How Mark Eckert Is Running A Thriving Pop Production Studio (Despite Being Stuck At Home)

Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode one 29.

Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm not here with my cohost today. He is still out right now, so I'm flying this ship solo, at least the intro here. Uh, today's episode is actually an interview I did. With a very, very good friend of mine, Mark Eckert, who we interviewed back on episode 68 and back on episode 68 which is close to two years ago now.

He was managing to get all of his clients from Instagram marketing. He was doing a lot of recurring payment project, so where a client would pay him a set amount per month and he would just produce songs on a consistent basis. And I checked in on Mark to see how his business is doing through the quarantine.

And he said his business as good as ever. As a matter of fact, it's better than ever. And honestly, I'm not surprised just based on the interview we had with him. On the previous podcast. A lot of his work is done remotely before all this, and his business was already set up to get clients online. In other words, strangers were already hiring him, so I wanted to get him back on the podcast to see how he shifted his business through the quarantine, what he's doing right now to keep his business relevant, and we dive into a lot of things.

Uh, things about how he's attracting clients right now, how he systemized every aspect of his business so he can deliver consistently good work even when it's completely online. He talks about how he's hired people, and honestly, a lot of the stuff that we talk about today is very similar to the interview I did with Joe from the online recording studio a few weeks ago, except Mark is just generally working one-to-one with clients.

Instead of hiring a bunch of engineers under him. So if Joe's interview was maybe a little over your head as far as something you could realistically achieve in a reasonable timeframe. I don't know how many people can hire on 30 audio engineers under them and keep them busy like Joe did. But if you're the type of person that you can't grasp doing what Joe is doing, then this interview with Mark is exactly what you need right now.

His business is virus resistant. His business is flourishing right now in the coven crisis. And once you've heard this interview, we will understand absolutely why he is doing so well right now. So here is my interview with Mark Eckert.

Mark, first of all, have you been since the last interview, my friend?

Mark: [00:02:20] Well, it's been two years. We've talked since then. We've caught up I think a couple of times since then,

Brian: [00:02:24] No, we have, we talk all the time. Our listeners have not.

Mark: [00:02:27] Oh, okay. All right. What's up, listeners? So yeah, no life's life is Gucci as hell. Business is good. Music's good. Life is good. Everything's good.

Brian: [00:02:38] That's summation right there is why I actually want to get you on the podcast cause anyone listening right now, this week, obviously, I mean we've, we've had a whole series on a kind of virus resistant business models.

Mark: [00:02:48] Coronavirus.

Brian: [00:02:50] Yeah. And so there are a lot of studios that are struggling right now, and Mark is not one of those studios.

You're fortunate position where you have set your business up from the get go to be essentially recession resistant and virus resistant. So even if people are listening to this episode way later and the coronavirus is long gone and hopefully not forgotten about, this is still going to be a relevant interview because we're gonna talk a lot about.

How Mark has his business setup so that it is running like a well oiled machine through all of the scrap that's going on where some studios have lost all of their work, Mark is still going strong. And, uh, how would you say, first of all, it has the crone of ours affected your income for their studio in any negative way or positive way?

Have you seen any change before we get into the details here?

Mark: [00:03:33] We've actually been scaling from every aspect of the business, so everything has been growing.

Brian: [00:03:38] Good, good, good. So first of all, if you weren't familiar with Mark, go back to episode number 68 . We interviewed him the first time it was a, the episode title was using Instagram marketing to build recurring income as a music producer with Mark Eckert. And there was two fabulous things that we talked about.

Ended up sewed. First of all was just using Instagram marketing in general to find clients. Really relevant right now in this climate, so go back and listen to that episode. The second thing was the stability of recurring income as a business. Is that still your main form of income is recurring or are you more off one off projects now?

Mark: [00:04:10] I've diversified since two years ago. So of course I still have some clients doing that, but, um, you know, I've introduced a couple of different offers, you know, if somebody does want to pay me up front, then we have an expedite fee. And, uh, yeah, there's a, there's a bunch of different facets of the business.

So.

Brian: [00:04:25] Let me, before we go into this, uh, anyone who did not listen to the interview, catch us up on Mark eckert.com your website. What do you do? What do you offer? What does Mark Eckert in a kind of a nutshell.

Mark: [00:04:36] Yeah. So that site, uh, is, uh, the main, the main thing is production and artist development, specifically for indie pop artists. Um, from a remote aspect. So, you know, I think everybody has some clients, at least that you do in person. Um, so like, you know, I have some homies that I just believe in that are in my city that, you know, we'll work together cause they're fucking awesome.

But, you know, since I began, at least 90% of my income has, you know, come from artists all around the world. And yeah. So, I mean, I work with a shit ton of indie pop artists from Milan to Melbourne, to London, to Montreal to. I just had a sales call with a, an artist in Sri Lanka that blew me out of the water.

I was like, what the fuck? Like hell yeah. All right, cool. Let's go.

Brian: [00:05:22] That's awesome. So you predominantly work with indie pop artists. That was the same two years ago as it is now. Has that changed at all, or have you branched out to kind of other genres and sub genres.

Mark: [00:05:30] The meat and potatoes is indie pop artists, but I do have some offers that do help artists a little bit outside of that realm, but that's the main thing, the overall differentiation between my model as opposed to a more traditional studio or. I'm more traditional person online. If there is such a thing is we're offering essentially full development, and that's not just a fancy, Hey, you know, we'll make some graphics for you, et cetera.

It's like, no, we're, we're offering, um, a, a real possibility for artists to run their own PR campaigns and a lot of holistic, you know, like, Hey, this is how to actually build something and we have proof to back it up.

Brian: [00:06:10] That's great. So you're offering more than just production services.

Mark: [00:06:14] Absolutely.

Brian: [00:06:14] You're doing more to get them past the point of like, okay, I'm handing the music off to you, Godspeed and get logged. Now you're actually taking it to the next step after the fact. Can you kind of explain from start to finish, when someone comes to you, let's talk about how the whole process works with you.

Cause this is again, let's just actually walk people through the process working with you. I'm paying you money because again, this is set up to work, rain or shine virus or no virus. This business model works extremely well and I'd love for you to kind of give people an overview of how the entire system works from start to finish.

Mark: [00:06:43] Yeah, sure. So you know, if we want to talk about different stages of the funnel, I'm pretty sure your audience is aware of what a funnel is.

Brian: [00:06:52] We've talked about funnels a lot. For those who are not aware, it's just three main sections. Top of funnel is basically generating awareness for your studio. Middle of funnel is getting people to take the next step, whether it's to fill out a form or get on a sales call, and then bottom of the funnel is closing them, getting you to pay their money.

That's. The simplest way. I can explain a funnel in about 30 seconds, but we have plenty of content on this podcast backlog if you want to go back and listen to it, but continue on. Mark.

Mark: [00:07:14] So, yeah, top of funnel, I'd say, uh, right now my main strategy has been through Instagram, so I have a lot of cold traffic through there. I have a couple of things going that helps with the algorithm and I run paid traffic like straight up. I absolutely pay money to get in front of a lot of people. I'll do some, you know, kind of partnered posts with a bunch of different, if you want to see influencers or whatever, and my whole thing is I could give a flying fuck how large my audience is, but however big my audience is, I want them absolutely obsessed with what I do.

