The audio industry has been hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis. Studios around the world have had their bookings wiped out, and everyone’s scrambling to adapt.
So, what can we do to make it through this crisis and come out of it stronger than we were before?
With no slowdown in sight for COVID-19, there is still a light at the end of the tunnel that we need to keep moving toward.
Listen now to find how you can adapt your business so that you make it through this crisis as strong as ever.
In this episode you’ll discover:
- Why the near-worldwide business shutdown isn’t all bad for small businesses
- What you can do now to have a massive boost in business in the future
- Why understanding Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is more important now than ever before
- How being part of a community is key to making it through the crisis
- What opportunities COVID-19 presents for home studio owners
- How you can set up a remote recording studio
- Why owning a large commercial studio is the last thing you need right now
- Why the real estate market is about to crash (and what you can do about it)
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Click the play button below in order to listen to this episode:
Quotes
“Fertile ground right now. Now is not the season to harvest, it’s the season to plant.” – Chris Graham
“When this crisis ends, whoever’s left standing is probably gonna do pretty well because there’s gonna be a massive amount of demand that’s pent up, and there’s gonna be a much lower supply of who is still around doing this.” – Brian Hood
Episode Links
Websites
456 Recordings – www.456recordings.com
Chris Graham – www.chrisgrahammastering.com
Filepass – https://filepass.com
Bounce Butler – http://bouncebutler.com
Chris Graham Coaching – https://www.chrisgrahammastering.com/coaching
Courses
The Profitable Producer Course – theprofitableproducer.com
The Home Studio Startup Course – www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/10k
Facebook Community
6FHS Facebook Community – http://thesixfigurehomestudio.com/community
@chris_graham – https://www.instagram.com/chris_graham/
@brianh00d – https://www.instagram.com/brianh00d/
YouTube Channels
The Six Figure Home Studio – https://www.youtube.com/thesixfigurehomestudio
Send Us Your Feedback!
The Six Figure Home Studio Podcast – podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com
Related Podcast Episodes
5 Studio Niches Ripe For The Taking – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/5-audio-niches-ripe-for-the-taking/
The Key To Running A Profitable Online Mixing Studio In 2020 – The Blue Ocean Strategy – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/the-key-to-running-a-profitable-online-mixing-studio-in-2020-the-blue-ocean-strategy/
The Recipe For Platinum Records, Number One Hits, And A Seven-Figure Income – With Seth Mosley – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/the-recipe-for-platinum-records-number-one-hits-and-a-seven-figure-income-with-seth-mosley/
The Virus-Resistant Audio Business | A Full-Service Podcast Agency – With Launchpod Media – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/the-virus-resistant-audio-business-a-full-service-podcast-agency-with-launchpod-media/
How To Build An Online Recording Studio That Employs 30+ Engineers – With Joe Wadsworth – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/how-to-build-an-online-recording-studio-that-employs-30-engineers-with-joe-wadsworth/
People and Artists
Graham Cochrane – https://www.grahamcochrane.com/
Pat Flynn – https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/
James Taylor – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Taylor
Ed Cash – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Cash
Machine Shop Live – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqIGoLJDlXiQugQzIVODTcA
Davey Ramsey – https://www.daveramsey.com/
Books
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann – https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591848288/
Tools and Stores
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/
Zoom – https://zoom.us/
Audiomovers – https://audiomovers.com/
Sweetwater – https://www.sweetwater.com/
Reverb – https://reverb.com/
Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode one 26
welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm finally back here with my bald, beautiful, amazing cohost. Christopher James, add like a cheer sound right there. When I, when I call his name ma'am. Uh, yes, actually
Chris: [00:00:40] 400 milliseconds stereo ping pong delay,
Brian: [00:00:43] I don't know about all that.
Anyways. Yeah, you've been gone for the last couple of episodes. Things have been crazy related to the coronavirus which is funny cause like the last episode you and I did together, we talked a little bit about the coronavirus and all the FOD stuff. Pre episode and I was like, no one wants to hear about
Chris: [00:01:00] Happier times, man. Happier times.
Brian: [00:01:02] And now it's like, it's two weeks, three weeks later, things have only gotten worse.
Chris: [00:01:07] Yeah,
Brian: [00:01:08] I'm just glad to have you back for an episode, man.
Chris: [00:01:09] me too, man. It's been a, you know, mentioned this on the last episode I was on, but I'm a germaphobe
Brian: [00:01:17] Really? I didn't know that.
Chris: [00:01:19] I also have, uh, I think I have some control issues.
Brian: [00:01:23] It's an Enneagram aid for you.
Chris: [00:01:24] Yeah. Pandemics and Chris Graham, not a great combination, but on the bright side, you know, I've been doing a bunch of those, you mentioned this a couple episodes back, but I've been doing like free mini coaching sessions and that in a world of social distance has just been so fun.
I've met so many people, I feel like I, I know you guys listen to this podcast better than I ever have before. And so that's been fun. So if you want to sign up for one of those, good at Chris, astro.com/. Coaching
Brian: [00:01:50] Let me do a little correction for our host here, since he's, he seemed timid on that pitch.
Chris: [00:01:54] please
Brian: [00:01:55] If you want a free coaching session, go to Chris Graham, mastering.com/coaching because you just mumbled through that and people listen to this podcast sped up, could not understand what you said.
Chris: [00:02:05] Oh snap. Okay, good call.
Brian: [00:02:07] yeah.
So anyways, I just wanted to reiterate that I've been doing a lot more group coaching for the, uh, our community members and the profitable producer course. We rarely do them every single week, but for the past month, I've done every single week of group coaching call. And they've had more people than we've had in awhile, and we had so many questions.
And it's like, man, there's a lot of uncertainty around coronavirus right now, what people are doing with the studios, which is kind of a good segue into this episode, which is as studio owners. What can we do to adapt and change into the new reality that we're in right now? And we've kind of had a series on this, the last two episodes, if you haven't listened to last two episodes, go listen.
The last two episodes I'm talking to you Chris, cause I know you haven't heard him yet. Two episodes. We had decay Waddell, who owns the company launch pod media, and they're working with businesses doing all of their podcasting needs and they are crushing it right now. They have like 10 engineers on staff.
They have. 15 or 16 podcasts that are paying them monthly every single month. They have a set amount of revenue they're getting every single month, and it is a substantial amount of money that they're getting per month.
Chris: [00:03:08] Corona proof.
Brian: [00:03:09] I don't if it's crowd approved, but it's definitely Corona resistant, which is just as good right now.
