How To Build An Online Recording Studio That Employs 30+ Engineers – With Joe Wadsworth

Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode one 25

you're listening to the sixth finger own studio podcast, the number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio. Now, your host, Brian Hood and Chris brand. Welcome back, another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I am here with a special guest. The owner of the online recording studio.

Joe Wadsworth. How are you doing, my friend?

Joe: [00:00:33] Hi Brian.

Brian: [00:00:34] Very well. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Stuck in self isolation at the moment. So try to make the best of it. That's great. You're one of those British people that sounds smart no matter what you say. So you have that distinct advantage over me.

Someone born in Alabama with a thick Southern accent, so I can't sound smart. I have to do double the work to sound just as smart. So for those who don't know, Joe. Joe is the owner of the online recording studio, which is online based recording studio with something like 30 audio engineers working under him.

To sound like that, Joe, is that right? Yeah. If I'm being totally honest, I don't know the exact number of people that we have on our books at the moment. I probably

Joe: [00:01:09] should,

Brian: [00:01:09] but we have a team of producers and engineers and also

Joe: [00:01:13] session

Brian: [00:01:14] musicians. That's why it's, it's slightly more difficult to keep

Joe: [00:01:16] track

Brian: [00:01:16] of because a lot of our producers have their session players as well, so it's difficult to kind of gauge, but yeah, I'd say at least at least 30 people on so far.

So this is it really intriguing business model to me for several reasons. One of the reasons is this is essentially an agency model. So my old roommate friend of mine, Brandon, has an agency called media whisper, and they handle all of the social media accounts for live nation. He has like 25 people working under him, and it's the exact same business model that you're doing except with an online recording studio.

I've never seen. Essentially what is a recording studio agency. So that in and of itself is interesting to me. The second reason this business model is interesting to me is because of what's going on in the world right now with the coronavirus. And this is a business that seems to be relatively. Virus resistant.

And so last week on the podcast, we interviewed DK, what L of launch pod media, who has about 10 people working for him. They have 15 or so podcasts that they're producing right now in the business sector, and they're doing really well despite the coronavirus. And so I'm trying to do a series of interviews.

Corona virus resistant business models, and Joe has one that I think is probably fairing better than a lot of recording studios right now, especially if you're, if you're doing in-person recording. So I wanted to get Joe here on the podcast to pick his brain on how his business works, what we can take away from it as audio engineers, maybe if we're shifting our business from in-person to online and what we can do as far as audio engineers that are just sitting in our basements right now, tinkering with plugins and stuff.

How we can think bigger and beyond just the one person home studio and perhaps I into scaling up their business to multiple engineers and multiple people involved. So Joe, can you give us a little overview of what exactly is the online recording studio? What do you offer? Just give us kind of the rundown of that so people have a good idea for the rest of this episode.

What it is that you do.

Joe: [00:03:02] Absolutely. So

Brian: [00:03:03] essentially the online recording studio, as you say, it is a sort of agency model, and we provide services for singer songwriters and producers as well, who for one reason or another, can't get into the studio or don't want to go into the studio, which is a lot of people right now.

Absolutely. Well, initially those reasons were. A lack of experience, maybe a lack of budget, lack of confidence, or just not really knowing how to go about it. And so what started as just very simply doing music production for people over the internet grew into something where we realized that there were a

Joe: [00:03:38] of

Brian: [00:03:38] other services that we could offer in terms of promotion, branding.

Some people just want mixing and

Joe: [00:03:44] you

Brian: [00:03:44] know, which

Joe: [00:03:44] something

Brian: [00:03:44] that did have a much bigger preexisting. Demand for online, the mixing and mastering thing, but full production, there was a real lack of any kind of structured model that people were doing. Now you've got things like sound better, which is like an open marketplace, I suppose.

But the thing with that is that, especially right

Joe: [00:04:02] now,

Brian: [00:04:02] now

Joe: [00:04:03] we're

Brian: [00:04:03] all locked in at home, every single

Joe: [00:04:06] who sat in

Brian: [00:04:06] their bedroom is going on sound better, and that thing is

Joe: [00:04:09] incredibly

Brian: [00:04:09] saturated with brand new people on there.

And those sorts of things are really difficult to do because either you have to do projects

Joe: [00:04:16] a

Brian: [00:04:16] pittance, you know, for no money just to like get your ranking up, or you have to spend loads of money on it, which a lot

Joe: [00:04:21] people

Brian: [00:04:21] don't have.

But

Joe: [00:04:22] in

Brian: [00:04:23] terms

Joe: [00:04:23] what

Brian: [00:04:23] we do it, it

Joe: [00:04:24] a

Brian: [00:04:24] one to one. You work with

Joe: [00:04:25] producer or you work

Brian: [00:04:26] with a designer, you work

Joe: [00:04:27] a

Brian: [00:04:28] mixing and mastering engineer and it's all done remotely. So. You work on a video chat, you know, you send over a rough draft to one of our producers and we'll talk it through with you, develop those ideas and then get it to a point where we've taken care of recording all the instrumentation in our studios and studio conditions with our session musicians.

And then the artist just recorded their vocals at home and they send us that audio. We mix it all together and yeah, so I think we are one of the few remote recording agencies in the world currently. About what you were saying in terms of what's going on now with the whole covert 19 thing, we've sort of accidentally created the solution to a problem that wasn't, yeah, they're just that of

Joe: [00:05:08] sort of

Brian: [00:05:09] a kind of luck in a way I think, or just because we've tried to make it so that you can do it from home.

The situation now is that obviously everyone is stuck at home and we have seen that it has had a big impact on

Joe: [00:05:17] the number of people booking in.

Brian: [00:05:19] So we are now looking to bring on more producers to the team to be able to handle the demand that we have, because it really is, it's good,

Joe: [00:05:26] but it's

Brian: [00:05:26] hair's a little bit intimidating because there's a lot of people coming in now going, I want it to do this stuff back in the day.

But now I've got however long off work. So with the almond recording studio, you said you offer. Obviously recording, producing, mixing, mastering those sorts of services. You also said you offer marketing services. What all services do you offer under their almond recording studio? So we also offer branding.

So we have

Joe: [00:05:49] full

Brian: [00:05:50] branding designers and developers. We offer social media management and assets design. Ad campaigns, Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. We're looking into YouTube at the moment, but I think for us, we've spent the last couple of years getting really good with Instagram and Facebook, and so we like to stick to that rather than spreading ourselves too thin.

We also offer coaching, one-to-one coaching, so I have a few coaching clients who I talk to about social media strategy I talked to about how they can be reaching out for sync opportunities and things like that. Then we also have some people that we do coaching, like Dow coaching with, so. We have some of our producers teach logic or Ableton

Joe: [00:06:25] younger

Brian: [00:06:26] people and some old acts we have.

We've got

Joe: [00:06:27] older

Brian: [00:06:28] people as well who

Joe: [00:06:29] the

Brian: [00:06:29] moment are now wanting to kind of

Joe: [00:06:30] work

Brian: [00:06:31] out how

Joe: [00:06:31] record a

Brian: [00:06:31] little bit at home. And really that progression of those services that we offer has just come out of starting

Joe: [00:06:38] with the production

Brian: [00:06:39] of the recording, building that and growing that. And then

Joe: [00:06:42] one

Brian: [00:06:42] day a client being like,

Joe: [00:06:43] do

Brian: [00:06:43] you guys do this?

And us going. Yeah. Okay, sure. And then finding the right people to be able to deliver that thing. And it's really just grown based on what people have asked for. We've made very few assumptions in terms of adding new services, because on the few times that we have made assumptions, they've always been wrong.

And so we've just based everything that we're doing on what people are asking for. And so when an artist has said to us, Hey, now that the songs recorded, what do I do? It seemed like, well, okay, we should be offering this support that carries on afterwards. So we'll put together an ad campaign, we'll do some branding, et cetera, et cetera.

And so it really is. Kind of any service

Joe: [00:07:21] that

Brian: [00:07:21] singer songwriters may need or, or home producers or artists, whatever. Um, w we kind of cater to everyone in that way. Can you give us an idea of what your target customer is? Do you target any specific niche that seems to be the predominant customer base, or are you pretty much an all around nonspecific recording studio service?

It's a very good question and one that we

Joe: [00:07:42] still are trying

Brian: [00:07:43] to answer sort of five years into the business. One of the things that all business courses or schools or whatever, do they say, you know, you're a really try and segment your audience into different people because everyone has different reasons for doing stuff.

Everyone has different backgrounds and finances, et cetera,

Joe: [00:07:59] cetera.

Brian: [00:07:59] You want to try and be as specific as possible with your customer. We have done that and we've put together, you know, customer. Personas, customer profiles, and actually what we found is that there are so many different kinds of people who come to work with us, that it's actually easier to just kind of be as broad as possible and just have a sort of open door policy than try and individually target very, very specific people.

The thing that unifies all of our customers, all of our artists is. Just

Joe: [00:08:26] want to

Brian: [00:08:27] record music and songwriters it. One of the things that I love most about

Joe: [00:08:31] job is

Brian: [00:08:31] the honor, on a Monday morning, I can have a call with an 18 year old girl from Texas who wants to sound like Taylor Swift. And then

Joe: [00:08:40] in

Brian: [00:08:40] the afternoon, I have a

Joe: [00:08:41] with

Brian: [00:08:41] a 65

Joe: [00:08:42] year

Brian: [00:08:42] old Japanese

Joe: [00:08:43] who

Brian: [00:08:43] wants to sound like Bruce Springsteen.

You know, we've got these two people on opposite sides of the planet and trying to market to them in any other way than just you like songwriting. It's really difficult

Joe: [00:08:54] because they both

Brian: [00:08:55] essentially want the same

Joe: [00:08:56] thing

Brian: [00:08:57] and essentially for the same reasons

Joe: [00:08:58] well.

Brian: [00:08:58] So

Joe: [00:09:00] our target customer is anyone who wants to

Brian: [00:09:02] record a song basically, or anyone who wants to promote their music.

This goes against everything we've really ever talked about on the podcast. We are big proponents on preaching that they're, the riches are in the niches. Whether you niche down by a specific service, which you guys haven't seem to have done, or are we talking about niching down by specific genres of music?