Brian: [00:07:48] By the way, if you go to Mark's website. That is the exact vibe he gives off. You're either in or you're out. We've talked about Mark's website probably more than any other website in this podcast before. I feel like every five episodes it comes up, but that's basically the gist. It's like you're either going to like me or you're going to hate me.

I don't care if you don't like me, but if you love me, we're going to get along just fine.

Mark: [00:08:06] Yeah. And if anybody is, is kind of approaching that, like if you're kind of just, you know, sitting on your couch smothered in potato chip oil and you have no idea what's going on and you're like, Oh my God, I can't be that selective. I don't want to be that mean to people or whatever. No, it actually, it's not from a, you know, a fuck you pay me sort of thing.

It's actually completely from an ethical standpoint, the reason why. I have purposefully decided to focus on a very niche clientele is because I truly don't feel like I could help the vast majority of artists out there. I can help a very specific person in a very specific place within their career, in their life, but if they are not under the specific sets of criteria, then I feel like I'm stealing from them.

So I've chosen to opt out from doing any business whatsoever with them. So that is why I am so selective. It's not from a fuck you pay me. I'm so cool. You can't be a part of the cool club. I hate the cool kids club. It's literally like, yo, I'm only going to accept the dollar from you if I can help you and if I can't help you, I'm going to refer you to somebody who can, or I will, I don't know, fucking send an article that I think, you know, like whatever, you know, send a self help book something, you know?

So yeah. So it's really just about. Letting, a lot of people know who I am with the intention that 2% are really going to vibe with me, and the other 80% don't care whatsoever. And then the remaining 18% are like, ah, it's interesting enough. Like maybe I'll, maybe I'll learn a little bit more so they'll follow me, or, you know, DM me or.

You know, Instagram is just one thing. I'm in a bunch of stuff, but we get first connected there. So the next step is like, I'll post a lot of things that I feel I can help the person that, you know, I think would be an ideal client.

Brian: [00:09:54] How do you determine what is your ideal client? Do you have a formal kind of like a document that's like, this is my customer avatar or is it just like I have a gut feel and I know what to say to attract that type of person or all of the above?

Mark: [00:10:05] Yeah, absolutely. So I'll probably explain it like this. If somebody asks me, what's your favorite food? Oh my God, I got so many of them. But if somebody asked me what I hate, I fucking hate olives. I don't like olives. I don't like, you know, a couple specific things. Right? That immediately comes to mind.

Brian: [00:10:21] Cilantro is obviously one of them.

Mark: [00:10:23] So I think it's much better to figure out things you don't like and then whatever's left, it'll probably work for you.

I struggled for a couple of years of doing what I thought was cool and two of my best friends, and I'd say they're mentors, honestly, at this point, Johnny Fung, incredible guitarist and producer out of Nashville. And then my buddy Adrian Crutchfield, and he played sax for Prince, like he's a bad ass. And I remember like I was in these jam sessions with them, like these.

R and B, like gospel jams. I'm mainly a drummer and I thought it was cool, like everything, but then Johnny and Adrian just came over to me and they're like, Mark, like, why are you like in these rooms? Like you didn't listen to this music growing up. You know, you're a  progressive Jew from the North. He didn't listen to gospel.

Come on. And I was like, Oh no, I think it's really cool. Like, you know, and they were like, if you're listening, write this down. Don't do what's cool, do what's second nature, because cool is always going to be a phase second nature. You're just always going to do because like why not? And I made music that sounded like a shitty version of pop that turned into Synthpop, you know?

So from a music perspective, that's why I do that. From an ethical perspective, I know I can help people from a business perspective, I know I have longevity with that offer. So, you know, like I said, kind of towards the top of the funnel, people know what I do. And then once I have both decided what I like and I have a, like you asked earlier, Brian, I do have a list of things I hate.

You know, I think like if you're in business or you want to improve in general, you're going to write things you want to avoid. Like fool me once you're a fool, fool me twice. I'm a fool. Or your trick, whatever, whatever that saying is. You know what I'm saying? So I'm fine getting fucked over and being upset once, but if it happens twice, it's my fault.

Yeah. So I just write out, you know, things I don't want to get fucked over by anymore. And so I avoid those things and those clients are left. So understanding those people, you know, I put out really specific content that I feel like could help them. I'm not doing clickbait stuff. You know, a lot of people.

On Instagram, maybe you'll look at accounts with two or 300,000 followers and they'll post like memes or they'll post, you know, very specific or a very like vague thing. I feel like the people that I want to work with are a little bit annoyed by that stuff at this point, and they want some real insight, not knowledge.

They want insight. You know, knowledge is general, insight is variable and I feel like they really want insights. So I post insight stuff. So I just made a post on like the one thing you should know about the music industry right now, and he was talking about, you know, if you're an artist, like why you should have all of your infrastructure set up and the specific reasons why, and it wasn't a huge post, but I got two leads from that.

I closed one of them that post.  not cash collected, but I made $11,000 from that post.

Brian: [00:13:28] And just to kind of give everyone a review. I mean, go to our show notes page. If you want a quick link to Mark's Instagram profile, or you can just look up at Mark Eckert on Instagram. But I'm looking at this video. It just says, the one thing you need to know about the music industry, it's just him talking.

Uh, it has. 16 comments on it. It was posted what, yesterday, six days ago. Before this, all your posts are basically screenshots of like a Facebook post or just a note pad or something. So it's just a screenshot of text and I see one with 13 comments. I see one with 60 comments. I see a screenshot of taxed with.

30 comments. So these are getting a lot of engagement, and for some people that's all a lot of engagement. For something that's not a lot of engagement, 30 comments, 16 comments, whatever. To me, it's a lot, especially for what you're doing, but it's targeting the specific type of customer that you're trying to get into your studio.

So all you need to do is to appeal to one person that wants to pay you $11,000 everyone else, it doesn't really matter if that post resonated with them or not.

Mark: [00:14:18] Yeah. And then I, you know, I have to kind of warm them up, you know, get them into the middle of the funnel, you know, from a, I'll say from a business perspective and then an ethical perspective. Because I think oftentimes, you know, we're coming from music where money can be considered evil sometimes. Like we're in the one industry where we have to train ourselves.

To say, Hey, it's okay. I made a dollar. How fucked up is that? But like, it's okay. You know? It's only not okay if you're not helping somebody. If you're helping somebody, it's absolutely totally cool to accept a dollar and you need to have profit.

Brian: [00:14:54] Yeah. You have to have a profitable, sustainable business, which is what we talk about all the time on this podcast. You can't have shame about it because that's just going to leak over into putting shitty workout, because you have shame about making money in this. And then when times like this come where covert hits, and a lot of people are affected, if you're the one that wasn't making profit before, you're definitely not gonna make it happen now.

So that's just a mindset thing that needs to be overcome.

Mark: [00:15:15] I'll kind of back that up even more. You know, this isn't a flaunt or anything like that. You know? There are plenty of people have a shit ton more. Capital than I do like, and that's totally cool. But like I'm not worried about this whole thing because I have two years worth of money in the bank and because of that, you know, my main assistant Justin, I don't even want to call him an assistant.