And then last week on the episode, I interviewed Joe Wadsworth of the online recording studio.com and they are crushing it right now. It's a fully online recording studio, but they have 30 engineers working for them. I've never heard. Any studio on earth following what's called the agency model, Europe an agency, and you employ a bunch of basically contractors who are doing work for your agency and they are absolutely killing it right now to the fact where the 30 engineers, they have have too much work to go around, they need more engineers hire on, so they've hired people over the last week.
Some of our own podcast listeners are now working for them.
Chris: [00:03:49] It makes me sad that I didn't get to hang out with him.
Brian: [00:03:51] You would loved Joe and I'm sure we'll have on the podcast again. He's also, he's even offered it up through email on the followup exchange I've had with him.
Chris: [00:03:57] I love it.
Brian: [00:03:58] All that to say we've had this theme going and today, Chris and I really want to dig into this topic as deep as we can to an extent, some of the opportunities that are out there, some of the things to watch out for what we can be doing as audio people today in order to thrive through this.
But Chris, I'm glad to have you back, man.
Chris: [00:04:13] Thanks, man. It's good to be back. Well, I think as we kind of launch into this, I'll start by saying this isn't all bad. This is not going to be all bad and four, a lot of us. This is going to result in massive culture changes that are going to make the business of your dreams possible. let's talk about that.
You know, there's obviously risks and concerns and you know, things on the, on the horizon that we need to keep an eye on in our industry. But boy, you know, you can look at this as, Oh, the sky is falling. almost is. But the other way to look at it is we need creative people. Two help and serve. And find new ways to make music and it's going to be awesome.
And for a lot of people, they're going to look back and say, well, my career wasn't going great. And then Corona hit and I found a way to serve people through that, and now I have a thriving career.
Brian: [00:05:08] That's a lot of people's story from 2008
Chris: [00:05:10] Yeah, totally. Graham Cochran's.
Brian: [00:05:12] Graham Cochrane is one, one of the podcasts, I don't listen to him as much anymore, but Pat Flynn from smart passive income,
Chris: [00:05:18] Yeah, same.
Brian: [00:05:19] he graduated college in like 2007 or eight when nobody was hiring in the architecture space, so he ended up just launching other businesses on the side, and that eventually became smart passive income, which is his podcast, and he's making millions of dollars a year doing that.
And so with every recession, every single like depression, even on the other side of it, if you make the right moves and if you serve people well and find ways to make it work, you could come out the other side so much better off. And we're not trying to downplay those who are struggling right now, but we're just trying to say there is light at the end of the tunnel.
And that's basically the whole gist of this episode.
Chris: [00:05:52] Yeah. So as we kind of launch into this, as I've been doing all these, you know, free mini coaching calls, like I've come up with this episode over the course of like 20 of those. And so I've got a lot of ideas. Did Brian and I want to talk about, and the first, and I think the most important one is that we don't have one pandemic right now.
We have to, the first is Corona, and the second is fear. And. This is an intense thing. You know, like if you think about, we've talked about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, many, many times in this podcast, and Maslow's hierarchy of needs is fascinating. It's sort of the basics of human psychology. Why do people do what they do?
What's most important to them? this is super, super, super relevant for this conversation right now, because if you're not familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, first I want you to visualize a pyramid. No, it's an isosceles triangle. I think. Equal lateral. I think that's the same thing. And the bottom of it, there's the first tier, and that's psychological needs, food, water, warmth, rest, et cetera.
Above that, once people have that locked down, they move up to the next tear and that safety needs. So that's like security and safety and generally feeling okay. Above that, there's another tier, which is belongingness and love, and that's intimate relationships and friends. And then above that. Second to last year is esteem, which is, you know, prestige and feeling accomplished and respected.
And then above that, everybody's favorite part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is self actualization. And this is, you know, figuring out how to achieve your full potential. And a lot of times this revolves around creative activities, so super duper applicable to us in the music services spaces because the only people that we help, generally speaking, are people who are trying to self actualize.
Brian: [00:07:39] Two for sure. They're either trying to get self-esteem through their music or they're trying to self actualize. The way our business runs on the top two parts of that pyramid,
Chris: [00:07:48] And that's a tricky conversation. We've mentioned this before, but many musicians struggle with mistaking the esteemed here for the self actualization tier. They think that if I get esteem that self actualization, it ain't at all and it gets really dangerous.
Brian: [00:08:04] but that's another topic for another time.
Chris: [00:08:06] Another topic, but it brings up an interesting question because what happens to the bottom part of the pyramid when one of the top tiers gets messed up,
Brian: [00:08:14] Nothing really.
Chris: [00:08:15] nothing.
Humans don't work like that, but when one of the bottom tiers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs gets messed up, the top tiers come crumbling down. And so there's a lot to think about here.
Brian: [00:08:26] And just the tier we're talking about right now is safety. Generally safety. Like people's number one concerns right now are restruction their lives in a way that keeps their families and friends safe. Staying indoors, getting toilet paper, as stupid as that sounds, that's part of safe. Feeling safe and secure at home.
And that may not be the case this week, but you know, in the past, everyone knows the great toilet paper storage of 2020.
Chris: [00:08:47] Well, I think the toilet paper shortage is actually interesting. Not to get stuck on this, but the psychological needs thing. That's the base of this pyramid, and that's food, water, warmth and rest. I'm not sure about this. I'm not a psychologist, but I feel like we get used to some things. Toilet paper being one of those.
And I think that that starts to mess with our psychological needs when we walk into Costco and there's no toilet paper or bottled water, that creates a pretty intense fear. And so back to this idea, there's actually two pandemics right now. One is Corona, the other is fear. we got to keep in mind that right now, probably our number one issue, my number one issue, everyone listening to this podcast, number one issue is fear.
And fear makes people do some pretty weird things, and it is a far more infectious, far more dangerous disease and coven 19 . That's like the stock market fear. It's got nothing to do with coven. Everything to do with fear. The toilet paper shortage, fear, people acting crazy. You, you sent out an email, I think it was this morning, Brian, where you pointed out, you know, you can get on Google and there's a, what's the tool called where you can see what's.
Brian: [00:09:59] There are two trends that are peaking this month. One of those trends is sourdough starters, so if you are getting into sourdough bread making, that's a hot topic right now, which what we're doing it right now, so that's, we're just going to be become part of the trend there. The part of the trend I don't want to become part of, if at all possible as panic attacks that is at an all time high.
You look at the last five or actually as long back as Google trends goes to 2004. This is the peak of the term panic attacks in Google right now, because so many people are having panic attacks right now. That is a very common thing, and the thing that leads to panic attacks is fear. It's nothing to do with coronavirus bother.
There's nothing in the coronavirus symptoms that induce panic attacks. It is the fear surrounding it right now.