Would you also haven't seen this. Really niche down to either. But despite that, you have built a sizable business with a lot of customers, presumably because you have a lot of engineers despite that. So I'm really looking forward to digging into this business and getting more details behind it. Cause I feel like our audience, a lot of our audience is in the position that you're in, where they're trying to appeal to everyone.

And the saying, I've always said on the podcast is if you try to appeal to everyone, you will appeal to. No one. Except in Joe Wadsworth case. Let's move on here. So it's easy for people to hear that you have a pretty big business here that's got a lot of moving parts in it. Can you give us a little bit of background before you even started this?

What's your background as far as audio or did you have any visit? Was it full business background or was it audio background? What's kind of camp do you come from. So I

Joe: [00:10:02] had no business background at all.

Brian: [00:10:04] I still don't really have any formal business training. I started the business, so I come from a very musical family.

My dad is a theater actor, so he does a lot of stuff in the West end in London, and my mom was an actress. She now works as a

Joe: [00:10:19] kind of

Brian: [00:10:20] Business coach, but she, from the age of four, me being fallen, not her, sat me down at the piano every night and

Joe: [00:10:27] you

Brian: [00:10:27] know, made me do my practice. And so I played the clarinet and the piano when I was younger and always was involved in musical stuff and always knew that I wanted to go into music production.

Uh, when I was in my. Teen years. I really want, I basically just want it to be Mark Ronson cause I thought he was the coolest guy in the world. And I said, right, I'm going to start a record label and I'm going to be a music producer. And then I went to study music production at Leeds college of music. Now.

In hindsight, I probably wouldn't have chosen Leeds college of music again because I didn't feel like the course was actually worth it. And I think that's something that I would pass on to any younger people that are perhaps in your, in your listeners who are thinking about studying music production. I would say if you're thinking about doing a degree in production or anything in the arts, really.

If you get to the end of your first or second year of doing that and you aren't already doing it professionally, in my personal opinion, I think you've wasted your money and I think you should do a degree that's more likely to get you a job. Because even though all of my producers are. Qualified in terms of having done music production degrees or masters.

I've never asked to see those qualifications in a hiring process. I've asked the listen to their music, and so if you're a good producer or a good engineer, save yourself well, 40,000 pounds in the UK, I think it's a hell of a lot more in, uh, in the United States. We call it soul fail university. The specific one in Florida.

Is about $85,000 or 60 something thousand for the online degrees. So that's something we've preached on the podcast a long time, is to stay the hell away from that stuff. That is mad. It's a crazy amount of money. And for a lot of people, unfortunately, especially if you're going into music, which can be so unpredictable, you may never make that money back in a way that means that you're able to pay that whole thing.

And I think that

Joe: [00:12:12] actually

Brian: [00:12:12] you've got to think.

Early on.

Joe: [00:12:14] is this

Brian: [00:12:14] going

Joe: [00:12:14] be

Brian: [00:12:15] worth my while in terms of what I'm going to get from it? When I was about 17 when you were,

Joe: [00:12:20] was

Brian: [00:12:20] like the time that

Joe: [00:12:21] apply

Brian: [00:12:21] for university. I applied at two places. I applied at Leeds college of music and a place in London called the Guildhall.

Now the Guildhall only takes

Joe: [00:12:29] people

Brian: [00:12:30] a year and they have like thousand sounds and people apply. And my mum, and in, in hindsight, I think she was doing this on purpose, but my mum said to me, you're never

Joe: [00:12:37] to

Brian: [00:12:37] get into that school because you don't do enough practice and you don't do enough work.

I realize now that she was using such basic reverse psychology

Joe: [00:12:44] get

Brian: [00:12:44] me to work hard, but at the time I felt like I was being really clever

Joe: [00:12:49] and

Brian: [00:12:49] be like, well, actually I'm going to try really hard and get in, and I luckily was offered a place, but sort of

Joe: [00:12:53] out of an act

Brian: [00:12:54] of teenage defiance said to my mum, well, I'm not going to go.

I've got it, but I'm going to go and go to Leeds college of music instead. It backfired in her face. Yeah. In hindsight was a very, very reckless.

Joe: [00:13:04] decision

Brian: [00:13:05] because the

Joe: [00:13:06] guilt,

Brian: [00:13:06] who was an amazing, amazing place to study and leads culture, music is pretty rubbish to go to. To be honest, after my first

Joe: [00:13:13] year, I felt

Brian: [00:13:14] that the course was just not worth the money cause I was already 12,000 pounds down by then.

And I just thought, this is silly. So. I started the business when I was in my dorm, in my halls at university. When we first started, we were called my first single and it was me doing all of the production and I, the reason we would call my first single is because I was targeting just younger musicians, people who I felt like I was comfortable doing the music production for.

Joe: [00:13:39] And

Brian: [00:13:40] throughout that first

Joe: [00:13:41] I

Brian: [00:13:41] did this

Joe: [00:13:41] then

Brian: [00:13:41] I started to bring in other people who were in my halls and bring in other musicians, and that was always nice to kind of get different people in. And then started to build a little

Joe: [00:13:50] mini sort of

Brian: [00:13:51] agency model within my university dorm after a while.

Joe: [00:13:55] Realize

Brian: [00:13:56] that actually

Joe: [00:13:57] that was

Brian: [00:13:57] a huge gap in the market for kind of bringing. What I now see as a massive, massive pool of producers, home producers

Joe: [00:14:05] or producers

Brian: [00:14:06] are just struggling to find as much work as they want. And singer songwriters. There are million posts every single day with hashtag

Joe: [00:14:14] singer

Brian: [00:14:14] songwriter on Instagram every single day.

There's a million. Wow. You know, it's astronomical numbers. And I

Joe: [00:14:19] thought,

Brian: [00:14:20] why is there no one who's in the middle bringing these two people

Joe: [00:14:23] together?

Brian: [00:14:24] And I think that production generally is a thing that you do in isolation. Especially while you're learning how to do it. A lot of our listeners are cave dwelling creatures that haven't seen the sun in six months, and that was before all the coronavirus stuff hit.

It's just they haven't left their house. I'm a recovering troglodyte, so I, I'm the same type of person where I would say to my studio for months on end without ever leaving. So that is a lot of our audience and we're learning, we're learning, we're trying to recover from that. And now's not the time to recover because we can't go out and like talk to people.

But. Melissa,

Joe: [00:14:52] I suppose

Brian: [00:14:52] an ideal situation for people who like to stay inside. It's always, you know, it's all coming up roses,

Joe: [00:14:56] but I think that

Brian: [00:14:57] what I found was that the majority of the production people

Joe: [00:15:00] that I

Brian: [00:15:01] was surrounded by were not naturally people. People, which is the plural of people person. I've never said people, people before, but I

Joe: [00:15:10] think, I think that, yeah, they, they weren't people.

People. Yeah.

Brian: [00:15:14] Uh, I'm not just repeating the same words for emphasis. They, yeah. Um, but I people person, they're not people, they weren't people persons. If that's better. And the thing that they needed was to be able to speak to artists or have that opportunity to be able to speak to artists. And then on the other

Joe: [00:15:30] side

Brian: [00:15:30] of that,

Joe: [00:15:31] found

Brian: [00:15:31] that a lot of artists were posting songs of themselves on Instagram.

But that was it. That was sort of the be all and end all of their plan was, I'll get it up on Instagram and that's it. It's done. And so they may be needed a bit of, you

Joe: [00:15:42] a

Brian: [00:15:42] bit of explanation as to what their options actually were and how easy it could be to do it. And so very quickly we changed the name from my first single to the online recording studio.

The main reason, well, there are two reasons. One was we just wanted to grow up a little bit and also be a bit clearer about what we do. And the second reason is that with the name, my first single, a lot of people thought it was something to do with like a

Joe: [00:16:03] dating service.

Brian: [00:16:05] Yeah,

I did. I had to explain that to someone on more than one call that there was no dating element to it, and so I just thought, right,

Joe: [00:16:12] we need to change

Brian: [00:16:12] the name of this.

This doesn't make any sense. Here's my new dating app idea. It's called co-write and chill. Yeah, very nice. It's exactly what it sounds like. So we, we changed the, uh, we changed the name to the online recording studio. I stopped doing any of the production stuff because I felt like I wanted to focus more on the sort of business side of things

and also the quality that, because we then started approaching people who were much more experienced musicians.

So either doing, mixing and mastering for bands or for people who'd been around a bit longer and not just working with younger artists. We started to bring on. Professional producers, not just people

Joe: [00:16:47] I was

Brian: [00:16:47] at uni with. And um, and yeah, then the team just kind of

Joe: [00:16:51] from

Brian: [00:16:51] there.

Joe: [00:16:51] And

Brian: [00:16:52] as I say, we

Joe: [00:16:52] adding

Brian: [00:16:52] services as and when we needed

Joe: [00:16:54] And

Brian: [00:16:54] that was nearly

Joe: [00:16:55] five years ago

Brian: [00:16:56] now I would say the name changes. When you officially launched this, I guess, cause you kind of, that's when he started to figuring out your business model and who you were going to be. So this was probably it when 2015, 2014 what year did you say, would you say that got started.

2015 was my first single, and then we officially became the

Joe: [00:17:11] online recording studio,

Brian: [00:17:12] I think either late 2016 or early 2017 wow. So you guys have grown quickly. This is way faster, a timeline than I previously thought it would've been given where you are now. Well, it's,

Joe: [00:17:22] it's

Brian: [00:17:22] actually, to be honest, it's faster than that.

Even I would say the first sort of year of being online recording studio, we were still.

Trying to desperately work out how to be business people. I think that was it, because you know, having not had any real business training, so I dropped out of uni at the end of my first year because I had basically made back what I Odin uni fees.

So I just thought, there's no point in

Joe: [00:17:45] staying here.

Brian: [00:17:46] Good decision.

Joe: [00:17:47] Yeah. So

Brian: [00:17:48] for about a year, we were just sort of treading water, not

Joe: [00:17:51] knowing what

Brian: [00:17:51] we were doing. And it's actually,

Joe: [00:17:52] I would say

Brian: [00:17:53] throughout 2019 is when the real change starts

Joe: [00:17:56] happening.