He's a team member. Like he's fucking amazing and better at things that I am. He's going to have a paycheck. Like I can guarantee that we are cool. I don't have to treat him worse or furlough or anything like that because. I was profitable the past couple of years, and I put that aside, you know, I didn't get a fucking Rolex to flaunt, you know?

Brian: [00:15:58] Or actually today it's the a, it's the Tesla that people. Try to fly in and they realize they have a

Mark: [00:16:02] bro, I got a manual Exterra from 2006 paid off.

Brian: [00:16:07] 2006 Honda pilot.

Mark: [00:16:12] I fucking love you, Brian. Oh my God. All right. Anyways, I'm sorry. Okay enough, uh, that bullshit. So middle of funnel. So from a business perspective, you know, you kinda hear about this content marketing. You put out a bunch of free stuff that helps people. In return, they give you an email or something like that.

Now, that is absolutely a, you know, a thing that works, but you can't just approach it as if I put out these free things, they'll download it. Because a lot of people like, you know, you gotta be solving somebody's problem. You can't just put out like a ridiculous like checklist that doesn't help with anything.

You know?

Brian: [00:16:49] I tell people in my course, we talk about creating lead magnets and stuff for your studio. This isn't the profitable producer course, and I tell people over and over again, don't add to the piles of shit content. Like these horrible pieces of content that people are putting on there. Don't add to that.

Make something that's going to be helpful. You, you're better off spending a hundred hours crafting something genuinely helpful for someone than you are spending an hour turning out a hundred pieces of shit content.

Mark: [00:17:12] Yeah, I have. I have a bunch of free things like, you know, I have my release strategy ebook. It's 35 33 or 35 pages and it's like legit. How, I mean, this is if you want to run your own PR campaign, this is literally what the pros use. Why? How do I know that? Because I paid them off to help me understand. I took a month, month and a half off of work to write this out.

Now why did I do that? And was it to get clients? No, it was because I had an artist call me up crying her eyes out. She spent like five grand on a campaign that went nowhere and I made this for her and my clients. But from an ethical perspective, I was like, I think everyone should have access to this cause I want to help people not get hurt.

So that's why it's for free. Now as a byproduct, yes, I got fucked on the clients reaching out or our leads reaching out. It's all about the intention. You can't just go into it being like, how can I make money from this thing? How can I solve a problem? I think money will come from that, but how can you solve a problem?

Brian: [00:18:09] So let me, let me recap where we're at so far just to kind of make sure everyone's on the same page. You get most of your clients from Instagram, you're posting consistent content on there. Not like a shitload. It's not like you're posting 10 times a day. I saw like maybe a handful of posts, seven or eight posts in the last month or so.

So it's, it's a, it's a very sustainable amount of content. A lot of it's just like a screenshot of like a paragraph of text, a couple of videos mixed in there. So it's very manageable content strategy for anyone who has an hour a week to do it. If probably less than that. And then you are sending them to your website or they're deeming you, we can talk about more about the process with that.

I'm sure it varies depending on the person.

Mark: [00:18:46] Yes. So the next thing is to get them to my site, and that's an incentive and like I have a bunch of free downloads.

Brian: [00:18:51] And that was good to talk about that. So now on your website and people should go to Mark ecker.com cause it's one of my favorite sites for studios, mainly because of how many people at excludes. No, it's not trying to fill it to everyone. That's what I love so much about your site. It's excluding most people and it includes it.

It really attracts those who are a perfect fit for you and your personality. And then you are creating content. That is behind an opt in wall, right? And by Optum wall, I mean, they're just exchanging an email address for the content. And this content is created to help someone with a specific outcome. And in this case, it's the release strategy.

And I would say it's not honestly the most effective because you don't really need this until you're probably done with the music is when people start thinking about this. But what happens is they read this, it helps with their launch, and then next time they're ready to do music. Who was it that helped them do the launch last time it was Mark accurate.

They're going to at least consider you for the next upcoming release.

Mark: [00:19:40] So here is actually a bit of insight that I think you would find interesting. I am actually becoming even more selective. So what does that mean? It means I actually want to work a little bit less with people who are completely new. I want people who are in a further stage. Of their artistic in musical career.

Brian: [00:20:03] Same thing here, man.

Mark: [00:20:04] Yup. And that means they are aware that they need to have a proper release strategy. They've done it before and they know this is a problem. If you're first starting out, you don't even realize that PR is one of the biggest pains in the asses in the world.

Brian: [00:20:16] When you're first starting out, you think you can come into the studio and record 10 songs in an hour. Like that's, I've had bands do that. That's the kind of client you want to just avoid at all costs.

Mark: [00:20:25] The reason why I'm pushing more content that is kind of at a further stage is I'm actually trying to get people in who've already put out music before they've worked with producers in the past and they realize that that was not the right solution and that was not the right process and I am the solution for that.

So if I was putting out like very basics of like, you know how to, you know, produce, you know, semi produce your own stuff, like I could make. A tutorial of like how to like get your stuff to demo mode, but

Brian: [00:20:54] What's going to attract beginners though.

Mark: [00:20:55] yup. It's going to attract beginners and that's fine, you know? But it's not what I'm obsessed with right now.

I have future plans for a label. We're already kind of building out infrastructure for other offers as well. And so I want a lot more people, a little bit more experienced coming through the door.

Brian: [00:21:12] Yup. Okay. So we covered, I think, top of funnel decently. Well, there's like you could do an entire course on this topic, so like there's no way we could do it justice unless we just only focused on that. But there's so much more involved with being able to remotely produce artists. Did you work with remotely and are able to do this rain or shine virus and no virus flows continue on.

They've been attracted to your studio. There are now aware of you, they're analyzing you, they're considering you. What's kind of the next steps in the process for them?

Mark: [00:21:37] Yeah. So on all of the downloadables that I have, or free things in general, there's always a call to action at the end. So very important thing that people forget about is make an offer. Like, just write that down right now. Make an offer. A lot of times people don't get work. They don't get any opportunities because they just never made it blatantly clear that they were available to accept work.

Brian: [00:22:04] Yup. And if you go back to episode 80 where we talk about how to get more customers through your website, we talk about call to actions. We talk about a lot of this stuff. So that's definitely one you want to review. If this is something you are unaware of, if you don't have set up in your business right now.

Mark: [00:22:16] I think a big problem in the music community is that it's distasteful to, Hey, I can work for you, hire me, and we can get this done. It seems to be kind of like this thing where everybody's supposed to kind of just slide into these decisions and that's not how it works. People don't, yeah. Spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a slid in decision to solve a big problem in their life that is worth thousands of dollars.

So unless you make that offer, they will not reach out. You'd be very surprised how many people just need that guidance of like, Oh, they're available. Awesome. Very cool. That's it. So all of my downloadables have a simple call to action. Like, Hey, if you need this time, do that. If you need this done there that you need this done, check that out.

If I don't do any of these things, check this out. So they're always leaving with value and they're always guided to the next step. So more kind of, I guess, bottom of the funnel in the, I guess sales funnel, if that makes any sense. So now they have seen everything I do. They know that I'm giving them a bunch of stuff for free, and I'm not asking for anything and I'm just trying to help.

They can then go ahead and see all of the different offers I do. One of them is they can apply to work with me one-on-one.

Brian: [00:23:26] By the way, this back in episode 68 you call this your D fuckboy. 5,000 correct.