Chris: [00:10:42] so we're not going to get super into this, but part of that spike on Google search results of searching for panic attacks is me. I didn't know what a panic attack was until a couple of weeks ago. I had one and it lasted for 45 minutes. I thought I was going to die. So anyways, let's talk about some happy stuff cause uh, that sucked, man.
Brian: [00:11:04] Chris, you can be vulnerable on this podcast. Yeah.
Chris: [00:11:06] I can, we'll see how vulnerable I'll be. But yeah, I mean, if that's something you're struggling with, don't do it alone, man. Have a conversation.
Brian: [00:11:13] That was part of the email was just get people and find any community. But I mean, I just linked to our Facebook group because there's so many people in there, and we had a thread of like, I think it's over 200 comments now. One of our community members had a, was struggling panic attacks and so many people were going in just.
Giving all sorts of advice from drugs to religion to practical things in between, but at least it's people giving something to try to help. And I think at the end of the day, if you just feel like you're supported by a community, people, that is enough for some people to avoid the fear surrounding this.
It's being at this alone is, I think what's getting to a lot of people is the isolation we're all in right now.
Chris: [00:11:45] Yeah. It's a weird thing, man. You know, to go one level deeper in that, I always thought that panic attacks or anxiety attacks, they're different. Like an anxiety attack, you know, you feel it in your belly, a panic attack. You feel it in every cell of your body. Yeah. It's a really weird thing. I'll tell you what, one of the, you know, for me, when I had the panic attacks, it's breathing issues.
I hyperventilated and at that freaked me out and then I hyperventilated some more. Yeah. Let's, uh, move on. So one of the things I want to bring up that I think is really interesting and is the core of this whole episode is that the music performance business, up until a couple of weeks ago, had the single worst business model in the history of all businesses.
And let me explain what I mean by that. Their business model, if you're in a band or a performer or whatever that happens to be write great songs two. Record, great songs, three mixed master, et cetera. Great songs.
Brian: [00:12:43] Or get those songs mixed in.
Chris: [00:12:47] Number four, publish those great songs. Number five, tour to promote and perform those great songs. Number six, sell tee shirts.
Brian: [00:12:59] Yeah. And other merchandise. That was basically the business model for all the bands I've ever been a part of or seen around or recorded myself. That's the business model. That's not universal. However, because some people monetize through movie and film and TV, but that's, let's just take the exception Al and talk about the rule here, which is it's a pretty terrible business model in most cases.
That's why being in a band is the worst way to make money.
Chris: [00:13:19] Yeah. Well, and it's related to a lack of creativity. And assumption and the assumption is off. They like our music. They'll Whirlpool by our tee shirts. Here's the thing, guys, I'm a weirdo, so like we can't take my opinion and applied to society, but I love nay adore James Taylor. He is just the bee's knees.
I'm obsessed with him, but I will never, ever, ever buy a James Taylor tee shirt ever. I'm not going to walk around with a James Taylor tee-shirt on. That's ridiculous. That's not my vibe. And so this assumption that my love for James Taylor can be converted into a tee shirt sale. It's just not going to happen.
And a lot of people are like that. And this, this, this assumption that anyone who likes your music will buy a tee shirt.
Brian: [00:14:01] Let's talk about how this is relevant to our audience because it's. If you're tuning out now, there's a reason that we're bringing this up.
Chris: [00:14:07] Well, the big reason is that the reset button has been hit Turing's dead right now. It might come back to life. It probably will in some form, a different form.
Brian: [00:14:16] It will definitely come back, but it's just, it's not going to be any time in the near future. It may be in the mid future. It may not be till later this year. I don't know what, I'm hearing somebody, many mixed reports on this and it doesn't really matter, but what matters is right now, touring is dead.
Chris: [00:14:30] Yup. I think even after, you know, you're allowed to tour again, a lot of people are going to be thinking, is this really how I want to make a living? Because this didn't go so well, and a lot of people that are in bands are not going to be in bands anymore after this. They're going to get real jobs. And that's scary
Brian: [00:14:46] If there are real jobs.
Chris: [00:14:47] if there are real jobs after this.
But you know, one of the things to keep in mind with this is a lot of bands, and you all know this, if you're listening to this podcast right now, they're experimenting with live streaming and live streaming is interesting to me because I'm seeing a lot of bands that are live streaming and promoting a link to their Patrion account that is not a bad business model.
That actually makes sense. The tee shirt thing is sort of like if I walked into Costco, I love Costco. If I walked into Costco and they're doing samples and walk up and this lady's like, we've got these vegan vegetable Simotas. They're so delicious. Would you like to try one, sir? Yes, please. Oh, these are so good, ma'am.
Where can I buy these? Well, actually, we're selling waffles today. Here's the waffles. And be like, what are you talking about? I came to this spot because I liked samosa's. And you are trying to sell me waffles. I came to the show because I like your music and you are trying to sell me tee shirts. That's a problem.
That's real, not smart. So the reset button has been pushed and I think it's going to be super exciting to see what the creative geniuses that are our music community decide to try next. Because here's the thing that's amazing and we're going to come back to this a bunch in this episode. Right now is the single best time to do business experiments in the history of the world.
Because guess what? If you do a business experiment right now and it fails, Brian, whose fault is that?
Brian: [00:16:15] Everyone else but me.
Chris: [00:16:17] That'll that,
well, let's, let me try that again.
Brian: [00:16:20] I saw you try to mal the answer to me.
Chris: [00:16:23] well, okay, I'll just do it myself. So if you do an experiment in your business right now, you try to offer a new service. You tried to do something remote in this experiment fails, isn't it your fault? It's fault. It's the circumstance that we're in right now. It's their fault. If it succeeds, you win. You have an amazing opportunity to try new things right now, and if they fail, you don't get blamed for it.
No one's going to be like Waterman. He tried to do something new.
Brian: [00:16:51] It's the ultimate scapegoat.
Chris: [00:16:53] Yeah, it's the ultimate scapegoat. It's perfect. So I've talked to so many of you and generally everyone is trying something new. Some people are trying remote songwriting collaboration. Some people were trying to remote production. Some people are trying to lean more heavily into remote mixing.
Some people are doing remote mix critiques. There's so much that you can do. Some people I've seen posts about like, Hey, if you're doing a live stream and need a free sound check. Hit me up and the bands, you know, they do a, you know, a soundcheck and then the audio engineer from far, far away says, yeah, it sounds good, but you might want to move that one Mike closer to that other guy.
There's plenty of opportunity to serve here. And I think here's the next beautiful piece. What do you think people are doing in quarantine own home studios right now? What do you think, Brian? I think they're getting used.