Brian: [00:17:56] So

Joe: [00:17:56] quadrupled the size of our

Brian: [00:17:57] team during 2019. Um, as I say,

Joe: [00:18:01] are

Brian: [00:18:01] looking to bring on

Joe: [00:18:02] some more people

Brian: [00:18:02] now.

We'll have a link in our show notes of where people can go to do that. We'll talk about it towards the end of the episode as well, where they can go to apply as well. So what were you doing early on? Let's just say the 2017 2018 where you guys were kind of just struggling to get traction, which is, I'd say most businesses when they first opened, do not just instantly hit traction.

They have to slowly figure out what's gonna work, what's not going to work. What were you doing to build demand for the online recording studio early on? So when we were very early on, the first thing we did was work out. We knew that we were limited in terms of the number of staff that we had and the hours that we had available.

Because I think that when you are starting up

Joe: [00:18:38] business

Brian: [00:18:38] or

Joe: [00:18:38] there

Brian: [00:18:39] is a startup, I think there

Joe: [00:18:40] is a

Brian: [00:18:40] real temptation and something that I've certainly to to

Joe: [00:18:43] the past

Brian: [00:18:44] of trying to do everything.

Joe: [00:18:46] And

Brian: [00:18:46] so we were like, right, we're going to get big on

Joe: [00:18:48] We're

Brian: [00:18:48] going to get big

Joe: [00:18:49] Instagram.

Brian: [00:18:49] We're going to become Twitter influencers.

We're

Joe: [00:18:52] to get on top. Wasn't

Brian: [00:18:53] even a thing then,

Joe: [00:18:54] but like,

Brian: [00:18:54] you know, we're going

Joe: [00:18:55] get

Brian: [00:18:55] on vine or whatever it was. I'm trying to remember

Joe: [00:18:57] what

Brian: [00:18:57] was big back then, but what that meant is that we were spreading ourselves way too thin, and so I said. Very early on, right? We need to

Joe: [00:19:04] on

Brian: [00:19:04] one thing because right now we don't have a huge amount of money to do stuff.

I funded the beginning of the business with a bit of my student loan, so like the maintenance loan that you get a bit of money from. A great thing that we have here in the UK called the princess trust, which is like a charity for young people to start businesses, so they'll give you a business loan that's like.

North 0.5% interest or something like that, which we paid back within the first year. And then also my parents helped me out a little bit at the very beginning too. But spreading yourself too thin is the biggest mistake I think. I see people starting up, this sort of thing make. And so we realized early on that for us.

Instagram was our channel. And so all of our efforts went onto growing that Instagram understanding and creating a system for Instagram where we could meet people and not be spamming people. Because I think Instagram is growing more and more spammy with every, every day that passes. And so, yeah, those were the sort of early decisions that we made that I think meant that we were able to stay focused with stuff.

And the challenges that we were facing really were lack of brand

Joe: [00:20:02] awareness,

Brian: [00:20:03] which when we changed the name to the online recording studio, that did make a big impact because there was no real mystery

Joe: [00:20:10] about

Brian: [00:20:11] what it is that we did. We've used the same

Joe: [00:20:13] yellow color

Brian: [00:20:15] for everything since we started, and so that's something that's.

Quite distinctive in terms of people recognizing it as part of our brands. But the main thing that we realized, and actually it kind of came about as a money saving thing, was because we didn't have the time or the manpower to be able to put together loads of videos cause you have to have so much content really available to be able to do stuff because we didn't have the time or the people to be able to do that.

We had to come up with a solution that would mean that we could continue to put out a lot of content, but not have to spend ages creating it all. And so that's why if anyone looks at our Instagram now or our website, the vast majority of what you see on there is user generated content. So what we would do is we would get testimonials, we would get artists singing their songs, we would get, you know, this and that, and just make sure that our.

Instagram profile was full of people talking about

Joe: [00:21:06] us,

Brian: [00:21:06] talking about their experience, seeing different people from different places in the world. Because all of these things are built on kind of social proof. And so if you see, it's like herd mentality. So if people see that there are other real people talking about it, that saves you having to do any of the selling yourself.

It saves you having to create loads of content yourself. All we do is, you know, an artist will send us a video

Joe: [00:21:28] of them

Brian: [00:21:28] singing the song. And we'll post it with their name on it. And that's a post that's a days social media salted. And what that does for us is it shows that we're able to work with artists

Joe: [00:21:36] from

Brian: [00:21:37] anywhere in the world.

Shows that there's a real diverse mix of people that we have. And, and really

Joe: [00:21:41] that

Brian: [00:21:41] was, that has come out of the fact

Joe: [00:21:43] we

Brian: [00:21:44] basically had, we're on a shoestring budget to begin with and we're trying to find ways to save money. So for any of your listeners who are looking to kind of try and really get going with stuff at the moment, I would say

Joe: [00:21:56] try and get

Brian: [00:21:57] as much video content from your clients as possible and repost that, repurpose that content, and also continue to use it.

We still are sharing testimonials from three years ago as part of our ad campaigns that we run now. And so get stuff that you can keep using that isn't too specific as evergreen. This is this word, evergreen that we keep hearing. That would be my recommendation. And I'd say those were the biggest challenges we were facing.

Having no money and being spread too thin. Um, if you're a one person operation that's even worse. You know,

Joe: [00:22:25] I, I get it. There's much

Brian: [00:22:26] more difficult. Yeah. We call it the shiny object syndrome. And that's where it's really bad for podcasts fans because they hear a different topic every week. And then, so that's a new shiny object to go after every single week.

So it is really difficult to find one thing. Do you plan to focus on and double down on those things? And I run three businesses right now, and so I'm just as bad as anyone else at this where I have. Three different businesses that I have different strategies and tactics that I'm trying to implement for each of these three businesses.

And so it is a real challenge to say, Hey, I'm going to purposely ignore all of these opportunities that are out there and only focused on this one that I've identified as the best opportunity for my business in this moment. And that can change sometimes. Sometimes it'll be working on something and then all of a sudden  comes and takes over the world news and everyone's minds and everyone's stuck inside, and then you have to change what your focus is.

But that's just the reality of business is being able to adapt to change.

Joe: [00:23:17] Absolutely. But how do

Brian: [00:23:18] you find being

Joe: [00:23:19] a

Brian: [00:23:20] sort of multi-business owner, how do you find. There's sort of a, is there like a translation between the three where if you suddenly have a breakthrough with one thing, you kind of think, okay, how can I now implement this into my other business?

Or like, you know, you have a real brainwave and you're like, Oh, okay. I can also apply this to the other two businesses as well. Do you find that that happens or is it that they are three very separate things. With the six figure home studio in file pass. Those are the two most similar businesses that share the same customer base with my recording studio.

Very little translates to the other businesses and vice versa. So I've told people for years now, and I continue to believe this, you can have up to three businesses and even when you have free businesses, you can grow. One, you can maintain another and one other one's going to slowly die off. Fair enough.

And that's what I've seen in my past. I've had multiple businesses since 2014 and so it's always been that sort of thing. And businesses or income streams have come and gone in different focuses. Depending on what I'm into at the time, whether it's real estate or Airbnb, or whether it's my recording studio or six figure home studio or podcast or file pass or whatever is out there right now.

All of these things. Some of them can be shared. Like if I get a customer for the six week old studio, it's almost always gonna be a customer for final pass or vice versa, but it's still difficult, so there's no perfect solution. Ideally, you would just have one business, but I'm to add for that. Fair enough.

I think sometimes what's very nice if you are someone who is quite creative and not necessarily just musically creative, that thing of. You know, being an architect, you know, I've tried liking to build things. I think actually

Joe: [00:24:50] taking a break from one business to

Brian: [00:24:52] look at another

thing and still having to

Joe: [00:24:55] those creative faculties

Brian: [00:24:56] that you have can be a really nice refreshing thing and

Joe: [00:24:59] can

Brian: [00:24:59] actually help you

Joe: [00:25:00] when

Brian: [00:25:00] you then go back to the other one.

To sort of have clarity and have cleared your mind up a little bit to

Joe: [00:25:04] then

Brian: [00:25:05] try out what ever it is that you wanted to try out on. The other thing. Yup, so big picture. It works really well for two of my businesses doing that, bouncing back and forth, but there's still things that fall through the cracks when you do that where emails, backup support, someone's waiting on you for something that they work for you.

It's just, it's difficult. But I actually wanted to go back, actually, you talked about your Instagram strategy. This is something that's really appealing right now to anyone listening right now because. There is no in person meetings in most places. Right now. You're not going out to shows. You are not taking someone to coffee or dinner or lunch or whatever to get to know them or to sell your services to them.

Instagram, social media, maybe even advertising, which we might get to later on. These are things that are still relevant today in the environment that we're in. It sounds like your strategy is user generated content, so your customers are creating videos. You're sharing those videos on your Instagram feed predominantly.

And I assume people are coming to you. So inbound leads, meaning the leads to come to you, is that most of your customer base people that  you are coming to your website, filling out forms or talk to you, or are you doing any cold outreach or anything similar to that in order to generate leads for your business?

So we do a little bit of cold outreach, just a couple of hours a day, just going through hashtags and, and reaching out to people. But

Joe: [00:26:16] I think that

Brian: [00:26:17] I've always been very careful to make sure that we're not. Spammy at all. And I think

Joe: [00:26:23] that's the

Brian: [00:26:23] thing. Anyone who uses like an automation bot or anything like that, I mean, there's

Joe: [00:26:29] nothing

Brian: [00:26:29] worse than having a post on

Joe: [00:26:30] of

Brian: [00:26:30] you holding a guitar that's just a photo

Joe: [00:26:33] and

Brian: [00:26:33] like getting a random comment, being like, Hey, this is such a great song.

Send me a DM. And it's like, well, this obviously doesn't

Joe: [00:26:40] make any

Brian: [00:26:40] sense. Um.

And so I think we've, we've always wanted it to be a human, you know, it's always a human being talking to the other person on Instagram. So we do reach out a little bit and talk to people, but more than anything, it's not necessarily to do with trying to, it's not like a funnel per se, where we're trying to then convince subway.