Mark: [00:23:31] Yeah. And you know what?  I gotta tell you it's the fuckboy 10,000 now I've added even more.

Brian: [00:23:37] so just to kind of catch everyone up, in case you headless in the last episode, or you're not on a site right now, there's a big, it's the biggest text on the entire screen. If it just said, let's work together. Apply here. It's a link. Have you tested a button on that, by the way? I'm just curious how button would perform on that versus a link.

Mark: [00:23:51] I'm actually redoing the site right now. That's something we'll talk about another time, but there's some things that I feel like I can optimize and yeah, I think a button would be a lot better than just like click there.

Brian: [00:24:01] Yup. So you click it and you were prompted to apply for working together. And there's a video on there right now. It says, enrollment's closed out with itself. Ugh.

Mark: [00:24:10] Yup. So right now, enrollment is closed because I have so much work and I have a waiting list currently where I've decided to only accept a certain amount of clients every single month, get them insane fucking results, and everybody else can wait until I have a spot available.

Brian: [00:24:28] Can I ask you why you don't just get the application as a lead instead of just saying no applications at all?

Mark: [00:24:34] They typically make it clear. A lot of times they will be reaching out to me personally. I'm going to be programming in where they can go ahead and fill that out and we do have the information, but right now, because it is such a lengthly application, it takes about 10 to 20 minutes to get through.

Brian: [00:24:50] That's the 10,000 aspect. The defect boy, 10,000 aspect. Long story short, this is an application that. Really digs into what they're looking for and helps them understand whether or not Mark is going to be a good fit for them or not. And if they're not going to be a good fit,  kicks them out of there.

Basically. It doesn't really kick them out of there, but it's a way for you to weed through leads and it's called qualification. You're looking for what's called a qualified lead. A qualified lead is. Someone who is a good fit for you and you're a good fit for them. An unqualified lead is where the lead is not a good fit for you, or you're just not a good fit for them.

That could be someone that doesn't have a budget. Give me someone that's in a different genre than you can be someone that the dates don't work out for you. There's all number of reasons, but this helps you not have to talk to every single lead that comes in the door because there are so many that come in the door.

You don't have time to devote to that. Every hour you spend talking to a bad lead is an hour you could have spent working with a good lead or closing a good deal.

Mark: [00:25:40] And the thing about a client business, you know, this could be production, this could be, you know, marketing. This could be anything. The thing with a client business is, unless, and Brian, we talked about this, but unless you have. Fucking incredible processes and standard operating procedures put in place, they will not get the same amount of value because you've got to think about it as an agency because that's kind of what we're all acting as is.

We are providing a service for specific one-on-one clients. The more clients we take on, the less time we have with each. So actually, the more you scale, the worse the results. So another reason why I've decided to close enrollment right now is because I'm actually training my team so we can have more of a.

Real developmental process that can be essentially sent to them automatically. And we have about two people, two different artists right now going through my Guinea pig system. I'm very fucking excited about it, and it seems to be working great. So since closing this last record, we actually implemented a few things.

Um, I have a custom built. Squarespace site that I've done a bunch of development on and I've paid a lot of different people to kind of, you know, this has taken a while to get to where it is, but additionally, we use file pass.

Brian: [00:26:54] Yay. You're a foul pass customer now. I forgot about that.

Mark: [00:26:58] Oh yeah, dude. So I'm, I paid for the top tier for file. It's fucking awesome. I'm not just saying that Brian, cause you're here. I mean like I'm glad to shit talk to you in person, but I think once you know that you got invited to a wedding, I think that's when you realize like you're at a time. All right, I can shit talk this person like we cool.

Brian: [00:27:18] it's true. It's true. You were invited to my wedding.

Mark: [00:27:20] Yeah, so we have a whole system that I have my team trained on and an artist comes in and they are automatically delivered a lot of things that I would be talking to them on, calls about more from a career aspect, developmentally, artistically, et cetera. And then we have them actually fill out a lot of things, uploading different files and specific places like file pass.

It's been a godsend, Brian, being God in this situation.

Brian: [00:27:46] wait till we launch our, uh, our Zapier integration. So you can start automating a lot of different things too.

Mark: [00:27:50] Oh my God, that makes me so excited. Um, wow. That like that's fuck yeah. I was actually kind of wishing that there was, and I didn't want to like nag you and

Brian: [00:27:58] We're working on it right

Mark: [00:27:59] cause I run that pitch and I hate when people nag me about stuff. I'm like, I'm working on it anyways. Sorry guys.

Brian: [00:28:04] Okay.

Mark: [00:28:05] Yeah, so I use file pass.

That helps tremendously with getting revisions and you know, our team understanding what is to be done next so I can kind of just be assigned what to do.

Brian: [00:28:14] Let's actually pause real quick cause I think there's a gap here. Someone.  is interested in working with you. Let's pretend we're in a world where you don't have a long waiting list and you're ready to take on that customer, right? Then let's start there from the process, cause I really want people to see the whole picture from top to bottom.

How you onboard a customer, how the entire process works from you, figuring out what their needs are, how you're. Getting files and setting up. Give me the whole rundown, including tools that you use because again, this is what people are like love to nerd out about. It's like, this is our gear talk. We don't get to talk about gear on this podcast because we have the gear slot alert, but we'll talk about software and processes and like systems and assistance and all that sort of shit.

Mark: [00:28:51] I'll tell you what I was doing that was incredibly effective and I think you guys should do, if you don't have like a crazy fancy site and all of this automation. And  systems. So this is what you should do, okay. When you bring a client on, okay. Firstly, understand your payment terms. Okay. So have that very clearly laid out.

Um, make sure that's it. Okay. You have to guide the buyer. That's a term is if you go ahead and Google, like user experience or UX companies, brands around the world pay millions of dollars to make sure that their customer has an experience that guides them to their next place. So the worst thing that can happen is you take on a buyer, a client in this case, and they don't know what's the next step.

If you don't automatically deliver value to them or extremely quickly and efficiently, they will immediately have buyer remorse and you will have issues the rest of your production period because they're going into it understanding that they are an afterthought. Okay. So when they sign on, have a system in place, even if it's just you go ahead and go on a Google docs and right in buyer pays or like client pays deposit.

What's your next step? Send them this email. It's written out, these are the files you need. This is the reference tracks you need. This is, Hey, I need this. I need that. I need that. Okay. Once that is sent back, what is the next step? So you have an actual idea of what is the next step in the process and they always feel included.

This is not hard. It can be very easily done and it's a very simple process and that's how you can work remote. Is for them to understand. You can use tools like Slack where slack.com basically people are both, they are in a channel. You're in a channel. With them and then they can send files back and forth.

We were doing that for a year and a half. We've only, you know, build something more custom recently, but yeah, have a system in place where they automatically get that value and then you can get started on the production. Just have a step by step version for every single thing or you know what's going on and they know what's going on because if you are remote.

The biggest thing that artists are scared of is that they are not being paid attention to. A lot of days can go by and you don't even fucking know. So just make sure they're included on the process and you are organized as to where you are at in the process.

Brian: [00:31:09] One tool comes to mind specifically. I don't think the price range is too crazy for this, but it's teamwork.com it's a project management app. This is one that I've used in the past and I'm about to start using again, and it is so useful, especially when you're working with clients because you can create projects and add what they call collaborators in there.