Brian: [00:17:40] Eden. So Moses, by the way, I had to look up what the hell a samosa was. Cause I've never heard of that in my life. I thought you were like, I thought you were mistakenly thinking it was a mimosa. And I'm like, Oh, they're giving out mimosa samples at Costco.
Chris: [00:17:51] like my Moses.
Brian: [00:17:52] Samosa is a potato field pastry of some sort. So that's, if anyone's wondering what the hell that is, that's what that is.
Chris: [00:17:59] Delicious. Trader Joe's has great ones.
Brian: [00:18:01] Other than that, home studios right now are either looking for work or they're learning and honing their craft, or they're just working because it didn't really affect the studio. If they have a kroner proof business model.
Chris: [00:18:12] There are thousands millions of people on planet earth who are not professional musicians and are not professional audio engineers, but they've purchased home studio gear in the past.
Brian: [00:18:23] Well, you're talking about the self producing musician. That's a lot of people right now. It's the people that are like, they're off a tour. All the tours have been canceled or postponed for now. They're sitting at home with nothing to do. All they're doing is writing in pre-pro ING or recording.
Chris: [00:18:38] My like thought here is it. There's going to be something I'm calling the coven records rush and I think about a month from today, Chris grant mastering is going to have the best month of all time. Because everybody and their freaking mom has a goal. I want to make my own record. I want to make my own EAP, and I bought gear.
Brian: [00:18:58] Well. Yeah. If you listened to last week's episode with Joe Wadsworth, that's what they're experiencing at downline recording studio right now. They're getting so many people that are just at home bored. Using their own music. They need somebody to help mix it or edit it, or even re-record parts or fully flesh out some instruments with remote musicians.
Like they are crushing it right now, which is why they had to hire more engineers and it's because of this. It's the early part of that Cove hit records rush. That's you're talking about right now.
Chris: [00:19:25] It's coming, and if you're an online mix engineer, that's visible. That's good. Pretty good couple months for you. If you're not online mastering engineer, it's going to be a pretty good couple months for you. Get pumped about that. this is not the entire sky falling for some people and this is every tragedy that's ever befallen our planet.
There are winners and there are losers, and I think one of the things that Brian and I can do to help our industry and to help you guys the most, it's a challenge you guys to go give her asses off over the course of the next couple months.
Brian: [00:19:57] Yeah. If you want to win this right now, if you want to be part of the winners after this, and I don't want to call winners and losers, that's so it's dark, it's kind of mean, but like. But it's kind of, there's not a better way to say it because it's the reality of it. I mean, like we can grow up with our participation trophies, but at the end of the day, one side, one and one side lost, and that's the way it is in the world.
If you want to be on the other side of this, better off than you are now, which I think is most of our listeners right now. This is the best time in probably our lifetime, to find ways to be a Go-Giver to your target customer. And if your target customer is stuck at home. And trying to figure out how to self produce.
There's opportunities for you to add value there. If your target customer is trying to scramble to figure out how to monetize something on , now is the best time ever to help them with that. The more your target customer is scrambling and struggling right now, the more opportunity there is for you to go giver and help them and.
Long term, this will pay off. This is what I call the 10 X return. It will be at a 10 X return. It won't be now. It may not be next month, and it won't be 10 X for every single person you talk to, but overall, it'll be a 10 X return on any time, effort, and energy you put into being a Go-Giver right now. And there are more opportunities now than there have ever been, I think in our lifetime.
Of being business owners because of how much uncertainty is out there, how much uneasiness is out there, how many people are scrambling to figure out what they're doing now that their band can't tour now that they don't have access to a studio, you can be the person that is, if all else fails. You're helping them set up a home studio so they can at least make use of their time at home.
And that is a huge opportunity that a lot of you are not taking advantage of right now. You're sitting in your homes watching the news, you're being fed fear all day. Every day you're anxious because you don't know what's coming next and you're not doing anything productive. All you're doing is sitting around waiting, hoping that something's going to change.
Instead of taking this moment to connect with people who are sitting at home alone with nothing to do, who are probably in a similar boat to you. In offering to add value and help them right now.
Chris: [00:21:56] Totally my advice. I've stopped watching the news. I've stopped reading the news and I have no intention of starting anytime soon. Cause here's the thing.
Brian: [00:22:03] Stop doing that like five years ago.
Chris: [00:22:05] Good for you. It doesn't help you. It doesn't impact you. It doesn't make you safer. Wash your hands, stay inside, keep six feet away. All this stuff we know we're supposed to do.
Just keep doing that. You don't need the news at all. It's just making you more likely to have a panic attack. So stop watching the news and if you want to feel better, go help people. That's the best medicine for the fear pandemic right now.
Brian: [00:22:30] And it's also something that anybody can do right now. There is not an exception out there. If you have an internet connection and you have any skills in the audio world that translates to adding value to someone else's life.
Chris: [00:22:41] Yes. Share and serve, and, and here's the thing. Musicians feel very alone right now. Like everybody else. Conveniently though, society seems to be coming together around all the live streaming stuff. It's been really beautiful to watch. And if those musicians feel supported by you. They're probably going to hire the people they felt the most supported by during this quarantine.
So go help them go serve them. Go do whatever you can to make them feel loved and to make them feel like they're in community. Just go be a good person and I promise you that's going to pay your back in the longterm for your business. Like Brian said, he's going to be 10 X.
Brian: [00:23:16] I've pushed this episode probably 30 times today, not just on this podcast, but on my group coaching call this morning with my students to just random conversations I've had. Go listen to last week's . So with Joe Wadsworth with the online recording studio, because he talked a lot about his strategy on Instagram for getting customers.
He is getting enough customers to feed over 30 audio engineers, constant work just by having high value, one to one conversations with people on Instagram. Nothing else besides his word of mouth. That's all he does. He has a team that does that all day if genuine connection, genuine conversations with people on Instagram, because that's where his customers all hang out.
If you can just do that right now, you will find plenty of opportunities to add value. If you want a more practical reason to do this, it's because if you offer mixing services, go teach people how to self record so you can mix their work when they're done with it. You teach mastering services, go teach people to mix their own stuff so you can master it when they're done with it.
Do whatever it takes, but at the end of the day, if you are adding value to people, it's easy. It might, in the webinar I've taught on, I, I teach it in the course is all about planting seeds right now. All the work that you have in your pipeline right now is a result of all the seeds you planted 30 60 90 120 days ago.
All of the work you get through this coronavirus crisis is based on the seeds you're planting right now. So if you want to come out on the other side, better off than you are now. A plant more seasons, just like a farmer for farmers, like, why am I a crops grown in this month? It's because you didn't plant them three months ago or however the hell long it takes to plant crops.