It's like a cold call that we then try and convince someone into purchase. It's more just we reach out to people. We like to be really active in the community. And

Joe: [00:27:05] we have various groups

Brian: [00:27:07] online. We've got like this tours artist group on Facebook. And

Joe: [00:27:11] and

Brian: [00:27:11] actually what we like is building this community and everyone's sort of giving feedback to

Joe: [00:27:14] one

Brian: [00:27:15] another and stuff like that.

So for us, it's

Joe: [00:27:16] more about

Brian: [00:27:17] adding more people to

Joe: [00:27:18] our community

Brian: [00:27:19] than actually trying to sell people because that most of the time when we, if we speak to people, they're not ready to book in

Joe: [00:27:25] right

Brian: [00:27:25] away anyway. They want to see what we

Joe: [00:27:26] can do.

Brian: [00:27:27] And the vast

Joe: [00:27:28] I would

Brian: [00:27:29] say in the high eighties in terms of percentage of what we get.

Are

Joe: [00:27:33] who

Brian: [00:27:33] have known about us for a few months, sometimes a few years, have had a chance to see what we do and watch maybe a few people's projects come to life. And then they get in touch with us and say like,

Hey, how are

Joe: [00:27:45] You

Brian: [00:27:46] know, I've been watching

Joe: [00:27:47] you

Brian: [00:27:47] guys

Joe: [00:27:47] a

Brian: [00:27:47] little bit and I like to try it out now.

Joe: [00:27:49] I

Brian: [00:27:50] try

Joe: [00:27:50] something

Brian: [00:27:50] small to begin with? Which is what we always encourage people to do anyway. Um, so on the whole, it is people now coming to us directly, but

Joe: [00:27:58] we

Brian: [00:27:58] first

Joe: [00:27:58] started,

Brian: [00:27:59] it was me doing like 10 hours a

Joe: [00:28:01] day.

Brian: [00:28:01] Outreach on Instagram, kind of trying to graft to get us up to the point where we're at now.

You have to kind of do that. I think. I'm not in charge of the outreach that gets done now. We have people in our team that take care of that, but there's sort of , not necessarily script, but the kind of structure of the conversations that we have with people online. That I put together has come out of spending all of that time doing it when I was at university.

Just doing it for hours and hours and trying to work out how to have meaningful conversations with people on Instagram, not be spamming them and also not immediately seem like I was trying to sell something to them, even though at that time I was trying to sell something pretty much straight away. Now it's much more just about keeping the community open.

So are you just having a conversational approach just like talking about their music or what their goals are, or just basically you're just trying to start any sort of conversation that can go deeper so that you have some sort of meaningful conversation versus a surface level, Hey, I'm just doing this to get customers type of vibe.

Absolutely. I think from experience of selling, I think that actually no one. No one logs on to Instagram to buy something. Do you know what I mean? You go on Amazon to buy something or you go on eBay to buy something. You don't go on Instagram because you're looking to make a purchase. What do you mean do you, I usually like on Instagram just to look at the ads and that's how I shop.

Well, you're perfect to target too. I need to get some data from you so that I can tell you

Joe: [00:29:24] Um,

Brian: [00:29:25] if only that were everyone, but

Joe: [00:29:27] actually

Brian: [00:29:27] people aren't on there to make a purchase. And I read a really, really interesting book last year called contagious. Which is seven. I think it's these seven pillars of, of things that make things go viral.

It was to do with vitality and stuff online. I'd absolutely recommend that as a, as a book to read, I can't remember the name of the author, but it was a really, really interesting book and he was talking about social proof and about how people kind of have this herd mentality and, and wants to do this sort of thing and actually aren't really looking to buy.

They want to be entertained, they want to be told a story. They want to be validated. And our approach to talking to people is always . Take a genuine interest in what they're doing. And I think what's nice is that now that

Joe: [00:30:06] we

Brian: [00:30:06] have our artists

Joe: [00:30:07] groups

Brian: [00:30:07] on Facebook, a lot of people who follow us on Instagram join those groups and post music and get sort of feedback

Joe: [00:30:13] stuff.

Brian: [00:30:14] And that

Joe: [00:30:14] very

Brian: [00:30:14] naturally grows into

Joe: [00:30:15] conversation

Brian: [00:30:16] about their music

Joe: [00:30:17] and

Brian: [00:30:17] then what we could do for it. And it's the same with the sort of minimal outreach strategy that we do on Instagram. We will,

Joe: [00:30:24] if we

Brian: [00:30:24] find a video of someone that we like and we think that we could help, we'll come out and be like, Hey.

This sounds great. You know, I really liked the

Joe: [00:30:30] of this.

Brian: [00:30:31] Where can I hear more of your music and then maybe

Joe: [00:30:32] and

Brian: [00:30:33] have a listen

Joe: [00:30:33] their

Brian: [00:30:33] SoundCloud

Joe: [00:30:34] their Spotify, and

Brian: [00:30:36] you know, it

Joe: [00:30:36] time.

Brian: [00:30:37] You can't

Joe: [00:30:37] automate a

Brian: [00:30:38] genuine interaction with someone. And I think perhaps we might have grown faster as a business if we'd look to automation tools and things like that.

But I think that the fact that there's always a person on the other end of the. Phone or the other end of the Instagram chat makes a big difference to people. And so we, yeah, we'll talk in the comments for a little bit of someone's post and ask them about their influences or whatever and just to have a genuine conversation based on what they've put.

And then if we feel like there's someone who maybe would benefit from joining one of our groups, or, or even our services, we just say, Hey, you know, send us a DM and we can have a little bit of a chat more, but it's very, very low pressure. We're not pushy sort of salespeople at all. I hate getting phone calls from people who are really trying to sell me something really hard and

Joe: [00:31:19] also who

Brian: [00:31:20] give a price, and then within five minutes have reduced that price by 80% if they say it's $100 and you say no, and they say, okay, $50 and you go no, and they say, okay, $20 it's like, well, I now know that you were trying to add potentially $80 on top of what you actually needed to charge.

And so it's an even bigger no, now. So we're always, when we talk to people, say.

If this is right for you, check it out. Booking some time to talk if you'd like to, but you know, once you're ready, we'll be here. No pressure. Please do keep in touch. And I think just, it sounds very British, but that thing of just having nice manners and you know, being very polite to people, I think goes a long way.

And as you said, having them bridge Saxon does make people think that you're smarter than you are. It's true. That's just science. So anyone that's listening to this podcast for a while, and especially if you're a student of the profitable producer course, a lot of what he's talking about here as far as it's Instagram outreach is nothing surprising.

It is something we've preached for a long time, which is add value in your conversations. Always add value. Think about what you can do for the customer, not trying to get the customer to pay you money. And although in the back of our minds, all of us want them as customers, we still have to take the longterm approach of how can we add value, add value, add value in every phase of the customer journey because they have their own customer journey, whether they're songwriting or they're in pre-production, or they're currently producing music, or they're in pre-release phase or post-release phase and touring or whatever phase they're in.

There's always some way you can add value to them. And I think Joe and his team had probably done a really good job. Of having this approach through Instagram specifically when it comes to your team, you, you talked about your team being in charge of the outreach. Now talk about the process of you handing that off.

How did you decide, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to hand these conversations off to my team now. How did you decide how they're going to approach it? How do you decide? Do they have KPIs or key performance indicators that you track as far as what they're liable to do or what they're supposed to do every week?

Like talk about that process a little because I think with a business as large as yours. There has to be systems involved and I'd love to start diving into some of those systems now, because all of our listeners right now, they are in the boat where systems are going to help keep them focused on what actually matters in the business because you start systemizing these other parts of your business that are, I wouldn't say less important.

They're just things that anyone else can do if you train them correctly. Whereas you as the business owner  Joe or me, Brian. We need to focus on the things that only we can focus on as the business owner and cold outreach or community engagement or whatever you want to call it. That sort of stuff is very systemizable.

Can you talk about specifically handing off that part of your business?

Joe: [00:33:43] Oh

Brian: [00:33:43] yeah, absolutely. So the moment when I knew it was time to do that was. Actually,

Joe: [00:33:49] to

Brian: [00:33:49] be honest, there wasn't one time

Joe: [00:33:50] I

Brian: [00:33:50] did

Joe: [00:33:51] because

Brian: [00:33:51] I've cut, I've gone

Joe: [00:33:52] back

Brian: [00:33:52] to it a few times because the initial sort of

Joe: [00:33:55] that

Brian: [00:33:55] we used when we started, we've reduced, because it is a little

Joe: [00:33:59] it

Brian: [00:33:59] was a bit spammy what

Joe: [00:34:00] was

Brian: [00:34:00] stuff we were doing in

Joe: [00:34:01] 2016

Brian: [00:34:01] and 2017 it was kind of.

Copy and pasting essentially the same conversation over and over. And although that was effective, my feeling was that for anyone who wasn't the actual person that we were talking to, because you've got to think about it, you know, although we were commenting on people's posts and yes, we might have converted the person whose post we commented on as a into a sale, I felt like.

Anyone who was scrolling through that same hashtag play list or hashtag feed that we were going through and finding videos on would see us if they were a singer songwriter, they'd go, well that's a really spammy account. Cause they're basically having the same conversation over and over. And I think once the sort of leads that the artists that would just directly getting in touch with us as opposed to people we'd reached out to, was more over, I think a two or three month period than the amount of people that we got through reaching out to people directly.

That's

Joe: [00:34:57] when

Brian: [00:34:57] I started

Joe: [00:34:57] reduce

Brian: [00:34:58] the number of hours that was being done on that. I drew a kind of mind map, semi

Joe: [00:35:04] sort

Brian: [00:35:04] of thing. That was sort of a, a

Joe: [00:35:07] structure of

Brian: [00:35:08] how we want those conversations to go and how we can best deliver value to

Joe: [00:35:11] in

Brian: [00:35:12] those conversations. Be it through giving advice on.

What to buy in terms of equipment. Give it a being advice on how to promote yourselves or whatever. But I think that thing that you were mentioning about giving value, that was a huge part of it because we wanted to understand how we could make

Joe: [00:35:28] sure

Brian: [00:35:28] that what we were doing and what we were putting out as as a company was helping people.

And once they saw that we could help them, they would then come back to us as opposed to us showing them what we could sell them and then going, no, I don't want this. And that being the end of the conversation. And I think that something that I would absolutely recommend is trying to . Build communities over trying to go fit individual sales, especially now with when social media is going to be at the forefront of all of this stuff.

