't know, I wake up everyday happy about this, even with the months and the years or where I was just squeaking by making budget every month.

And wasn't earning a profit every month, even in those days. You know, it always worked out and I never, I count numbers. My wife does that more truthfully, she's amazing at it. And I spend money. So she tells me what I can spend, what I can't. Yeah. If you are married and your wife has that skillset or your partner, whoever bring them on board and have them help you because it's huge.

But for me, like it's something that saved us, is having her do that. And it's allowed me to focus more on the relationships. Truthfully. I think if I was counting money, I wouldn't be as focused. Cause I might be more panicky. You know what I mean? That's been huge for me. I value it and appreciate it. And I think at the end of the day, if I can enjoy being around people, as much as I enjoy doing music, that's a win, win, because I feel like a lot of people struggle with being it's hard if you're an introvert and you don't love people, I enjoy conversation.

It's hard to do this job, especially if you're a producer, you might not be a producer if you don't like people. I mean, because producing is more about people than the actual audio in a lot of ways. If you look at. Some of the best in history, you look at Rick Rubin, some of these guys, all their conversations are about people.

I mean, they talk about music too, but yeah, it's more about what people making the music. It wasn't Rick Ruben. The one that said, if you want to, something magical happened, just set the stage. Well, who's the stage four it's for the people that are coming. Yeah. And you're not dictating to them what to do.

You're setting them to be successful. And so for me, if I have that much care and every part of the process, those people were going to do fine. Cause they're not too worried about much. They're not worried about. You know, if I'm there for them or not, and whether they can trust me with their hard earned money.

Cause a lot of these artists, they're not touring anymore and they're still spending money and they use their tour funds to pay for the records. A lot of the artists I work with are ticket sellers. Some of these independent artists are they're taking their ticket sales and they're putting it right back into their music and their content and their marketing and their submit hub payments and all that stuff to get their music out.

They're reinvesting that money. And so I'm part of that reinvestment. So I better darn well care a lot about them. If I'm going to be part of that, that's kind of how I see it.

Brian: [00:35:55] This goes back to the genuine care about the person involved in the project. Because again, when you're running a business, it's really easy to see numbers and only focus on numbers. And I think it's great that your wife is able to handle a lot of the numbers, stuff that take that off your shoulders, because.

It can be a genuine distraction to building that relationship because you're too focused on making the numbers work. Right. And the word issue here is if you focus too much on making the cameras work, they don't work because the relationship doesn't work. Whereas if you just focus on the relationship, suddenly the numbers start working.

And I think people don't really understand that.

Chris: [00:36:28] I have to emphatically agree with you on that, Brian, this is probably 2014 when I was trying to figure out how to grow my business without raising my prices. Not a great idea, but it was funny because I learned exactly that I would see more phone calls. More money, less phone calls, less money. And it's really true.

You'd put the relationship first and so long as you had your systems in place so long as you had margins built in where you knew you weren't making $4 an hour on a project. And so long as you were focused on your values and on your niche and just being the same person every day, that those relationships, it was everything.

And this has got nothing to do with the music industry. I think this is just general humanity here. It's the same 2000 years ago, you're going to buy your mutton from the guy you trust. Right. You know, so I love this conversation, man. Yeah. This is a deeper dive on some aspects of the go giver and on truly valuing the relationships that you're building with people.

And I think it puts gas back in the tank. You know, as you're doing this, as you're running your business with integrity and building relationships and trying to serve people and love them well, Inevitably, that feels good. And it makes you want to do it more, which is going to grow your business. And I think I tell you, I have been astounded Jake through our conversations and through what I've been learning about myself recently of, I didn't understand my motives the way I do now, before I had a diagnosis on PTSD, I thought my motives were all one way and they by and large were, but the problem with any kind of mental illness, particularly when they PTSD, that can lay dormant and then all of a sudden.

Show up in a big way is not understanding what you're really, after not understanding what's really driving you. And I think, you know, this question of focusing on relationships, get central to asking what is really driving you. What do you really want to do? Not just, you know, like when I'm doing a coaching call with somebody I'm constantly asking, okay, it's two years from now.

Okay. It's five years from now. You're super successful. What does that look like? Let's work backwards from there and see if we can plot a course from here to there. In the midst of that, it's easy to leave out the quality of life stuff. Like, are you proud of how you treat your friends? Are you excited about the relationships that you're building?

Are you okay as is, and man, I'm learning so much about how ignorant I was of that stuff over the past couple of months. And it's been awesome. It's been amazing to kind of finally start to understand.

Brian: [00:38:56] This is forced you to determine what your values really aren't.

Chris: [00:38:59] Yes.