And it's your fault. And that's the case. So if you're wondering why your business is struggling now, it's because you didn't plant the seeds one, two, three, four months ago. Start planting seeds today and do it where ever your customers hang out.
Chris: [00:24:54] Yeah. Fertile ground right now. Now is not the season to harvest. It's the season to plant.
Brian: [00:24:59] Oh damn. Quote that. James, thank you.
Chris: [00:25:03] Ah, I'm back. It was good. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, things that you could do, and these are things that maybe you tried to do this for money. Everyone's situation is different, but in my opinion. You know, now's the time to do free work. It's the best time ever to do free work. So we're gonna talk about remote services because obviously they're the only services right now.
your studio is a repurposed hospital with isolated ventilation and all sorts of fancy stuff like that. So the first thing that I think is the most interesting that I've talked to a couple of people about is this idea of remote songwriting. you know, from my standpoint. How cool would it be for me and James Taylor to do a zoom video call and he helps me write a song like, Oh my gosh, that'd be so cool.
Or let's say there's a producer, you know, like the producer, my hero producer growing up was ed cash. I was obsessed with ed cash. So to hop on a zoom call with ed and call or write a song sounds amazing, and my likeliness of hiring ed to produce a song for me someday, it goes up about 47000% if we do that.
Brian: [00:26:10] Yup. And if you go to our podcast backlog on episode one Oh four we talked to Seth Mosley. Seth Mosley is doing remote songwriting sessions on zoom. He's doing remote production work using a few tools that he share with me. And then I also shared with our community, by the way, I'll go and pitch it now.
If you want to go to the six figure home studio.com it's the first thing that shows up when you're on the site. It's 22 tools to help keep your studio open during the quarantine. It's remote work tools, by the way, so things like zoom, things like audio movers. There's so much out there to help with this sort of stuff, so go download that guide if you haven't already.
But this stuff is possible and people at the high level that suck Moses out of multi Grammy winner, they are still at work right now. And even stuff that would typically be in person, they're finding ways to do it online cause there's no excuse to not do this right now.
Chris: [00:26:56] I love it. Well, six figure home studio salute to Seth Mosley. That's freaking super sweet. So the next service, Brian, you sort of mentioned this right now, is remote production working with clients remotely. If I were a producer right now, what I would be doing is I would figure out what is the go to affordable Mike and the GoTo affordable interface that I can recommend to my clients to buy.
I've heard this from a couple people. They're sending like an Amazon link. Here's what I get. Go ahead and buy that and then we can work. That is amazing. And here's the really nice special part about this remote production. It was kind of a long shot. It was a pretty hard pitch.
Brian: [00:27:33] Yeah, we talked about it in the podcast like probably 10 1520 episodes ago, and it was kind of like, this is a little bit of a long shot and we'll, we'll throw it out there anyway. Pull the trigger on that is going to be doing well now.
Chris: [00:27:43] Not only that, but remote production work is never, ever, ever again going to seem weird. This is going to normalize remote production. That's massive. So before, think about it like this, like back in the day when I was a young, nobody would spend money on the internet. It just, they weren't comfortable with it.
And eventually when PayPal came out, it made it easy enough and not intimidating to buy things on the internet. And there was a massive change.
Brian: [00:28:09] Yeah. It was weird. Back in the day, you didn't even want to put your name online or like you said, a photo of yourself online.
Chris: [00:28:16] you wouldn't do it.
Brian: [00:28:16] less your credit card information. That's just insanity.
Chris: [00:28:19] Yeah. And so there was a culture change, and now everyone buys stuff on the internet almost every day. So there's a cultural change coming around. Remote production, and this is amazing because for many of you, you're pretty much limited to your local market after this. If you've got a niche, if you're like, man, when it comes to Nigerian reggae.
I am the guy and I do remote production. Well, congratulations. You're going to be full of people that make if that's even a thing, Nigerian reggae, like from here on out, because you're going to fly to the top of Google search results. So remote production is a thing. Now it's here to stay. It will never, ever, ever leave, and that's a good thing for us.
Brian: [00:29:00] You talked about sending a microphone and interface to people or them buying it or whatever. There's multiple ways to do it. Yeah. You can send it to them and they give you a deposit, and if they don't return it, you keep it. You can get them to order it themselves, whatever it takes. But the end of the day with Leary, two tools with a tool called zoom, whichever one is probably familiar with, by now, you can control their computer and their dog from your computer so you have full control over their dog.
From your side and then a plugin called audio movers that can send the full high definition audio to your computer for either monitoring or for re-recording into your own da. You can make this work for guitars, for bass, for vocals, for other acoustic instruments. Maybe not drums because that's a little too complicated, but with just those two tools, you can do a full remote production session and it's not that hard.
I've played around with it enough to know that it's definitely possible and it's pretty crazy to see. How little it actually takes just to run a session with two easy as tools that are really cheap.
Chris: [00:29:52] Yeah. So one of the things you get to keep in mind about what's going on right now is I would say this fear thing sucks. The other component is loneliness and people. The social distancing things sucks. And people are finding ways to feel close to other people. And one of the ways that you can do that, his podcasts with a buddy doing it right now, it's amazing.
This feels so good. So part of that is there's going to be a lot of demand. There's gonna be a lot of podcasts that are going to get started right now cause people got nothing to do but time. And so many people have been like, Oh, I'm going to start a podcast someday. And now they're like, Whoa. I've got nothing better to do.
I might as well start my podcast.
Brian: [00:30:28] It's true.
Chris: [00:30:28] People are looking for people to help them with that. So podcasting agency, pretty good move right now.
Brian: [00:30:36] Yup. If you'll listen to the episode that we did with DK two episodes ago or two weeks ago, he did this when he listened to our five studio niches ripe for the taking over two years ago, and within a year and a half of launching that, or within a year even of launching that, they were crushing it already and they were hiring extra people on.
Chris: [00:30:52] I love that.
Brian: [00:30:53] I love when I hear people that have taken something that we taught and actually gone out and implemented it, and this is the time to do that. If you're looking to shift to a business model that makes sense. If I were starting from scratch right now or super early in my career and all my work dried up, I would dive headfirst into podcast agency as my choice business right now.
Chris: [00:31:10] I love it. That's amazing. Well, the next one, Brian, why don't you take this one.
Brian: [00:31:15] We can really just kind of wrap these next two up. These are very similar. It's just remote mixing and promote mastering. This is the two most obvious ones. These are still coven resistant because they can all be done remotely. You can do it from your home. You can mix from headphones, mass from headphones if you have to.
It doesn't take much gear, especially the way we, I've always talked about it where just do it in the box, you know, like it is very low barrier to entry, which also increases the amount of competition out there for this. So these are two areas that are going to be very saturated right now, especially with a lot of recordings in ears.