You've got to have a community. You've got to have P, you know, you have your podcast, for example, Brian, everyone listens to this, and so you have a community of people who you can engage with and talk to, and that's a real communal aspect to it and that's what people want. That's what social media is good at.

There's a lot of stuff that it's bad at, but that's what it's good at when it's done properly and managed properly. And so I would say to any producers or engineers who are looking at trying to do something similar, I would say focus on community because the individual outreach

Joe: [00:36:24] strategy

Brian: [00:36:25] that we use is very, very minimal now, and something that we don't do a huge amount on in terms of sending that off.

It was this mind map. I gave it to a couple of different people in the team and tried them out and said, all right. Have a go and see how you do on this. And there were a couple of people who I felt were particularly good and what was the most interesting thing was actually the person who I thought was going to be the best person because they're an excellent salesman,

Joe: [00:36:46] was

Brian: [00:36:47] not suitable for the outreach that we were doing because they had that.

Real sales instinct, was it ABC always be closing? It's one of those like, what are those phrases that you hear? I thought they would be the perfect person for it, but because they were so keen on going for the sale as opposed to trying to create a meaningful connection or a meaningful relationship with someone.

Actually it ended up being someone who had no background in sales, who was just a really nice person and just great to talk to and someone who could talk to anyone. And we found that actually just keeping people engaged through conversation.  is the best sail that always be closing thing might be true if you're selling something that is like a one off over the phone or like a, I dunno

Joe: [00:37:28] if,

Brian: [00:37:28] if someone's selling things door to door, fine or always be closing.

But actually I think that for what we're doing for music, there's so much personality that goes tied into the product and the service of what it is that we're doing that really, you just want the person to know and trust you. And then if they want to work on something. I'll work on something with you, and if they don't, they don't.

But I don't think you should try and force it too hard. I just think you need to demonstrate, as you said, quite rightly, Brian, that you have this value and that you can do what you're doing. And through engaging people in genuine conversation, that brings them onto our profile. They look at some of this content that we have.

They hear some examples of our work, and then they put two and two together in their head and they go, okay, yeah, actually I want . Today this and that's when they'll come to us. And that usually takes a few months.

Joe: [00:38:11] I'll sort of

Brian: [00:38:12] cycle of first meeting someone to finishing a project with them can be several years.

Yeah, it does take time. I like how you talked about the always be closing thing is something that is not true in our industry and I would highly agree with that. Here's the deal with our potential customers is producers or mixing engineers or whatever you do. There is a element of our own souls in the music that they create.

And. If all you do is approach with sales, sales, sales, sales, sales in mind, that's just going to put them off when you mix a traditional salesman. But which, by the way, Joe, you talked about how people call you all the time. And the interesting how all salespeople have this specific voice they use and how it's so easy to spot.

It's the same thing on Instagram. If you're just going straight for the cell or any medium, it just puts people off. And I think with what we're doing, we have to take a longterm approach. And there's a couple of reasons for this, and Joe's the guests here, so I'm not going to go too long on this, but it's just worth kind of reiterating for people.

Really, we can take a long term relationship focused approach because people want to hire people that they know, like, and trust, especially in our industry. And selling someone on your services does not build trust, does not allow them to get to know you. It does not make them like you. Sure as hell doesn't make them like you.

But if you focus on the actual genuine relationship. In the community aspect where you talked about Joe building a community that helps build a relationship so they get to know you. That helps build trust and that makes them like you because you're adding value to their lives as opposed to just always be closing, which is just focused on one singular thing, which is the cell.

If you focus only on the cell, you will not get it. If you focus only on the relationship. Surprisingly, you will get the cell. The other reason that you can focus on the longterm approach is because the customer lifetime value, the cl V LTV, the lifetime value, sorry. That's the technical term. Lifetime value in our industry is actually pretty high because people tend to create music ally.

They don't really stop creating music, and so if you're their go to person, if the online recording studio. Is the GoTo studio I'm going to work with as a musician because I've gotten to know Joe and his team, and I like him and his team, and I trust them and I know they're going to do a job with the music.

Then over the next few years as I'm writing and recording music at home, I'm going to send it to them, the mix, or I'm going to trust that they're gonna make good decisions, which means every single time I have money and have music, I'm going to pay it to Joe. And so again, lifetime value of a few genuine conversations on Instagram could be thousands or over $10,000 through the lifetime of that one customer.

So it really adds up. Absolutely. That's bang

Joe: [00:40:31] on. And

Brian: [00:40:32] I think that approach of slow and steady, but genuine relationships is one of the things that has been a real, really important to me and something that I

Joe: [00:40:41] really work with on

Brian: [00:40:42] producers is making sure that

Joe: [00:40:45] personal relationship

Brian: [00:40:46] is at the heart

Joe: [00:40:47] of everything.

Brian: [00:40:48] Because. In terms of like our hiring process. I know that if you're in, if you've come in for an interview, I know that you can do the musical bit of it. That's how you get your interview. The bit where we have the most trouble is finding people. As I said at the beginning, you know, people who are music producers are sort of solo cave dwelling, you know.

DAW, loving people who spend all their time just getting that snare to

Joe: [00:41:10] sound

Brian: [00:41:10] just right, but at the

Joe: [00:41:11] of

Brian: [00:41:11] not going out

Joe: [00:41:12] and

Brian: [00:41:12] playing soccer with their friends. I just want to say it

Joe: [00:41:15] was

Brian: [00:41:15] really difficult for me to say soccer then because we call it football and I realize your audience is American. That that was, that was, we have a lot of UK, but also soccer was a, the term soccer was originated in the U K so I just want to throw that out.

There wasn't really, I didn't know that. Look at the history of it. It's interesting. So sorry, I lost my train of thought. What was it? What was, sorry, I just do the curve. You there? I've got all down snap

Joe: [00:41:37] in my head. I've, I've forgotten where we were at

Brian: [00:41:38] with stuff. So what we found is that if, yeah, if you're coming in for an interview, I know that you can do the musical bit, but that bit of having the ability to create a long lasting relationship is something that is difficult to teach.

I think some people can just do it very naturally and be very genuine and, and understand that. Trust isn't really something that you can force with someone

Joe: [00:41:58] else.

Brian: [00:41:59] You can do what you can to

Joe: [00:42:00] demonstrate

Brian: [00:42:00] the value that you have and not do anything that would show that you are untrustworthy. But actually trust is something that someone has to develop themselves about you.

And the more that you try and say, trust me. The less someone is going to trust you. There were two things that

Joe: [00:42:14] were

Brian: [00:42:14] mentioning before and that one of the

Joe: [00:42:16] I

Brian: [00:42:16] was thinking was that that thing

Joe: [00:42:17] trust, but

Brian: [00:42:17] the other thing in addition to the thing with trust is when you are trying to add value to people's service to add to what you're offering, people know your value as well.

Because I think we spent a few years way undercharging what we were doing and being so grateful that anyone would even consider coming to work with us, that we were willing to sort of bend over backwards

Joe: [00:42:39] for the customer.

Brian: [00:42:40] And what we found is that. We thought this would lead to us getting more customers, or the customers would stick with us longer because we basically just said yes to everything.

I'd actually, what this meant was that sometimes the tracks that we worked on, we weren't really happy, not

Joe: [00:42:54] happy with the finished

Brian: [00:42:55] product because  someone who wasn't hugely experienced in production was calling the shots and we were just going, yep, yes sir. No, sir. Three bags full, sir. Absolutely. Like, you know, what can we do.

But what we

Joe: [00:43:08] realized very

Brian: [00:43:08] quickly was that people have come to

Joe: [00:43:10] us because of

Brian: [00:43:11] the expertise of the production team. They want to be told what's the right and wrong way to do thing, what you

Joe: [00:43:16] know

Brian: [00:43:16] how we can do this properly. And so if you are someone who is able

Joe: [00:43:20] give

Brian: [00:43:20] them that thing, so give them that information.

You hold the keys to the kingdom, and so you don't need to go, okay, well I'll slash my prices in half, and it's unlimited drafts forever, just so that you can get a customer in, because actually that's not worth your time. It's not worth your money. It's not worth your effort. Because realistically trying to get someone to go from spending $50 to spending $500 is a lot more difficult than trying to start someone off at $500 and then getting that one person to pay $500 because you know that that's how much your time should be worth.

Now. That's not to say that there aren't a few times when you do need to sort of graft and you have to maybe. Reduce your fees slightly or whatever, just to try and get something. But one thing that I see how much your producers doing, not necessarily amateurs, but inexperienced, should we say producers doing again and again is just bending over backwards and thinking that they're so grateful that they've got this work from someone that they'll do whatever.

And actually that can be a really bad thing because if someone came around to fix your car, for example. And

Joe: [00:44:20] they

Brian: [00:44:20] went, you actually,

Joe: [00:44:21] do you

Brian: [00:44:21] mind just connecting that wire to that one instead? I think that might work a bit better, and they know that that's wrong, but they go, okay, yeah, yeah. Just because they wants to do it.

You're driving at a hundred miles an hour down the motorway and all your wheels fall off. That's not ideal. And that's happened because they didn't say to you, you actually shouldn't connect those two wires because the wheels will fall off if you go above 60 miles an hour, and that's the same with music

Joe: [00:44:41] production.

They want to know

Brian: [00:44:43] The skills that you have. And

Joe: [00:44:44] so

Brian: [00:44:44] make

Joe: [00:44:44] that

Brian: [00:44:44] you are valuing them correctly because you will save yourself

and take it from someone who didn't

Joe: [00:44:50] that.

Brian: [00:44:51] You'll save yourself a lot of stress and a lot of time, and also be able to work with clients who will treat you with more respect.

And actually that leads to a much more conducive relationship for making great music and people who will want to keep working with you. Now we have artists who started working with us when we were still called my first single. He's still working with us today, and that's because of the fact that we don't.