Brian: [00:38:59] I think answering the question, what is it that I truly want? I think the answer to that is your values, because what you want is what you certainly value and that can change from season to season. Sometimes you have to reassess those values depending on what has happened in your life or what has happened in your past.

And sometimes you have clarity in moments where things have gotten bad. Sometimes it just kind of what's happened to you, Chris, where you've had something happen and all of a sudden there's a little Claire, a little more clarity on what your values are, but I think that's the key to determining this.

Really important thing is what is driving you? What are you truly value? What is it? And that's gonna be different for everybody. But I think relationships have to be a big part of that. If you want to make it in this industry. So Jake, I want to switch gears here a little bit. We mentioned a lot about values, relationships, building, genuine connections with people.

And you kind of mentioned that thing you do in January is where you're connecting with clients every year. I would like to know if there's any other more strategic or tactical things you do similar to that. That matches your values. Cause I love your values and I love your approach, but I feel like you do have strategy to the way you do things.

And I'd love for you to share any other tidbits of strategy or tactics around what you do and how you do those things.

Jake: [00:40:07] Yeah, well, one of the big ones for me. So from 2007 to 2000, And 13, I was building this business specifically and it was a process finding one artist at a time, helping them define their sound, the sound that they could take. That was almost a brand for them. Like their sound. Once we got done, it was like, this is your sound.

This is all people are gonna recognize you, but then also helping them by strengthening them, kind of like what Mark it does. And a lot of the same ways where you're trying to help give them the resources. But yeah, so helping them build relationships, helping them get out there. I've been through people, selling CDs to now, you know, distribution and online only with streaming.

And then obviously also where labels were spending a little more money just 10 years ago than they are now. And you know, all that stuff. One thing that's remained the same as help one person at a time and keep your eye on them while you're working with them. Even though you're working on other stuff, trying to remain intentionally focused.

And so. 2013. I joined a band called Sanctus real. They're a big time, long time Christian band. I've been friends with the guys prior to that, they invited me out on a tour. I ended up joining being made a member and I toured. And so I was a hundred percent. Then at that point, working in Christian music and I was doing songwriting with the band.

I was doing demos production. I was also working with some other artists on the road. I worked with Sean McDonald and a handful of these other artists. I did some demos for full circle music and with X and Seth and those guys.

Brian: [00:41:29] Which is, uh, Seth Mosley was a previous guest on this podcast back on episode one Oh four,

Jake: [00:41:34] Yup. That's great, man. Brilliant genius. He lives a disciplined life. Like, I don't know anyone else like him.

Brian: [00:41:40] a lot of what you've said in this interview so far just reminds me a lot of the way Seth runs and builds his businesses as well.

Jake: [00:41:46] Yeah, he's great. So more or less, we went through a phase of Sanctus where our lead singer Matt was stepping down. After 20 years, his son has heart disease and there had been some scares. He was at a point where he was no longer. The tension of home life in the road was too much in home one and it needed to, he stepped down.

We brought in a new singer after some tryouts auditions and. It worked out really well, but for me, my son was coming. I wanted to be home. I fought to just have one kid. It's a journey I could talk about with you another time. But, well, my son was common. I was like, I'm going to be a dad. That's home as much as possible.

I want to be in this kid's life. I want him to be a champion. I want to raise him well. And so I said, okay, I'm done. So I resigned. Walk through a few months, step down. And then I stepped down out of a semi salary position where I had this income and health insurance and this stuff. And I was back to square.

One of, I have a savings account and that's it. I have a studio that's paid for. That's great. And I have a few clients. What do I do now? You know, I turned to mentors. I pray, I, you know, I turned my faith. I prayed, I did what I needed to do to kind of start evaluating what I want this next phase of my life to be.

Well, it turns out wasn't going to be in Christian music. I'm in Michigan. I wasn't going to move to Nashville. I had done a lot of work in Nashville and a lot of folks that know this, but Nashville is a very tight knit group of community. If you're not there and you're not in it, you're not part of it really.

You kind of are, but you're just not, you know, so who are my people? And I started meeting our indie artists, asking around listening, going online, like finding out what's going on in the scene where people playing, going to shows it was kind of stuff. And I found one guy I loved to stuff. And I was like, I love to see his voice.

I'm going to reach out to this dude, I'm going to bug him until he says, he'll pick up the phone and talk to me. So I did, and I bugged him and bugged him and he answered and we built a relationship and the artist's name is Michigander. He's actually now signed to a major label and we've been on a journey together through this whole thing, but great artists, amazing human.