Collaborators can check things off like that they've done, like you can assign tasks to them without them paying for an account. Are you paying for their account? They just have like a guest account on there. You can attach files, you can integrate with Dropbox and Google drive and all these other things for transferring files back and forth on there or collecting things like, you know, smaller files, PDFs like that.

Forums, you can have it trigger certain things in Zapier. So if you want to get nerdy and tie a bunch of things together. You can have one project trigger another project, so whenever maybe customer onboarding projects done, then it starts another project called actual production process or something like that.

And that can be a whole pre templated checklist of like, here's the normal process for step a, B, C, D in this process. Definitely check that out. It's worth looking into if you're someone maybe at a mid to high level and you're looking to do kind of a home base for your projects, very, very cool app worth looking into.

Mark: [00:32:18] I just want to interject for one second because I think we're like covering something that I think is like the big theme is like. You can have all these specific tactics, but unless you have your overall strategy of each individual, step from somebody first, knowing who you are, to not only closing a production, but them continuously hiring you.

You know, if you don't have a step by step thing written out of what your ideal client experiences, you're going to be missing out. And yeah. It's annoying as fuck. Riding that out. I got it written out. It was annoying as fuck making, but I did it because you know, if you can do all these fad diets, you can do like this weird workout.

But ultimately, unless you have a routine, you're not going to see results. You know, you need a system in place, and that system is what drives the results. It's never just individual tactics.

Brian: [00:33:18] Yeah, so this is kind of like you were talking about earlier, a Google doc. That's a great place to start with this sort of thing. You're just brain dumping every single thing you do from start to finish with a client. Kind of like how I'm trying to get out of Mark right now. Every single thing he does with the client.

Mark: [00:33:30] I'm so sorry. Wait, let's keep going.

Brian: [00:33:32] No, I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying like if I were working with Mark to come up with processes for himself to systemize his business, I would be doing very similar thing that I'm doing right now is just getting it all laid out and I would be taking notes from top to bottom. How someone goes from completely unaware of your studio and to the point where they're, they're paying repeat client.

A happy client.

Mark: [00:33:52] Absolutely. Like, I mean, I'm pulling this up right now. You guys can really know the inside of my business. I'm on my computer. I'm literally going into my Google account and. Okay. So check this out. So this is my process that I have written out. I'm just going to read through a little bit of it so you guys can kind of gain a pretty decent idea.

Of you know what's going on. So I literally have step-by-step what I experience, what they experience, what I experienced, what they experience it is literally, you know, buyer completes type form. And then me, I received this email buyer is then place into email with Calendly, link to book call buyer books.

Caught like, this is a lot of boring stuff, but

Brian: [00:34:39] not boring to me, man. This is the sexy stuff to me. This means that like they are experiencing. A very well thought out system so that when a problem comes up, this is very important for anyone listening right now. When a problem comes up in your business, whether it's with a client and especially with a client, but in the process, at any point, if a problem comes up, you should always have created a step that eliminates that problem from ever happening again.

Mark: [00:35:01] Absolutely. Yes. So the thing, the cool thing is I feel like I'm getting slightly off topic, so I'm really talking to systems, but I feel like the funnel is basically laid out. It's like, just write out step-by-step, and I want you guys to literally write out your step-by-step today. After you hear this, like, write out your step-by-step.

Brian: [00:35:19] Well in her Facebook community.

Mark: [00:35:20] Yeah. Posted there. I'll review it and say if it's trash or not or what you can, you know, I don't give a shit. Just tag me. Just be like, Hey, Mark annoy me. I don't care. I'll answer. But like the cool thing is, is when you have that written out. You will very quickly see all of your redundancies and inefficiencies.

You know, if any of you have followed what I do, I have a thing called backpage.com we do a lot of things with sync licensing and we represent a bunch of different people and we have a bunch of different buyers and licensors. Each one has their own protocol of how they want their copyright transfers or how they want a license agreement signed or whatever.

Some of these are 18 step processes. It's a lot. You know? So I have a team that doesn't have to cost a lot. You can get a virtual assistant for very, very, very cheap. And we have written out each individual process. And if something is inefficient, we can go in and be like, Hey, how can we get this done for us?

So by the time we need this done, it's already accomplished. So if you can actually understand your individual steps. You will be able to go and look at it. And because you're removed cause you're looking on, in Google docs you can be like, Oh, that's fucking dumb. Like let's get rid of that. It makes no sense.

You know? It's very good to understand that you don't have to update it like all the time, you know? But just having it there where at least it's 80% accurate. You know, next time you look at it, cause sometimes things just change and you forget to update it. And you'd be like, Oh, all right to change this, put that in easy.

And then you can go in and be like, how can we make this better? Now that I understand this new tool, or like there's this new software I've discovered, like file pass or whatever, I don't have to constantly. Have an A&R reach out to the artist, it's automatically there. You know what I'm saying? And I know of it.

So that's something where I figured out we had an inefficiency. We had something that was redundant. We don't need to reach out because it's already there. So that's what I'm saying is like, understand your system and you can get, you know, fit skinny and sexy as hell, but stop doing all the little fad diets and think that you're gonna.

I hope this metaphor is making sense, but.

Brian: [00:37:28] So we've talked about systemizing a lot, and I think this actually ties really well into hiring assistance. And if you go back to episode 122 it was just five or six weeks ago, why it's time for you to finally hire someone. This checklist you're creating right now is basically what you're going to hand off to somebody.

Anything you can systemize, like this is going to allow you to pass off a task to someone so that they never have to do it again or fire off a process to someone so you never have to do it again. And the better this process is. The less talented that hire needs to be.

Mark: [00:37:58] Yes. Okay, so a couple things. Two things. So the most important thing that people need to understand is you need to spend that money before you have it. Like the first time I ever hired somebody, I felt gut wrenched. I was like, Oh fuck, I got to spend this to get it done. And it takes a lot of self awareness because you have to have faith in yourself that if I have them do this.

Firstly, my client is going to have a better experience. They will come back and understand, yo, dude, like you know, or girl like, you know, whenever you are listening you might not be the best at a certain task. I suck at administrative stuff. I am terribly unorganized. If you look at my desktop right now, I have a thousand different things open.

It's terrible. My virtual assistant, Shelly, shout out to Shelly. You're the best. I just gave her a raise. Like she, you know, she handles all this stuff for me, so you're going to spend it before you have it. And secondly, do this. It's kind of boring, but like look up standard operating procedures, you know, just like Google that, I didn't even know that word existed until this year.

So I'm going to give you a shortcut.

Brian: [00:39:06] Yeah. We've mentioned on the podcast are called also called  for short.

Mark: [00:39:10] SOP is, yeah. Just write out step by step how to do something. Quick advice. Just say, you know, if somebody is reading this cause you want anybody to be able to replicate this cause you don't know if that help will be around forever. Sometimes people, you know, move on to other things. You know right out.

Firstly, the goal, what is to be completed. And the second is reason why. A lot of times it's very good to understand why we are doing this. So they understand the end results so they can gather at least a little bit of insight of if something does come up, how to treat that scenario, and then step by step.

Brian: [00:39:43] Can you give us our listeners example of something in your business you've systemized that you have pass off to somebody.