Push hard to sell them stuff. They tell us what they want and we say, okay, this is how much

Joe: [00:45:16] going

Brian: [00:45:16] to be. We don't say, right,

Joe: [00:45:17] going

Brian: [00:45:18] to be doing this and this is for you and this is

Joe: [00:45:20] What

Brian: [00:45:20] you have to buy. And I think people can tell whether or not you're trying to

Joe: [00:45:23] them

Brian: [00:45:23] something or whether you're trying

Joe: [00:45:25] explain

Brian: [00:45:25] to them that

Joe: [00:45:26] something

Brian: [00:45:26] that would be really good for them, but it does come at a price because those are two very different things.

One thing

Joe: [00:45:31] I would love

Brian: [00:45:32] to mention is. Although I did say I haven't had any sort of formal business training with stuff. What another book that was really, really useful for me was a book called the way of the Wolf, and it's by Jordan Belfort, the guy who will fall street is based on, yeah, familiar with him.

Yeah. Yeah. I think we all know his work to some degree, but he went from being whatever he was then sort of drug addled. Finance broking person out, you know, I don't even really understand what he did, but he is now the highest paid sales trainer on the planet, I think. And he teaches people how to do sales because he's like an unnaturally incredible salesperson.

And I read his book and then I listened to it on audible, being narrated by him, which was amazing. And he talks about these three things. Whenever you're trying to sell someone, you have to draw three lines on a piece of paper, and each at three lines is a scale from one to 10. And it they, they're representative of how much the person that you're talking to trusts you, how much the person trusts your business and how much they trust the service that you're trying to sell them.

And throughout your conversation of talking to them, what you should be doing is trying to get them from a one as close to a 10 on all three of these things. Now that's for an over the phone sales call. And so with us, that's extended over a number of months. That's not happening in one conversation that's happening over a number of months.

And we're trying to build on those three tenets, the trust that they have in

Joe: [00:46:56] us and us

Brian: [00:46:57] as individuals, what they have in the business and the trust they have in the service. And if you look at any of our marketing and any, in my opinion, marketing that is successful. It shows those three things and makes you feel those

Joe: [00:47:08] things.

Brian: [00:47:09] So for

Joe: [00:47:09] who

Brian: [00:47:09] are kind of trying to work out, how can I start making money from doing this sort of thing? I would say you have to think about it from the artist's perspective and how they view you. And if you're coming in with a, this is my sale and this costs this much, you've not demonstrated anything other than the fact that you want money from them.

And so that's a real. I met cherish kind of mistake that people make, I think is trying to go for that sell too much. Yeah, I would totally recommend that book to your listeners. We'll have that book as well as all the other resources in books we mentioned in this podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com slash one two five that's episode one 25 I love that analogy actually too, that you just mentioned here.

One was the three lines thing. I've never heard anyone talk about that and I feel like our audience, some people just had their minds blown because they're not thinking through their interactions with their clients that way. And I've never heard of putting a such an easy to digest form where you're talking about, and here's the other thing, as you said, it's, it's instead of one single phone call, this has done over months and months through social media and through every interaction you have in every interaction they have with your business, that actually takes a ton of the pressure off.

You're not trying to fit all of this in in a. 10 to 20 to 30 minute phone call. You have plenty of time. Any chance you get, you can increase the score on one of those three lines. The other analogy that I love that you use that I've never heard anyone articulate so well is that whole car mechanic thing where it is our job to make sure that they do not destroy their own music and for us to bend over backwards and do literally anything for our customer at the detriment of their own music is actually doing them a disservice.

And I feel like. You put it in a perfect way with the wheels falling off the car. That is so easy for people to let happen because they're so desperate for the work. And what that really does is it, it destroys the trust you could have had with your customer longterm. So that hurts the overall longterm lifetime value of that customer.

Whereas when you push back, when you need a push back, in the example you gave. This wire does not need to be attached to this wire when you push back. Although they may not like it in the moment longterm when they realize that you had their best interests at heart, they're going to trust you again and again and again.

Every single time they're ready to hire somebody in the studio. So these are very important to point out. You just info dump a lot of great knowledge buttons on our audience and I wanted to make sure I pointed those out. Joe, I know we're running a little late on time here. I do want to talk about some of the tools you use in your business.

If you have a a little bit of time here, because you have a lot of moving pieces, you have a lot of people working for you, a lot of different aspects does all tie together and we actually met because you were looking at file pass for implementing into your business as well. Obviously because of the way file pass centralizes revisions and allows people to do timestamp comments and all that.

But I'd love to hear the nerdy term is tech stack, but for our audience, because people don't talk like that in real life. What tools, software or otherwise do you use in your business with the online recording studio? Okay. So it's a pretty hefty list of things that we have at the moment. So I think the first thing is for Instagram, we use three separate tools actually.

So if I, I'll, I'll blanket sort of social media. We use three separate tools. The first is IgE DM, which is a desktop application.

Joe: [00:50:08] just

Brian: [00:50:09] means that you can have your Instagram inbox on your computer as opposed to having to do it on your phone. You can also save. Replies or quick

Joe: [00:50:17] replies

Brian: [00:50:17] or whatever, so that if there are bits of your conversations

Joe: [00:50:20] you're

Brian: [00:50:20] having

Joe: [00:50:20] that

Brian: [00:50:20] are repetitive, you don't have to type them again and again.

That's the first thing that he's IgE

Joe: [00:50:25] DM pro, I think it's about

Brian: [00:50:26] $12 or something like that

Joe: [00:50:28] online. It's really cheap,

Brian: [00:50:29] but really good. If you don't like

Joe: [00:50:30] to always be

Brian: [00:50:31] jumping between devices  we use sprout social for all of our. Social media marketing stuff. And then we use later for Instagram just cause we find that we like the interface more for that.

In terms of the operations of actually running the business, we use a few

Joe: [00:50:49] so we use Trello

Brian: [00:50:50] to track all of the projects. So those are project management tool. Is Trello. Yeah, Trello is what we use for everything. I was

Joe: [00:50:57] of

Brian: [00:50:57] a novice when it came to Trello, and then one of our producers, Marcus, came to me and said, you realize that we've had Trello for like two years and there's so many things on it that we're not using, and that we're basically just, it's like we've logged on for the first time

Joe: [00:51:10] and he set up

Brian: [00:51:11] whole incredible process.

Now that means

Joe: [00:51:14] that

Brian: [00:51:15] we're able to track the progress of each individual track. Other people can chip

Joe: [00:51:18] and give

Brian: [00:51:19] feedback. Other producers on the team. This all happens just on our side, so

Joe: [00:51:22] the

Brian: [00:51:22] artist doesn't see this stuff. We track them through that whole workflow and we have things that are automated in terms of triggers

Joe: [00:51:29] for

Brian: [00:51:29] letting you know when

Joe: [00:51:30] coming

Brian: [00:51:30] up

Joe: [00:51:30] a

Brian: [00:51:30] deadline of when something has to be handed in or different bits that

Joe: [00:51:33] ask, you know,

Brian: [00:51:34] whether it's videos of them singing or a testimonial video or whatever.

We can track it all on there. And also, I think. The reason that we first got in touch with you about file pass was that we kind of wanted to create something that would be more two way so that it would be client facing as well as stuff that we could use in our back ends. And the big thing that.

Although our workflow does allow for the flexibility within a project because no two projects are the same. What it doesn't do is get rid of the bit that we don't have control over, and the bit that we don't have control over is the stuff that the artist does. We don't have control over the sort of emails

Joe: [00:52:11] they send.

Really,

Brian: [00:52:12] we don't

Joe: [00:52:12] control over

Brian: [00:52:13] how they want to give their feedback. We do say, please don't

Joe: [00:52:16] us

Brian: [00:52:16] a massive long email that isn't split up into bullet points, but some people, particularly if they're not English, isn't their first language, which is a lot of people that we work with. Sometimes you're just going to get a big essay of notes.

That doesn't really make sense. But the thing with far past it was so great was this timestamp thing, and that's something that we're really keen to be looking at how we can implement, because that just makes that process of giving feedback. So simple. And that is the thing that gets in the way, is waiting for feedback and waiting for vocals.

Those are our two things that slow us down. But Trello. Is excellent for that. I'm now being advertised Monday a lot as well. monday.com people say this is very good, but honestly, we've had Trello for three years. It took me a long time to learn how to use it, and I'm not gonna. Transfer everything over. If it works, it works

Joe: [00:52:58] fine.

Brian: [00:52:59] I have no issues with it at the moment. So we use that and then we use HubSpot for all of our stuff. That's like email marketing plus our meetings so that people can book in meetings with all of our production team individually. They all have their own meetings links, which then tie into our contact, like our

Joe: [00:53:15] CRM, our contact management system

Brian: [00:53:17] for

Joe: [00:53:18] everyone that

Brian: [00:53:18] we work with.

And so it is all tied together and Trello is. Using

Zapier or Zapier. I never know how to say it. That ties into HubSpot with Trello, and then we use Slack to communicate internally as a team. Those are the big ones, really. Uh, and I would say that Trello is the one that I, I just love it. It makes organizing projects so easy.

And if you're someone who is not necessarily particularly organized like myself, it's an absolute godsend because it really is useful and really does help you to visualize. All of the projects that you have to do. That's the thing that I've always struggled with is not being able to see it all in front of me.

You know, I'm certainly one who likes

Joe: [00:53:55] stick loads

Brian: [00:53:55] post. Its up on the wall that Trello just basically means you can do that on your computer and it saves you having to peel the paint off your walls and repaint your walls every six months because you've pulled off and chipped paint everywhere. We use Trello for this podcast as well.

We don't use it. We don't have a lot of moving parts with the podcast. It's pretty simple as far as just moving different cards around for each episode. But I would love to see your setup for all in recording studio cause I imagine that's a very in depth process. There's a, a mastering engineer named Mike Cola collision collage, and I can never say his last name correctly.

Who has one of the most insane Trello setups for his mastering business where it's automated with Zapier when certain emails go out and moves cards around, when his CRM is updated, it moves cards around. When files get uploaded, it moves cards around. It's like insane. All of the automation you can have set up with that.

So if our audience does not know what Zapier is, because some people call it Zapier, by the way, Z a. P. I. E. R. Since the actual actions that are taken are called zaps. I've always called it Zapier, but you know what? We can leave it open to argument and that's fine. If anyone, our audience has not used Zapier, it is an incredible tool for, for automating a lot of.