Jason's like one of the sweetest people you'll ever meet most genuine. And he's extremely intentional. And we started working on music and Jason, because of his intentionality, he just invites everyone in. So all these bands started. Wow. Jason's, music's great. Who's he working with? And then I started getting calls and then I started becoming friends with these people and then become, you know, and then before, you know, it, you realize that there's a scene in the state of Michigan, which is crazy.

Even say that, but it's massive. And there's tons of rock bands and down in Ohio. Tons of killer bands down in Indianapolis, Chicago, and you just start reaching out all these people know each other. It's like a big spider web of they've played shows and opened, and everyone really cares. It's crazy, but like they're all in the same boat.

They really take care of each other and the ones that don't, they don't last long. No one wants them to play. If you're mean to a promoter, you don't get asked back. If you don't sell tickets and you don't do everything you can to make that show a success, you don't get as bad. So we just kind of started seeing this kind of movement happened in our, you know, three years into it.

And it's really beautiful to just see people selling tickets and bands, signing management contracts, and bands signing their first record deal and getting to keep their masters, which is crazy, like crazy new stuff that the industry is changing in a way. You don't get rich anymore. When you sign your first deal just doesn't happen.

No, one's going to take that kind of risk on a small investment anymore. Like they used to, but you see people starting to build careers and they're focusing. And so it's been this process and yeah, the strategy, if you will, to define it would be find one person and help them every way you can in every way possible.

I was having meetings, teaching people how to build their own personal budget. Cause they were out of money. They didn't know how to manage your money. So let's sit down and talk about it. I'll send you a spreadsheet. This is how I do it. Here's my finances. This is what we do. Like not even music related, but like just help people through life.

Brian: [00:45:21] This is 100% the Go-Giver we've mentioned this book so many times, this is the Go-Giver approach to marketing. Go give her marketing. We had a whole episode about this back on episode. 134, the five step process for Go-Giver marketing and why it's the best way to market your studio. Jake is doing this despite the fact that COVID has wrecked our country right now, as far as businesses and being around other people and having a social distance, Jake still having the best year of his career.

And it's because of how willing he is to add value to someone, whether or not as in music, he is going to latch onto someone, build a genuine relationship. And above all else, add value any way he can. That is his key to success period.

Jake: [00:46:06] Not even, I know we say add value. We have to use these terms. And we have to say these things because it makes it clear for people to understand what we're doing. But for me, it's like, I really, I just want to see this guy to have money that he, you know what I mean? I want to see this dude know how to manage his money.

He can't be successful if you don't manage your money. Well, you will. You'll never be successful. You might have some success, but you will never have longterm success. You have to be able to manage your money. So that's a skill set. They don't teach it at school. So let's talk about it. That's what my grandpa did for people.

My grandpa, you needed a job. He'd help you get a job. It didn't matter what it was. He was going to get your butt in a chair or get you working on the line somewhere to GM factory afforded factory. That's what he did. He did that for people. He didn't even know for me, that was something that, you know, I've tried to do for people and help them, help them with music, specifically build this stuff.

And if I don't have an answer for something and I can't help, I'll try to connect them with someone else that can. You know, I don't know how to get you a million playlists or, you know, listeners on Spotify, but let's see if we can find someone that can teach you. I've sent so many people to Mark Eckerd's website to sign up and Mark's great.

He's a good producer. I've finally listened to his music and I was like, this dude is sick. So, and if they call him and he's a better fit, cool. Go for it. Have fun.

Chris: [00:47:12] You're talking about the connector in the book. Go give her,

Jake: [00:47:15] Oh, baby.

Chris: [00:47:16] there it is. It's what you've been doing.

Brian: [00:47:18] You can tell Mark's great at connecting because he's been mentioned probably more than any single human on this damn podcast.

Jake: [00:47:23] He's loud too, though. That helps.

Chris: [00:47:25] Yeah. He's very loud.

Brian: [00:47:26] He is a very loud, obnoxious in the best way, individual.

Jake: [00:47:30] So I've never talked to him, but I know people that have it's good.

Chris: [00:47:34] You guys should talk. I'll give you his number.

Jake: [00:47:35] I'm sure we will. Yeah.

Brian: [00:47:37] I think we've talked about so much at this point. I think our listeners are probably overwhelmed with things they need to be, not just strategy. They need to be implementing in their business, but deep things, they need to be looking inward and their selves to reassess what their values and priorities are.

I think there's, there's plenty to go by. So if people want to either look up your work or connect with you, Jake, where can they go?

Jake: [00:47:57] They can go to social recording company.com. Nice and easy.

Brian: [00:48:01] Yeah, the link to that will be in our show notes. Are you on social media or are you a social media recluse like me?