Mark: [00:39:48] So from a production. Sam, this is so funny. I fucking love this. You guys are gonna love this. A little insight into our culture of fuckery.

Brian: [00:39:57] Okay.

Mark: [00:39:58] So I tried to just do the one thing in production that I am irreplaceable for. And a lot of times that comes with specific textures, a lot of arrangement things, and a lot of grit.

That is like very, not to sound narcissistic, but like the Mark sound of why I get hired. I have a very specific, like purposefully shitty pop, if that makes any sense. It's like pop music for people who are too embarrassed to say they like pop music. That's my style. So we have a revision process and Justin handles all of those revisions.

So the whole thing is just relabeled production revisions, tin Google docs, and it's shared with the team. And this is great. The, I guess the acronym for everything is nipples and I, P P L. E S.

Brian: [00:40:43] Okay. We lost 87% of our listeners just now.

Mark: [00:40:46] Yup. Boom. So it is the nipples. So it is a six now seven step process. The first one is notes. The revision notes will be forwarded to producer regarding production via Slack message. So this is, like I said, we are moving over to a new system on our custom site, but this is when we were using Slack. So this could be for you.

So. Copy this in if you start using Slack. So number one notes, the revision notes will be forwarded to producer regarding production via Slack message. Okay. Number two, I interpretation revised track with notes given by artists. And then asterisk if the note is specific, do it to a T if they are unsure about a particular revision, do it moderately or not at all.

Usually if they are unsure, they're most likely just a little bit insecure and unsure in general and will ask to put it back causing another revision set. I typically just say we made some sort of revision and I do send them some sort of version, but if it didn't sound what they were going for. We will let them know.

This typically resolves the concern over this revision and saves us time. You must mention this in your process. Documentation. Refer below three process documentation. Take note of what you are doing slash have done with reasons why. This gives me a way to communicate and sell it back to the artist that this indeed was the right move.

Because a lot of times what we do is not a simple yes or no question. Oftentimes we are working with what could be convinced, communicated and presented properly. There is a lesser chance for additional revisions, print and labeled master, full track and instrumental label. These tracks with revision number in the name of the song are one for first revision round Archie for second, revision round, et cetera.

Follow Google drive and Slack protocol listed below under final notes, and then we have our naming thing.

Brian: [00:42:29] Which that's a very important thing, is having a specific process for your naming conventions so that when you do need to look for a file, you're not looking all over the place for it. You know exactly what it should be labeled based on the project. It's a part of the artist you're working with, the version number, you know it is.

This is an important step.

Mark: [00:42:45] Yup. So the way that we do it is very simple. Client name slash song number in parentheses and title. Slash full track slash master slash R one so that's for the full track. And then for the instrumental cause we always send an instrumental as well. Client names slash song number, you know, and title.

Slash instrumental. Slash master. Slash Ron. Okay. So that's what we sent through five. Expectation. Listen back to make sure there are no flukes. These tracks must be of quality and reach the artist's expectation. That is why we have been hired. Do not ever forget it. Six selling it. Everything you do from the vision interpretation, the process documentation as well as the printing and labeling make it easier for me to understand that the artist has a convinced preconceived notion of what is acceptable.

The song is now complete and it sounds awesome, which means no additional revisions. So the whole thing I want to keep in mind, this is not a matter of manipulation, but understand what your product is. It is convinced why is James Brown, you know, bigger than another, you know, funk artist of his time. It's because.

Mass media convinced that James Brown was the better thing to listen to, but honestly, like if you really, if you didn't know anything, they'd probably be in the same category. And I hate saying that because I'm not trying to take out the mystery and the amazingness of what we do because. I'm still an artist first.

Like I am infatuated with so many records that give me goosebumps to this day. Like, you know, my life was saved because of passion pit manners. Like that record saved my life. Like I am an artist first. I am not a businessman first whatsoever, but for us to do the level of quality while still understanding that our client is a little bit.

They'd need a little bit more empathy than a standard accounting client or something like that. You know? If you don't go to them and let them know and you have to be truthful about it, you can't lie to them. But if you say, yo, I'm fucking stoked about this track. It sounds dope. You know, you can't lie, but if you are serious about that, make sure they know that.

Again, don't send them shit. Don't lie about that. That's not ethical. But if you do truly like it and you're proud of your work, let them fucking know. Because that is very, very important because that is why so many releases are songs go unreleased.

Brian: [00:45:05] You're not only giving them confidence, but you're also, if they think you're that excited about it, which you should be if you're saying this, then it makes them excited. It helps. Build a relationship. Honestly, like if you're excited about the music, let them know.

Mark: [00:45:17] And the thing is like, I have Justin trained of like, yo, man, like, you know, this is kind of the style that we let them know. And like. You know, straight up  send it back. And we mean it like we're not lying, but like we'll send back in all capital letters. Holy mother fucking fuck. This is amazing. We are freaking out because we are like, we're stoked about the project.

And you know what? Like it takes. An incredible amount of insecurity to be like, no, it's still shit. You know what I'm saying? But if I just went to them and said, Hey man, let me know what you think. Well, whatever happened to them during that day, you know, the girlfriend got pissed off at them, or you know, they figured out they had less money in their bank account.

Now they feel like, shit.

Brian: [00:45:57] Or their tour was just canceled.

Mark: [00:45:59] You need to realize that our product is convinced. And that's not to say it's not valuable. It's extremely valuable. But our product, what we are offering as a service, there is no right or wrong that is art. You know, why the fuck was the banana on the wall sold for however many thousands of

Brian: [00:46:16] I don't, I don't want to talk about it.

Mark: [00:46:18] Yeah, but it was key. And I'm not saying that that's a great example, but it was convinced a value. You know, like I, I admire the hell out of van Gogh. But it was art critics that convinced us to admire him because someone of stature told them that it was good, and artists hire us because we are the next step.

They don't know if something's okay. You know? We've all kind of become tiny labels. You know? They need to hear what we truly think. It's very important. Does that make sense?

Brian: [00:46:49] For sure. Let's shift gears here for a second. Why do you think that you are still going strong right now where other studios are struggling.

Mark: [00:46:58] I'll tell you exactly why. My value proposition, if you're putting bandaids on people, you're fucked. But if you're the heart surgeon, you're always going to have, you're always going to have work, okay? If somebody needs a little scratch fixed while they can go to you, but they can also find some Neosporin at, you know, Kroger.

But if you're a heart surgeon. And somebody is like, Oh my God, I'm having a heart attack. And that is like a big problem. You will be hired. And here's the cool thing. The reason why I'm getting more work right now is because everybody's having a heart attacks. So don't think that there is a lesser market and people are not, you know, hiring.

Stop having that starvation mentality. Like. You know, for the most part, independent artists and producers, like all of us, we don't really watch the stock market every day. We're not looking at our 401ks drop. So yeah, people in stocks who are, you know, just lost a shit ton invested in carnival, you know.

Well, I got to tell you, an artist in, you know, London, who's super hip and is the poster child for a sauce, is not probably invested in carnival.

Brian: [00:47:59] It probably don't have much of an investment portfolio if I'm being honest.

Mark: [00:48:03] Not taking advantage of people, not understanding things going around, but you also have to understand what the fuck are people's priorities.