I'm moving parts between apps, specifically  and then HubSpot. You said you use it for the CRM. Is there, I know HubSpot has a whole ecosystem of tools. What do you use besides their CRM?

Joe: [00:55:09] Everything.

Brian: [00:55:09] Our website is hosted on HubSpot, so any new pages that we build, any landing pages,

Joe: [00:55:14] or anything

Brian: [00:55:14] like that, are all on HubSpot.

Any email campaigns, our blog automation.

as well. So my co founder for file pass, his other company's called sound Stripe in there. Big company, 60 plus employees funded, venture capitalist funded, all that stuff. They use HubSpot for everything and they love it. He wants to incorporate it for file pass.

We're not quite there yet because we're still relatively new company. But I'd love for you to talk to our audience about the costs involved with a tool like that, because I know the pricing behind HubSpot. I know it is not cheap. I know it's quite expensive, especially compared to some other tools. What would you say to our audience when they're looking at tools, evaluating tools and all they see as price without considering the value that the toll gives you?

How much stock do you put into the price versus value equation?

Joe: [00:56:01] That's a

Brian: [00:56:01] really, really good question. I think with HubSpot's. How do we

come at it from just buying it new. We wouldn't be using it. Now what's great is that a lot of these businesses, and this is something that you have to do your own research for a lot of these businesses, especially things like HubSpot that are really focused on growth and businesses and and helping startups and all that sort of stuff, often have startup programs or discounts or things like that.

And so when we used HubSpot the first year that we used it, we used it at a 90% discount. Yeah. I think it's about 2000 pounds a month. And. We still don't pay that. So we have now three years on and we still getting it like a 65% discount and that's literally just come off the fact that we asked, we just said, look, this is a crazy amount of money.

There's still only like two of us in the team at this point in terms of the people who are actually going to be using HubSpot, cause the producers don't use it for anything other than booking meetings and it wouldn't have been worthwhile. Honestly, I still don't think that paying two grand a month for it is worthwhile because there are ways that you can do all of the stuff that we do with multiple tools.

It's just nice having them all in one place. And I think as soon as they say to us,

Joe: [00:57:06] it's going to be two grand

Brian: [00:57:06] to keep using it, we might look elsewhere and try and find another way to do it.

Joe: [00:57:10] But

Brian: [00:57:11] for anyone who is registered as a business as opposed to just self-employed, it's

Joe: [00:57:16] definitely worth looking

Brian: [00:57:17] at their startup program because if you are quite

Joe: [00:57:19] unique

Brian: [00:57:20] in what you do now, we were quite unique because I think

Joe: [00:57:23] then any, and

Brian: [00:57:23] even now one of the few people who kind of do what we do in the way that we do it,

Joe: [00:57:28] they were very

Brian: [00:57:29] in it.

And so I think that if you have a good niche of what

Joe: [00:57:32] doing, they'll sign

Brian: [00:57:33] you up

Joe: [00:57:33] a

Brian: [00:57:33] heartbeat

Joe: [00:57:34] because they

Brian: [00:57:34] want really interesting, diverse businesses because, and this

Joe: [00:57:38] where

Brian: [00:57:38] the user generated content comes back into it. They will then ask you to make a video talking about how great HubSpot is and the weirder your business, the better it

Joe: [00:57:46] makes

Brian: [00:57:46] them look.

And for us, music weirdos, they love all that

Joe: [00:57:49] of

Brian: [00:57:49] stuff because they're all very sort of corporate shirt and tie people who think of anyone who can play the

Joe: [00:57:55] piano is.

Brian: [00:57:56] Billy Joel, do you know what I mean? Not Billy Joel. He's the least rock and roll person. I can't meet here. That's what came to mind.

Joe: [00:58:03] Keith

Brian: [00:58:03] Richards. He's

Joe: [00:58:04] a guitarist. But yeah, anyone who does music

Brian: [00:58:05] is in the rolling stones. That's as current as I can be with my music references.

I'm not a thousand years old

Joe: [00:58:11] Just

Brian: [00:58:11] to be that. The reason I wanted to ask that is because so many people, when they start looking at tools, especially a CRM, is a good example of how much value a CRM brings your business, and then they see a price tag.

Any price tag, they choose their CRM only because there's a free option out there or something like that. And I feel like people are putting too much stock into. The cost versus the value. And if you didn't have HubSpot, you could still probably have coupled together some stuff, but it's still going to cost you money.

And the amount of value these tools bring to your business allows you to do what you're doing, which is have as many people as you have in your business to bring the income that you have in your business. Joe does the only recording studio do any sort of paid advertising? We do a little bit. Um, we do Google ads, so we go.

Certain keywords that we wrote for, but luckily, and this was again, part of the reason that we named the company, the online recording studio is because if you search for an online recording studio, we come up pretty high in the rankings just because it's our main, so it's like the post office, they were very clever because they're a post office and that's also the name of their company.

So if you search for a post office, that'll be the first ones to come up so that we don't have to do too much on. But also. Because we're in

Joe: [00:59:17] such a

Brian: [00:59:17] kind of early adoption phase for online music production, which I think will have to now that covert 19 know self isolation is happening. Uh, that adoption phase is going to have a very, very steep incline now because people are now having to work out how we do this whole thing online.

But because up until now, it's still been only people really knowing that this exists as a concept, searching for it on Google. That's not

Joe: [00:59:43] been

Brian: [00:59:43] a huge place for us to get business. It hasn't really been, I mean, we do get people coming through there, but Instagram for us is the big one. Now, occasionally I will promote a post, but what we've got is a really, really lovely group of

Joe: [00:59:54] musicians

Brian: [00:59:55] who we've worked with.

I would say on the whole, we've only ever worked with really, really nice people who were. When they're happy with what they're doing, have been willing to advocate for us and post all sorts of stuff here and there. We occasionally post and promotes with some money behind them, testimonials, occasionally before and afters, things like that.

But really, I mean, we don't spend that much. We probably only spend about $300 a month on advertising. It really is low because the, the level of organic. I guess lead generation, if you want to call it that, is so high. We don't spend that much money on advertising, which means that we can focus that money more on things internally that will make us more efficient at what we're doing, which has been really nice.

I know that story ads have been something that have been really effective for us, but actually in our advertising, not only are we having to sort of show what we do, we're also having to explain the concept. And you have basically 30 seconds to explain. It is possible to record a song online and get really high quality production and work with a producer and get all of these things down.

And, but even just by how quickly I had to speak there, that's not very engaging as an ad. So for us, we're still kind of waiting for people to see it as a viable option and know about it so that our ads don't necessarily have to be about education. They can just be about, Hey, we're the best people to do the thing that you already know exists.

And so I would say. The only time that we've seen success with ads that we've been running haven't been ads that we've run for our own company. It's it's ad campaigns that we've run for artists because it, for musicians, Instagram ads are amazing and so cheap as well. Instagram and YouTube particularly are really, really cheap.

You can be paying one P to P will or 1 cent 2 cents per stream or per swipe on your thing, sending someone to your streaming or wherever it may be. But for production purposes, we're still trying to crack the code of how to advertise that effectively. We still haven't got there yet, but it's something that we're looking at.

What would you say your top two lead sources are right now? Would you say? Word of mouth, then Instagram outreach or conversations, or would you say is the other way around or something else all together? Well, the top

Joe: [01:01:53] two

Brian: [01:01:54] I'll probably Instagram and our website, and the reason that those are the top two is because they are pretty much the only two.

We've tried to limit and just be good at a few things as opposed to trying to

Joe: [01:02:04] spread

Brian: [01:02:05] too

Joe: [01:02:05] And

Brian: [01:02:05] it's only now really

Joe: [01:02:06] we're

Brian: [01:02:07] looking more at Twitter and we're looking at Facebook because our customers have always hung out on Instagram. And so that's where we get the majority of our business from.

It is through Instagram, but where those website visitors, are they coming from Instagram because. Of conversations you had clicking through your bio or are they coming because they heard about you through word of mouth from one of the friends? To be honest, I would say about 80% coming through Instagram to the sites.

I couldn't

Joe: [01:02:32] in

Brian: [01:02:32] terms of whether those are people that we've reached out to or have

Joe: [01:02:35] out

Brian: [01:02:35] to us or

Joe: [01:02:37] I've come through word of

Brian: [01:02:37] mouth. What I would say is that almost everyone that we do work with. Says, I did reach out to a few of your artists,

you know, I knew about you guys already, but then I reached out to a few of your artists and ask them about their experience.

And they had really good things to say, which is always really nice.

Joe: [01:02:53] And

Brian: [01:02:53] so often we give, if someone comes to us on the  someone else's recommendation, we will repay that sort of, uh, that kindness that we've been given by that artist in. Some form or another, be it a free instrument on the next production or some discount or something like that.

And so, you know,

Joe: [01:03:08] I think

Brian: [01:03:09] rewarding people for helping you is something that's really important, but Instagram really is the main thing for us. And it's interesting, we've talked about a lot about how the sort of timeline of things is slower. And I think that right now everyone is panicking and a lot of businesses be, they music businesses are not, are going.

How on earth do we do this online? How do we now pivot our entire business to be able to ride this out? Because I mean, if you work in travel, it's gone. You work in the arts or theater, anything that's live that's gone for the foreseeable future. And so there are very few businesses that are able to, unless you sell a physical product, but if you

Joe: [01:03:44] are something that

Brian: [01:03:45] has to be tried on in store, people can't come in and do that.

But we're fortunate in the fact that we're not having to adapt. For us, it's just business as usual. And so I think now what we're seeing is that more and more people, especially the last few days, are going and researching. And so the number of people who come through Instagram versus the number of people who find us just online, it is sort of equalizing

Joe: [01:04:06] because people

Brian: [01:04:06] are now starting to search for that thing.

Yeah. I think that's one of the unintended benefits of the situation we're in right now is just you have the right business model at the right time, and as unfortunate as it is for a lot of businesses, people are scrambling right now and I feel like you have set up the perfect business in the audio world for weathering the storm.

One thing that stands out to me, I think that you do better than most people. That's worth bringing up here.  your sales material. On your website or how you convert a stranger into a customer. Now there is so much that goes into selling a customer on your services. We talked a lot about it through the conversations you've had on Instagram, the social proof through having people have a, what is it?