Moving straight to only mixing online. So you're going to see a lot of people moving to these two services, mixing and mastering. So if you're going to do it and go this route, you've got to think of how am I going to do this differently? And we actually have a podcast episode where we talked specifically that if you're trying to do an online mixing service or mastering service, what can you do to stand out?
And that's episode 113. The key to running a profitable online mixing studio in 2020 so we talked about this January 7th before all this covert stuff hit, and that's going to be even more important now that you follow that stuff. Now that this stuff has hit because so many people are going to be doing that now.
So if you're going to move to online mixing, mastering only, make sure you listen to that episode because it is even more important to stand out today than it was two months ago. God has moved fast three months ago, but whatever.
Chris: [00:32:30] I have an extra thing I forgot to put on here. One of the most common things I've talk to people about over the past two weeks as I've been doing these free coaching calls, is this idea that the touring industry died. And with it, the venue industry also died, which is super sad.
Brian: [00:32:49] They're not dead. They're just in a deep coma right now.
Chris: [00:32:51] They're in a deep coma and we'll see if they come out of it.
Many of them won't, but right now something interesting is happening. All of the concert venues on earth, our digital right now and the best concert venues on earth, our recording studios got to give a shout out to our friend machine, the producer, he's been doing this thing called machine shop live. He had.
What was the name of the band that came in
Brian: [00:33:13] The contortionists if you're in a metal heavy stuff there, the lighter flavor of that metal world.
Chris: [00:33:19] machine's thing here was, he had this band come over as far as I know, they stuck to all the rules as far as Cove aid goes, and they did a performance at machine studio.
Brian: [00:33:29] Clarify. He did it before all this coven stuff hit.
Chris: [00:33:32] Oh, you're right. You're right. You're right. Right. But I think this gets interesting because if you own a beautiful recording, studio streaming is here to stay.
Streaming was kind of like, Oh, live stream. Ah, that's kinda lame. Not anymore. Now it's like a big part of our music industry coming back. It's going to revolve around live streaming and the important thing to keep in mind there is if you own a beautiful studio and you have live streaming skills and equipment, you stand to do a fabulous service for our industry and to make a pretty penny while you're at it.
Brian: [00:34:01] And it's a decent way, depending on what country you're in. Some countries you can't even drive to the studio and you would call that a non-essential business. Some States are that way. So this really depends legally on where you're located. But it is a way to, as long as you take precautions to stay socially distance from each other.
If you have a large enough studio that's possible, you can still set up and run live streaming sessions out of it. Now, there are certain places this makes sense. Some places it doesn't, but that's the only thing I see right now working for recording studios and it's not that great of a solution because.
Of how contagious the stuff is. So it's like you don't really want to risk it if you can help it, which there's nothing you can do if you have a large studio right now to really make ends meet that I'm aware of other than moving your businesses online, which still has this large facility that's being unused.
And this is honestly, this is why I've always preached on the podcast. There is no real reason to heavy large commercial space anymore. And unless you are one of the major studios. Because there are so many studios out there, you can rent, so if you're forced to move out of your location, maybe you have to, you're breaking your lease, or maybe your lease is over and it just makes sense to move out right now.
That's a blessing in disguise. I don't think long term, that's a better decision and we're going to see more and more major studios shutting down through all this. What sucks.
Chris: [00:35:13] It sucks, but let me play devil's advocate a little bit. What that also means is there will be a lot of people in a lot of cities all over the world who will have the opportunity. You too, bye. Or get into a lease for a fabulous studio. At like 50% of the cost that they would have spent like a year ago.
Brian: [00:35:33] So with every negative there is that like positive side of thing. And that is the positive. I wouldn't say it's a positive, it's an opportunity. So here's the thing with this, and I have mixed feelings about this. Studios are going to close. There's no way around it. As many studios as I saw that had shut down in 2008 2009 when I started my studio in 2009 when it was like the peak of the recession, probably the worst time to start a business.
That's when I started my studio.
Chris: [00:35:57] That's when I went full in on Chris Graham mastering was in the depths of the recession.
Brian: [00:36:01] And I remember looking on Craigslist all the time for gear, and there were just so many studios that were fire selling their gear. They were getting rid of it. Their studio facilities were opened up. They were getting rid of all the gear. I don't see how there's any way around it this time around because it's not just a recession we're about to go through.
It's also a complete shutdown of all business as we know it or most business as we know it. And the flip side of that, the potential benefit in our world is. There's going to be the market flooded with used gear and there's going to be, the market flooded with unused studio space.
Chris: [00:36:31] It's going to be intense and I think one of the important things to keep in mind there you know, everybody wants that magical, what is it, Austrian, $3,000 Mike. I'm not going to say it's brand name. I'm going to respect the gear sled alert.
Brian: [00:36:43] Does it have three digits along with it? A letter fall by two numbers.
Chris: [00:36:47] It might possible, it kind of sounds like a submarine.
Brian: [00:36:50] A submarine. That makes sense. Got it.
Chris: [00:36:52] The submarine, Mike. Hey, we can call it that from now on. You guys all know what I'm talking about. There's going to be a lot of those for sale on reverb.com.
Brian: [00:37:00] Yeah. So as of today, we checked, there was 151 of them and they were selling from anywhere from 2,500 to $3,500 it's going to be interesting to see if those prices change over time as people are liquidating gear and they need cash. Cause that's the thing is studios as a whole are generally not well-run businesses in the grand scheme of things.
That's the reason we started this podcast, because most people that start a studio are creatives. They want to record and produce. They have a passion behind what they're doing, and that doesn't always make the best business person. And so our podcast is an aim to try to fix that. That being said, on a larger level, when you're running multimillion dollar studios that have a lot of moving parts and a lot of scheduling things, and a lot of, they're not necessarily managing their cashflow well, and so what happens is you can have a lot of assets, but you're cash poor.
And when you're cash poor and a recession hits or a complete shutdown of all business as we know it hits, that's when things start getting crazy because you don't have any income coming in. You have a lot of overhead with your bills, with your debt payments and everything else involved, and now you have to get cash some way just to keep the doors open.
And that means you have to start selling gear off. And that means the market is flooded with gear, which means the overall price is going down. Because most people, when everyone is flooding the market with gear, most people are not looking for gear to buy when everyone else is flooding the market. And it's the same thing in the 2009 10 real estate collapse, everyone was flooding the market with homes and nobody was buying homes, which mean the home prices had kept going down and down and down.