Brian: [00:48:10] That's actually a really important thing. If you listen to last week we had an episode about mindset and one of those mindsets, those toxic mindsets we discussed was. The scarcity mentality and what happens in a situation like this where the economy retracts, where people aren't necessarily spinning isn't much money, where things are really uncertain.

People are out of jobs, and it might be a lot of our listeners in that situation right now, they assume that that means that exact same thing is happening to all of their clients, so they just give up. I can't tell you how many people have, I've heard you say that just off their hands and give up because it's crazy.

I got laid off from my job.

Mark: [00:48:46] It's sad because there are so many incredible stories in art. That need to be told. I'm really not fluffing. I know that sounds like super cliche and shit, but like I'll just get like vulnerable for a minute. It's just me and you, Bri,

Brian: [00:49:00] Yeah. It's just me and UBU.

Mark: [00:49:01] and however many people are listening. But like when I was in high school, I was.

The one Jewish kid in my school in, you know, the South, it was fucking rough. Okay. And passion pit manners. That record really spoke to me and I'm being honest, like I wouldn't be here without that record. These stories are incredibly important and that is a priority for a lot of people. You are doing a selfless act.

By helping these stories get out there. That's how I truly feel like I'm not just getting a big check and saying fuck off. Like, I mean, we need as many people to listen to what you have to say. That's what our is,

Brian: [00:49:41] Just to add to that right now because so many people are stuck at home and they're not on tour. That just means more music being written right now.

Mark: [00:49:48] and everybody's on their phone. You have more attention now than ever before.

Brian: [00:49:52] Yup. Have you seen a, just out of curiosity, has any of the coven related stuff affected your ads either positively or negatively?

Mark: [00:49:58] You know what's interesting? The only thing that I have experience is I think some people are a little bit. More critical. But on the contrary, some people are more than ever understanding that they need to invest in themselves. So, you know, there's a famous Warren buffet quote, and he said, you know, only when the tide goes out, you see everybody swimming naked.

Brian: [00:50:22] Yeah, that's what he's referring to in recessions when everyone's leveraged up to their nipples, in your case, in debt. Then there are going to be the ones that are standing naked in the low tide.

Mark: [00:50:31] Exactly. And what you know, we're seeing is you can't bullshit anymore. So this  entire thing is going to do one of two things. It's going to knock you on your ass or it's going to propel you forward. For me and my team, it is propelling us forward because we are providing actual value for people. It's proven.

And we are constantly proving that and we work our asses off and we are ethical as hell. That is the number one most important thing is do not accept a dollar unless you can provide value for that person and don't accept a dollar from somebody you don't like. You know, even if that means less revenue.

And here's another thing. Sure. Maybe you might think people are spending less as a whole, maybe. But guys, you got to realize there is a huge difference between revenue and profit. That's something that I'm trying to study a lot lately. There is a big difference between getting a big check and then appropriately re-investing that check.

Brian: [00:51:33] Yeah. I think most of our listeners are just assuming revenue is profit. Obviously they have rent to pay and they have utility bills and maybe a few pieces of software they might pay for, but all in all, most of it's just profit. Right. You're saying is that's the wrong approach is to appropriately be reinvesting revenue back into your business.

Mark: [00:51:52] Try this. Okay. This is what I've been putting together lately. A great tool I love is you need a budget.com why NAB.

Brian: [00:52:00] I'm a paying customer as well.

Mark: [00:52:02] Yeah. It's the only budgeting tool for variable income, basically. Meaning you make different amounts every month. What I do is, you know, we kind of split everything 50% for owner expenses and like just running that, making sure we can continue to do so.

30% goes to expenses, like for the business, 15% I just put away for tax. I don't have a big surprise. And then 5% profit. Right now, typically, if you're doing under 250 K a year, which is where we're at, that's kind of what you try to be at some, allegedly, I'm just trying it out because I figured why not try a system as opposed to not having one at all?

And then as you grow, things change, but try that out and just, you know, if you make 1000 bucks, 500 bucks goes to you, like your bills and et cetera, 30% goes to you. Okay. We are absolutely reinvesting $300 into ads or $300. In to taking time for product or consultations. 15% goes to taxes, so you're not totally fucked, and then 5% you just put aside and you can change it.

But I think that's a great place to start.

Brian: [00:53:04] Yeah. It's kind of goes along with, ah, what's the book? I can't remember the book name.

Mark: [00:53:07] Profit first.

Brian: [00:53:08] Yes. Profit first. That's it.

Mark: [00:53:10] That's where I got this from. Sorry, I didn't mention that, but scrape up. It's the only accounting book that makes you not want to kill

Brian: [00:53:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it's a good system and I will say I don't, I don't think I followed anything like this really until launching file pass because file passes the first business where I had a co-founder from the start, someone that I have actually partnered with. And that just makes the accounting aspect much more of a formal process.

Where you know, we have to split certain things and we have to make sure the budgets are aligned to certain things. And we're probably still not as formal as we could be, but I do love the asthma. We haven't taken any money from fall past just being, and we put all of it. We put it all back into the company, but.

Mark: [00:53:46] Yeah. I haven't taken anything from that pitch for the  past over two years. Everything is completely reinvested, so I'm not following that, but I'm the only person who founded it. Other things that I'm working on will have more of a, you know, official approach, but start there. If you're self employed and you're just producing.

Brian: [00:54:02] The takeaway here and something that I just haven't really thought of that I, I love this is treating your business like a business. That's the thing is we treat it like it's our paycheck when it's really our business, and if you treat your business like a paycheck, you're never investing back into your business the appropriate amount.

Treat it like a business. Then every dollar you take away. You're saying, I don't want to invest that back in my business. Every dollar you invest back in your business is just going to, hopefully, if you do it correctly, longterm, grow your cashflow so that when you do start taking a larger and larger cut, that is a much larger cut than you could've ever imagined.

Mark: [00:54:34] Yeah, and I think also like a very common thing is people say re-investment and they don't actually know what the fuck that means. A very vague term. Very simply, what reinvestment means is getting more people in and giving them a better experience. That's all it means. Reinvesting means getting people to experience a better time with you.

That's it. That's all it is. That's what reinvestment means.

Brian: [00:54:55] Yeah. Do you have any closing thoughts here on anyone who's maybe struggling during the covet crisis to get customers to maybe pivot their business model online? Like

Mark: [00:55:06] Yeah. I mean like, here's the thing is that this is a proven model. It is a model that like doing everything remote is a model that will be the standard in a couple short years. There's an old saying, I love to always follow, and like my team always thinks about it. When your consumer's behavior changes, your product must as well.

Okay. When your consumer behavior changes, your product must as well. So you know, people are at home all the time. People are alone all the time. People are not at studios all the time. There's maybe less money being made from people. Okay, well how the fuck can you make yourself the best possible position for those people?

At the end of the day, guys, like, here's the thing, I want to be very clear about this. This is not forever. You know?

Brian: [00:55:54] It feels like it.

Mark: [00:55:55] Yeah, sure. I mean like, listen, I'm staying with my girlfriend the past five weeks in her dog. They are amazing. I would rather not be with anybody else, but at the same time, I'm home all the time, you know?