Jake: [00:48:06] I am on Instagram and Facebook as social recording company.

Brian: [00:48:10] We'll definitely go check out his website and then connect with Jake on social media. And dude, thank you so much for coming on this podcast.

Jake: [00:48:16] Dan, thanks for taking the chance to have me on here, man. You guys didn't know what you're getting into.

Brian: [00:48:21] Deep introspective thinking. That's what we were getting into.

Jake: [00:48:24] That's all I know how to do, man.

Brian: [00:48:29] So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. My fantastic deep dive into someone who is truly doing business the right way in 2020, despite everything that's going on, he's still having. A fantastic year because he focuses on the success of his clients. How can he make his clients successful?

He'll do anything he can do within his power to achieve that. And he's got a business driven by his values instead of his profits. And the weird thing about that is if you run your business based on your personal values and your personal values are focused on helping your ideal clients. Like Jake's case here, suddenly your business starts to work.

And I want to stress one point within this. When Kevin, I guess if you will, is that Jake is actually good at what he does. He mentioned somewhere towards the beginning of the interview that he has to take stock and ask himself the question. Does he really have what it takes? And unfortunately not everyone has that.

You can, you can help out all you want, but if you're selling a bad product, ultimately you're not truly giving your clients what they want. And what they need, but for everyone listening right now, who is fantastic at what they do. And yet they're struggling right now. This episode has a lot of great tidbits on why you need to focus on the success of your clients and how that will lead to the success of your business.

And I think a lot of the, and bits about his, how he approaches COVID right now, how he runs his stuff is helpful for anybody who's struggling right now to make that side of things work. If you want to see a copy of what Jake sends to his clients, that COVID. Kind of prep guide. He gave us a PDF. If you just go to our show notesPage@thesixfigurehomestudio.com slash one 46, the first link on that page from the top.

Okay. It should be the first link. Maybe it's the second link. We'll see. Uh, it just says social recording companies. COVID phase four. Michigan session prep guides. That is a link straight to the guide. You don't have to opt in or sign up for anything. It just goes straight to that PDF that he sent us. So thank you, Jake, for sending that to us, just to wrap things up here, we have some major changes coming to this podcast.

And I'll talk about those in a second, but before I talk about those, I want to say that the graphic design plan for file pass, the beta plan has officially launched. So if you just go to file, pass.com/design, you can get the info and the pricing for that as a separate plan from the audio plans, it's significantly cheaper than file pass audio right now for a couple of reasons.

One we're currently in beta right now. So we need people that are willing to test it. And we're going to grandfather, those people in. Similar to how we did beta and early access for our patients. They are plants. And the second reason is cheaper is because graphic designers just typically don't use near the same bandwidth and storage that audio plans use.

It costs us a lot of money to allow all our users to stream wave files. And in the graphic design world, that is not the same sort of issue. So it's just much cheaper. So the plans will likely going forward, be cheaper than the audio plans. But if you are a graphic designer and you want to use this plan, just go to the file, pass.com/design.

And if you are currently on an audio plan, all of our audio plans include the graphic design plan in it. So all you need to do is upload. PNG or JPEGs or the image type files and your clients can start putting pinpoint comments directly on the images, similar to how the timestamp comments and file password.

So now let's go back to what I said a second ago. The little cliffhanger left. Do you want about how the podcast is going through some significant changes? Chris and I had a conversation this week that we are. Changing up the podcast in a significant way. I'm not going to go to the details right now. But as of right now, our plan is to get us through 150 episodes of this podcast.

And we're just calling it the end of season one, we're going to have a gap. I don't know how long it's going to be. It's going to be a gap while we work on these massive changes. And when we come back with season two and I don't wanna let the cat out of the bag too much yet, but we will likely be a different podcast.

Now, before you start worrying, let me just say this. All of our current listeners will be better off for this change. Our listeners will gain a lot more value for the changes we're going to be making this. And it's also going to help Chris and I from kind of this three-year burnout, we're hitting on the podcast.

I'm sure a lot of you have realized Covance part of this, but I think a lot of people realize that there's only so much that Chris and I can talk about on this podcast before we start repeating topics. And so these changes are also going to help Chris and I. Moving forward to stay motivated, to keep putting out high quality content, to keep giving as much value to our listeners as humanly possible.

While also keeping us excited to actually show up and do this every single week. So if you already like our podcast, now, chances are, you will love the changes that we will make. And that's all I'm going to say about that, Chris and I will have more to say about this in future episodes as we wind down this season.

But for now I figured I need to mention this now. So you kind of know what to expect over our final four episodes of the season moving forward. So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast until next time. Thank you so much for listening and happy hustling.