So it's a dark time for some, and there's opportunities for others. Anyone that bought a house in 2009 or 2010 Chris. Is sitting on a lot of equity right now, or maybe not right this second. I don't know what the real estate market's doing right now, but you get the gist here. So there is an opportunity here because of just the general dynamics of supply and demand.
Chris: [00:38:43] Yeah. So if you've got a ton of cash lying around and had been thinking about starting a fancy studio, at some point you could get the world's best gear. Probably about a month from now is when I would guess is going to bottom out. For not a whole lot of money. And I think what's interesting, and we're not going to speculate too much on this, but I think it's curious to wonder about when there's a huge amount of used gear that comes up for sale prices, unused gear drop, and as prices on used gear drop, the incentive to buy new.
Also goes away. I think it's going to be very interesting to see what happens with some of the gear manufacturers in our industry. I think Sweetwater is probably, you know, they're the big kid on the block. Obviously
Brian: [00:39:24] I feel like they've run out solid enough business long enough to be prepared for moments like this. Yeah.
Chris: [00:39:29] from a sales standpoint, they're either killing it or in the very near future they won't. The big winner is probably going to be reverb.com you know that buy, sell, use gear, website. That place is
Brian: [00:39:40] Not a sponsor, by the way.
Chris: [00:39:41] Not a sponsor. Maybe someday they're pretty cool.
Brian: [00:39:44] Maybe someday, but all this to say is for our audience. Check the use gear market if you are in the market for buying anything. I still don't believe gear is really the answer for anything.
Chris: [00:39:55] not. Bye
Brian: [00:39:57] Yeah, just don't, don't buy new right now. And then if you were ever looking for a facility or even homes with facilities built in it, just keep checking your Craigslist or your Zillow or whatever it is, you check for rentals and purchases and just see what hits the market over the summer and over the fall.
And here's the reason why. All of this pent up demand, people doing pre-pro at home, people writing new music, people sitting on songs all summer long. When this thing passes us hour long, it takes, me and Chris both think there's going to be a huge boom for and huge demand for recording studio services to actually track, cause not everyone has the capability and know how to self record things.
And so when they've read a bunch of songs and they have all of these songs, they're just sitting on, they're going to need somewhere to go to record them. And this is the interesting, they happen during the great recession with all the real estate collapse, the new construction market disintegrated. No one was building new homes for obvious reasons.
Which meant general contractors or GCs, they had to move on to other things. So they stopped their profession to move on to other professions where they can earn a living. And so what that meant in 2012 13 1415 when the market started to recover and people started building new homes again, there was a massive shortage of good quality.
GCs or general contractors and subcontractors or people who do dry wall or people who do plumbing or electrical. And so what that meant is it drove up the cost for new construction because the demand was so high for these people and the supply was so low, they could charge a premium for their services and they started raking in dollars.
And even today, it's still the cost per square footage to build something is incredibly high. I mean, maybe not today, but like as of a month ago was, is still incredibly high compared to what it was. At the previous peak and some of that's inflation or whatever, but you get the, just when this crisis ends, whoever's left standing is probably gonna do pretty well because there's going to be a massive amount of demand that's pent up and is going to be a much lower supply of who's still around doing this.
Chris: [00:41:48] Yeah. A perfect example is if you're a pretty big studio in Nashville, Tennessee. You probably have two or three major competitors in your space. And I would guess that at least one or two of them, it's going to go to business. And a lot of the smaller businesses, the smaller studios that were less, you know, expensive, some of those are going to go to business.
And as a result there's going to be certain studios that are going to be like, uh Hey, we need to raise our rates cause we're booked solid. Like 24 seven for the next three weeks, so we're going to raise their rates 30% Oh my gosh, we're still getting bookings. Oh my gosh. Raise our rates again. So the supply and demand thing is going to get really interesting for some people.
like I wouldn't be surprised if I end up raising my mastering rates again. We'll see what happens with this coven records rush. Again, this is speculation. There's no promise here. Everything I hear, everything speaks to this is coming. People are using their home studios and this is there a rebirth of our industry.
And it's going to be fascinating to watch it unfold. One last thing on the, what should failing studios do? If you are a bigger studio, and especially if you make a lot of your income on tracking, depending on what country you're in, there is government assistance. There are many programs to support failing businesses, and your best move might be to stop listening to this podcast right now.
And to go become an expert on, you know what? The small business association in your country, it's a SBA here in United States. Do you go become an expert on what they can do for you to keep you open.
Brian: [00:43:20] Yeah. Cause this is a confusing subject, man. I've tried to research it into a little bit. Just for our own community and there's so much out there. And so like there's a lot of programs and there for different people and they haven't launched them yet and there's like next week we'll start taking applicants and it's for this, and if you're that, it's like it's something to definitely learn about because you may be eligible for money basically.
That's another way, by the way, we talk about Go-Giver mentality. If you can learn how musicians can benefit from these programs, that's a great way to add value to your, to your potential customers is being an expert for them.
Chris: [00:43:49] Yeah. So this is something, one last thing I want to address with that. Aye have had issues with taking any sort of government assistance earlier on in my life. there's no shame.
Brian: [00:44:00] I mean, we've got 12 million people employed in America right now. I think. Something like that. So
Chris: [00:44:04] You've been paying taxes for years, so that in a situation like this, the government can lend you a hand.
Brian: [00:44:11] how hard is that hurt to say as a libertarian
Chris: [00:44:13] Well, I mean, that's a, that's a longer conversation. This is,
Brian: [00:44:17] We don't have
Chris: [00:44:18] challenged my libertarianism deeply.
Brian: [00:44:21] Maya libertarian view is only a Ron from parks and rec. That's all I understand from that world. And you, you're violently to libertarians that I know,
Chris: [00:44:28] I don't know that I would call myself a libertarian anymore. More on that
Brian: [00:44:32] Oh, okay.
Chris: [00:44:32] Well, let's kind of sum this up. Let's talk about winners and losers in this category. And I think you know, one of the things, Brian, you preach, having an emergency fund and having a runway,
Brian: [00:44:41] I preach it, but I learned it from the Dave Ramsey camp. Love him or hate him. That is great advice.
Chris: [00:44:47] love him. I think he's one of the most fabulous people in the planet.
Brian: [00:44:50] Oh no, man. The last I heard as of like a week ago, he was forcing people to come to the office still, even though there was a lot of drama around it. They wrote him up in the Nashville scene, which is like our local newspaper, like. Kind of calling him out for putting people in danger after someone in the office.
Got it. And it was just very cold about it anyways. We're not here to spread gossip, love him or hate him. Does it really matter? The advice of having an emergency finder runway is what I call it, is more important now than ever for obvious reasons. Survival and thriving like, I mean, if you're an investor, there going to be all sorts of opportunities are going to be popping up over the summer for great investments because.