And that gets old. But this is not forever. So, you know, set yourself up. To work, be profitable and flourish in a very, very tough time. Because think of it, if you can work under all these pressures and make shit happen and help people like truly help them when things are good, you're going to be unstoppable.

This has been a huge wake up call for me and figuring out things I didn't need, things I was wasting money on, like I'm so excited about right now because this my environment. Has not because we're nervous or anything like that, but because I'm seeing some things happen and my awareness is heightened again.

You know, I'm forced having to think like I just moved into my first apartment again and I'm like, Oh my God, how am I gonna make rent? Even though we're not nervous about that? It's given me this heightened awareness so you know, understand where everybody's at and learn to flourish right now. Read a fuck ton of books.

Read a fuck ton of books, you know, and follow this podcast. Like I'm not even just saying like, but this is like a very crazy amount of insight. Just want you guys to know like what Brian and I are talking about on here. And what Brian talks about with his guests, they talk about outside the podcast to the same level of degree.

This isn't fluff. This isn't like leaving stuff out. We don't have private shit going on. These are real conversations, and I think this is one of the very few times. Are very few places where you can experience like no real shit that people are trying without any of the fluff. So just stay aware, understand insight, and constantly provide value and learn to flourish under pressure and you are going to be set for the rest of your fucking life.

Brian: [00:57:57] I agree. And here's one more thing that I thought of. Whenever you're talking about that in these downtimes, when things are tough for people and you're seeing studios drop off left and right, because maybe they legitimately cannot get clients right now, maybe there's some legitimate reason, but a lot of studios who are struggling right now, it's 100% mental.

They're just giving up. They refuse to actually try. This is your time to. Claim market share, where you're saying all those clients who used to work with, I'm about to steal them from you, and that sounds rough and harsh, but at the same time, when it comes out the other side of this, I have these clients now that you lost because you just gave up.

So that is where you're setting yourself up for the upside here. As you're saying. I'm willing to put in the extra work right now and shift my business and set up processes and systems and maybe even hire and invest into my business right now in the tough times, because when this is all over, I will be succeeding.

I will be growing. I'll be scaling in the future. So I'm going to put in the work now.

Mark: [00:58:51] Historically speaking, just to kind of back up our, you know, ridiculous fucking banter. You know, cause I don't want to be all fluff. Tony Robbins, you know, on a very real note, if you need some like real evidence behind this, if you look at the companies who fails during depressions or recessions and companies who flourished.

The ones that did poorly overreacted or reacted. They either spent a lot more than they normally did or they spent a lot less than they normally did. And then the ones who are like, you know what? Business as usual, baby, let's keep going. You know, this is an opportunity. Yeah, it's tough, but this is how we're looking at things and we know we can gravitate, you know, these people and take up this market, share, help with this, blah, blah, blah, and continue to help our customers.

Those ones. You know, are the Coca-Cola's. Those ones are like the huge companies that have always lasted. So you know, guys, you're being pushed a little bit. You're being forced to push, and you can't just take a nap. That's an amazing place to be.

Brian: [00:59:52] So before we wrap up here, is there anything else you want to mention on the podcast?

Mark: [00:59:56] Yeah. Okay. So something that I think all of you guys would be into since, you know, the vast majority of you guys are producers out there. So I founded that pitch about two years ago, and we are literally paying out thousands of dollars to producers every single month from placements. We secure in sync licensing, tech  shit ton of artists.

Every single member on our site receives opportunities throughout the year to prenegotiated deals direct to buyer from our team.

Brian: [01:00:26] Basically your people, the producers that are part of that pitch are creating music tracks based on what the music supervisors and companies are looking for and you're pitching those songs.

Mark: [01:00:36] Yup. Everything is prenegotiated with a set of buyers and licensors and artists that we work with. So we set the entire thing. We set that entire stage. We send you, you can log into our site and it says exactly what is needed. You pitch it to us and then we send it to them. So basically there is, um, you know, masterclasses on there.

We facilitate all of the, you know, different things with the deal. We pay out 100%. If you land it.

Brian: [01:01:02] I saw one of your Instagram posts, you said we paid out $4,000 this week.

Mark: [01:01:08] Yeah. I got DMS of like, Hey man, are these just like the opportunities? I know that it's a good marketing. It's like, no, bro, like I fucking pay palled the four grand out to people around the world and it's been growing every single month. So yeah. Additionally, you get a dedicated ANR from your account. We have a really bad ass community, kind of like six figure.

So if you're into it, you know, I'll hook you up. Brian's my dude. I love all of you. I'm active in the group, and so if you go to that pitch.com/ six-figure as I  F, I, G, U. R. E, check it out if you want to be a part of it. We have a 20% off code for listeners of six figure home studio. So just put in the code six figure sexy.

And you'll have 20% you'll have 20% off your membership. So yeah, that pitch.com/six figure and you can watch me, she'd be all about our entire process and how it's not bullshit and we're really making the damn thing happen.

Brian: [01:02:01] Yeah, it's unique business model. So it's, I haven't seen anyone else doing this, so definitely go check it out. If you're interested in, you're writing music at home and you want to do something to maybe supplement your income with that. Mark, dude, thank you so much for coming on. My dude.

Mark: [01:02:13] I love you to bed spry.

Brian: [01:02:14] If you have any questions for, Mark is active member in our Facebook community, so.

Mark: [01:02:17] And just reach out to me on Instagram like, I don't give a shit.

Brian: [01:02:19] That's true. Yeah. All right. Well take care. I'll, uh, I'll wrap this up. It as an awkward way as possible. Bye.

Mark: [01:02:26] ya. Goodbye.

Brian: [01:02:29] And cut.

So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Again, thank you so much for come on the podcast, Mark. Um, not only is it great to learn from someone like him and see what sort of strategies he's implementing right now is also really inspiring to see people that are flourishing despite what is going on around us right now.

If you are one of those people right now, it is kind of scrambling to figure out what you are going to do to pivot your studio, to find clients, to get strangers to hire you, which again is absolutely necessary if you're going to actually flourish in the quarantine. Then absolutely. Make sure you check out my free online masterclass teaches you the three most important skills for running a successful recording studio.

The first scale is exactly how to find clients for your studio on demand, so you're not just sitting around waiting for people to find you, which a lot of people are doing right now. So. If that's you, make sure you check out this masterclass. The second skill it teaches you is how to turn strangers into customers without pushy sales tactics.

And very similar to what Mark is doing. This is all about adding value to people, not just trying to take every single dollar that ever has come your way. This is about being selective, adding value, and selling to those who are actually qualified for your services. And the third skill that I teach in this workshop.

Is how you can stand out from those around you and charge a premium for what you're actually offering. Again, no one here cares about getting paid for online work from a stranger. If you're getting five bucks a song. So if you are scrambling right now, you need help. Just go to the six figure home studio.com/workshop that's a slash.

shop. You can register for this upcoming class for free. It's about 90 minutes long and I can guarantee you it's better than sitting around waiting for something to happen magically in your business. I can guarantee you, you will have a zero success if you are simply sitting around watching Netflix all day or playing video games all day.

You have to take steps, you have to keep progressing, and this workshop is a great place to start if you're unsure of what you need to be doing right this second. So again, that's a six figure home, studio.com/workshop. And you can register for that for free for anyone else still listening right now.

That's all I got for you today. Until next time, thank you so much for listening and happy hustling.