The market for so many things have tanked right now. So that's one great reason to have emergency fund. Others is just paying bills, eating, surviving, even if you don't have work coming in.
Chris: [00:45:37] Well, some of this too, you know, I did a coaching session earlier this week with an individual who has a pretty decent, a bunch of guys actually who had pretty great emergency funds. And one of the things we talked about was this idea. Look, a bunch of CDs are going to go to business. You're not. So once you're allowed to open again, you can raise your rates.
You're probably going to have to to keep up with demand.
Brian: [00:45:59] Yeah. Greater demand and lower supply is, is a crazy combination.
Chris: [00:46:03] So try to wrap your mind around that. These are people who opted to not buy more gear for their studios and opted to save money for a rainy day instead.
Brian: [00:46:13] Something. We've been preaching on this podcast for the last 126 episodes, by the way.
Chris: [00:46:18] Yeah. So they are going to get to keep doing what they love doing for a living and the people who could not resist the gear slut.
Brian: [00:46:26] Yup. That's why we have the gears. A lot alert on this podcast is to shame those who focus on gear and gear alone.
Chris: [00:46:33] Yikes. So just kind of keep that in mind, like this is an area where the people who were wise are going to extremely dominant position in our industry after the fact. So we already hit on real estate, you know, there's going to be studios to be had left and right.
Brian: [00:46:50] Just so, yeah. In a quick rant on real estate, because I had done real estate investing in my past. I've had an Airbnb in my past. There is about to be a flood of, I mean, this week in Nashville alone, we saw, I've saw more land go on sell than I've ever seen it. One week period in Nashville since, yeah, you're about to see the market flood with Airbnbs because people, I know people that have six or seven or eight or nine or 10 mortgages on Airbnb properties in the city, and no one is staying in your Airbnb right now.
0% occupancy. So you're paying mortgages. And there might be government assistance and forgiveness with loans and stuff around that. So I don't know how deep that goes, but as of right now, no one is doing that. No one is staying with you. You are paying mortgages and all these properties you're going to be forced to sell.
And when every Airbnb investor in Nashville, just for one example, floods the market with all these homes, that's going to increase the supply and no one's buying homes right now. So the demand is nonexistent right now. So the demand is already low. After all this is over, maybe it'll change. But yeah, real estate is going to be an interesting time.
Maybe by fall, if this hasn't completely passed us or, or, or at least the tourism come back by fall, so we'll see what happens. But that's the one area that I'm keeping a very close eye on.
Chris: [00:48:00] Yeah. So one of the things that's important to kind of wrap your mind around, I've got a sound bite for you here. When you are building businesses on debt, you need to understand that debt is a bet on status quo. When you take on debt, you're bedding. There will be no changes and the people that made those bets before covet, if you're in the sad position of, I'm sure there are some people out there that are like, restored an amazing recording studio in January, so I spend $50,000 on my credit card to buy all this gear.
You're screwed. Like.
Brian: [00:48:34] It's not just recording too. Is this any business? Like there's a restaurant two blocks from me that just put their sign up. They're constructing it right now. It looks like it'll be open and yeah, a couple of weeks. You know, they've been working on it for sure. Months and months, if not a full year. Now, talk about the worst possible time to be opening a new restaurant right now.
No matter how you funded it, it sucks. But if you find it with debt, that puts you even more strain on the situation where you're going to be hurting. So there are plenty of opportunities out there, but there's also a lot to think about as far as trying to keep your doors open. I don't, I think at the end of the day, honestly, being a Go-Giver is about the only thing we can truly focus on right now.
That is a win win for everyone involved.
Chris: [00:49:10] I think there's two things. I think being a Go-Giver, this is the best time to be a Go-Giver ever. It's at least a hundred times more effective now then it was three weeks ago, and I think the second thing it's really exciting and encouraging is that creativity wins in a situation like this. Those who are creative and go are going to win.
You need to be creative in a time like this and congratulations. You opted to be in a creative field, so you probably are pretty creative. gotta be really rough to be inherently uncreative and to own a small business right now. So thank God you know that we are in a creative industry. we learn more about creativity with every project that we do.
That's awesome. And if anybody's gonna pull through on this, it's going to be the creatives. It's going to be people like you and I. It's going to be people like us. So keep that in mind. Go out and serve the people that you care about. Go out and serve music communities. Go and help them. Don't worry about yourself right now.
This is a time, like Brian said, to plant seeds. And if you do that, those seeds are probably going to create the largest rush for your business that you've ever seen. Go out and experiment. Be creative about what you're doing. Try you know, remote songwriting collaboration or try remote production. Do experiments, because right now if you fail, it's Covitz fault.
If you succeed, it's yours. There are plenty of you listening to this right now. We're going to try new things and they're going to work and you're going to keep doing them after. This is over.
Brian: [00:50:49] So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. If anyone's . Was by what we mean when we say the Go-Giver or be a Go-Giver. It's based off of a book that we've mentioned many times in this podcast, and that book is called the Go-Giver. So go read that if you need to. An idea of what being a Go-Giver is as far as we are concerned with this podcast, that is an absolute essential read for every single one of our listeners.
If you haven't already, make sure you go join our Facebook community, not just because we're there chatting and having conversations and stuff, but because it is an important part of just feeling like you belong somewhere. If you feel isolated. Right now, we've got well over 6,000 members who are incredibly active posting questions, uh, helping each other in the comments, posting about their successes and struggles and things they've learned through ups and downs.
And while we are all socially distancing ourselves, that doesn't mean we have to be completely alone and isolated. So make sure you join our community. You can either search for the six figure home studio community on Facebook, or just go to the six figure home studio.com/community and that'll afford you to the right place.
And again, if you're unfamiliar with our community and what we talk about, it's literally just business talk only in things related to business. So there is mental health there because your mental health is so tied to your business. There are things about marketing, there's things about entire business model pivots because of all the coronavirus related stuff.
There's things about panic attacks because that's something that happens to people in our community, which we talked about in this episode, and I talked about in any, an email that I recently sent out to the mailing list. If you're on that. We talk about websites, we talk about differentiation and niching down.
It's just these are just all conversations we have on this Facebook community and we do not talk about gear at all. We did not talk about plugins at all. We did not talk about mixing or mastering or editing. There's plenty of communities out there for that. The six figure home studio community. Is the only community on Facebook or in the world, as far as I'm aware of, that solely focuses on the business of running a recording studio or audio business in general.
So recording, mixing, mastering, editing, or any kind of freelance audio work. So again, you can get there by going to the six figure home studio.com/community and that affords you to our Facebook group. Until next time, thank you so much for listening and happy hustling.