User generated content through having genuine conversations with people through having good referrals, word of mouth, but still when a stranger comes here, website, no matter how much they know about you, you still have a lot to explain on your website. And I think you'd do a great job of that. And I'd love for you to talk through some of the things that you do to help turn a stranger into customer.

And just for one example of many is the live chat. The first thing I'm greeted with when I come to your site is, Hey, I'm Joe. I'd love to help you, or whatever your, your little live chat bubble that comes up there. These are all tools that people can incorporate. What are some of the things that you do specifically on your site to help turn a stranger or someone that kind of knows about you into a customer?

So I think it comes back to those things

Joe: [01:05:26] we

Brian: [01:05:26] were

Joe: [01:05:27] about

Brian: [01:05:27] before about offering value before, you know, the, the, the message

Joe: [01:05:31] you get

Brian: [01:05:32] when

Joe: [01:05:32] first

Brian: [01:05:32] come onto the site is, I think depending on who is on the chat on that day, it'll be, Hey, I'm so and so. So it may say, Hey, I'm Joe, thanks for joining us.

How can I help? And the first thing there is that it's an open question. So it's not a yes or no question. I think whenever

Joe: [01:05:47] you're talking to

Brian: [01:05:48] people within a

Joe: [01:05:49] sales context,

Brian: [01:05:49] try and avoid yes or no questions until the very end

Joe: [01:05:52] when

Brian: [01:05:52] you just want to get them to say yes a bunch of times, a question like, you know,

Joe: [01:05:56] are you looking

Brian: [01:05:56] for today?

Or what are you hoping to achieve with your music? Can we try a few different ones? And they have varying levels of success, but I think when you give someone an opportunity to basically tell you what they want or what they're hoping for, you can then give them a really tailored response. And if you are able to have the time to be available on a live chat, and I know that now our site's on HubSpot, but I know that if you have a WordPress site or something like that, there are.

Third party plugins that

Joe: [01:06:18] can use

Brian: [01:06:19] that mean that you

Joe: [01:06:19] have that live

Brian: [01:06:20] chat on your phone. So you can be either, whether

Joe: [01:06:22] hook

Brian: [01:06:22] it up to Slack or

Joe: [01:06:23] WhatsApp or

Brian: [01:06:24] something like that, or

Joe: [01:06:25] Facebook

Brian: [01:06:25] messenger, you can be able to

Joe: [01:06:27] that.

Brian: [01:06:27] And I think that taking

Joe: [01:06:29] artist

Brian: [01:06:29] as an individual, understanding specifically what they want, and then being able to say, okay, well here are some of the things that we offer that will suit that.

Would you like to speak to someone in person about it? And I think getting someone to then booking a consultation to talk is much easier when they've already spoken to someone on your chat because I don't know, people don't really want to talk to people unless there's a reason for it. You don't really want to talk to strangers unless you have a reason for it, unless you're one of those people who like talking to strangers.

Joe: [01:06:58] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's

Brian: [01:07:00] Just there's someone comes up to you on the street with no reason to talk to you. You're a bit like. Okay, thank you. Bye. But I think that, uh, what's nice is that we do get to meet people and we have a conversation with people a little bit on the site first that kind of warms them up.

We then get them to book in for a consultation and we'll ask them to send over a few demos if they have already or haven't already. Then we'll have a conversation with them. And actually that first call, unless they have explicitly sent in an email saying, this is what I want to go for, can I just book in that first conversation generally is not a sales conversation.

It's 15 to 30 minutes getting to know the person, showing that you're not trying to sell and you want to understand what it is that they are looking for, and then understanding how you can best deliver that to them. Because the easiest sales, and this is. Something that took me a really long time to learn.

The easiest sales are the ones where you don't really have to sell anything. People tell you what they want and what they want to achieve and you say, yup, we can do that. You don't need to explain that. You can do that to them. You don't have to talk through all the minutia and the details of all that.

You just say, yep, okay, that's what you want. We can do that and this is how much it costs. If someone asks you for the price, first of all, that's a really, really good sign in terms of them wanting to buy it, cause that's a purchasing signal. Once we've had that call. They'll make a decision and maybe they'll come back in a few weeks or even the next day they'll come back.

Or sometimes they'll go, okay, how do we get started on that first call? But we don't push. But the single best piece of advice I was given about closing a sale, and this is face to face. And so we use FaceTime or Skype or whenever. So it is always a face to face meeting is when someone asks you the price, you tell them the price and then you stopped talking.

Also known as, shut the fuck up. Absolutely. Shut the fuck up. Do not

Joe: [01:08:40] say a word. Be very,

Brian: [01:08:42] very quiet. And. If you

Joe: [01:08:44] talk

Brian: [01:08:45] first, nine times out of 10 you will not get that sale because if you go, okay, it's $200 but also we can have this and it's really good value and whatever. You seem desperate, you seem like you're trying to push the sale.

You seem like the sale is more important to you than them as a person, and it's just a sort of number to you. But if you sit there and you say, right, it's $200. And there is a pause, uh, which for a podcast isn't

Joe: [01:09:10] very entertaining, but for

Brian: [01:09:11] this example, it is important.

Joe: [01:09:13] There is a pause.

Brian: [01:09:14] And in that pause, what they're doing is they're trying to go, why?

Okay, well. If you've taken those three lines into consideration that we were talking about trust and you trust in the business, trust in the product

those three things are as close to a 10 as possible. They're then going, okay, so what reasons do I have to not get this? This is all going on in their head.

In that pause, well, I can't think

Joe: [01:09:35] of

Brian: [01:09:35] any. They've told me the price. That's a reasonable price. I need all of these things. They can do it. I trust that they can do it. Okay, I'll buy and that's what happens. And if you interrupt that thought process by having to sort of justify the price that you've just given them, they'll go, Oh no, I, I need to talk to my husband or

Joe: [01:09:54] my

Brian: [01:09:54] wife, or, you know, I need to, there's always going to be a reason why they're not going to do it.

And I think that, uh, yeah, that. Honestly was a game changer for me and was so nerve wracking to do. The first

Joe: [01:10:04] time

Brian: [01:10:05] I did it, I was terrified. I have my hands, so I, you know, you could just see my face on the video, but my hands were just out of frame, shaking, sweating,

Joe: [01:10:13] and I was there. I said, all right, it's $250.

Brian: [01:10:17] And they went okay. And I went, okay, great. It was like really, really happy that I had actually worked, and from

Joe: [01:10:23] that moment on,

Brian: [01:10:24] that's how I've always done it with those things. But don't do that until you know that all of those three things that I've mentioned are very, very close to a 10 because otherwise they're just going to go

Joe: [01:10:32] Nope, it's

Brian: [01:10:32] too much and then you've sort of blown it at that point.

Do you, I feel like this is a good place to kind of wrap things up. You've given us so much to consider here as audio engineers and studio owners and producers and mixing engineers. Is there anything that I didn't bring up that you would like to talk about? Anything that you think, uh, maybe I missed out on or something worth mentioning here before we wrap this up?

Well, there's two things. One that we did mention early on, which is that we are now hiring. Yes, there is a massive demand for.

Joe: [01:10:57] online music production now because

Brian: [01:10:59] there are either people who are continuing to be paid while not being at work and so have a lot of time. People who are working from home or older people

Joe: [01:11:07] who

Brian: [01:11:07] are, you know, they wrote some songs back in the 80s and they want to relive the glory days because they've been told by the government that they're not allowed to leave the house.

Which is what we've just had over here.

And so there is real demand for it and instead of the time and

Joe: [01:11:20] effort that you could

Brian: [01:11:21] spend on setting

Joe: [01:11:22] yourself

Brian: [01:11:22] up a profile on something like Fiverr or sound better or one of those sorts of things where

Joe: [01:11:27] you have

Brian: [01:11:27] spend ages setting up a profile, doing loads of projects for

Joe: [01:11:32] no money to get your ratings up,

Brian: [01:11:34] and even

Joe: [01:11:34] then

Brian: [01:11:35] it's a full time job.

Just staying on there, checking for

Joe: [01:11:37] projects,

Brian: [01:11:37] coming in with the auto recording studio, working with us means

Joe: [01:11:41] that whole

Brian: [01:11:41] side of things is taken care of. And you will just continue to be given a stream of work. All of our producers are always in work. There's no one who's not working on anything at the moment because we just keep adding producers as in when we have the

Joe: [01:11:53] demand

Brian: [01:11:54] for them.

So if

Joe: [01:11:55] you

Brian: [01:11:55] are interested in applying, all you need to do is send a short portfolio of three songs with a breakdown of just your process for those three songs, whether you're an electronic producer, you've, you know, specializing in electronic genres or a live producer. If you are alive producer currently, it works best if you are a multi-instrumentalist yourself because it means that you can take care of a lot of the instrumentation and you'll make the most money if you can play more stuff yourself rather than having to bring in session musicians.

So if you are interested in applying, send a three track

Joe: [01:12:24] plus

Brian: [01:12:25] maybe a cover letter and a breakdown of your process on those songs to info@onlinerecordingstudio.com. And the second thing. Now, this is just a kind of fun thing that we're trying to do at the moment, which is because everyone is kind of stuck at home, and I guess it's quite a British thing.

We have this blitz spirit thing where, you know, we're all in this together, this community sort of aspect of everything. I think that. It's kind of part of, of, of British life. But we want this to be a thing that everyone around the world does. Now we're all being told to social distance ourselves and it's social distancing is what we need to be doing.

So we've set this new challenge, which is called social distance sing. Very funny, huh? Listen, listen to all the laughter. My cohost would love that cause he's the, he's the dad pawn guy. I gave you one polite laugh when you first told me that. And you said that's everyone's reaction. It's just a single. Huh?

Just, yeah, just the one,

Joe: [01:13:15] just the one laugh and that's,

Brian: [01:13:16] that's what we're going

Joe: [01:13:17] It's that

Brian: [01:13:17] level of just like,

Joe: [01:13:18] okay,

Brian: [01:13:19] th th there is humor in that. Not a lot of humor, but enough for me to register

Joe: [01:13:24] that that was technically a joke,

Brian: [01:13:26] so that this is

Joe: [01:13:27] this thing and

Brian: [01:13:27] basically it's kind of like the ice bucket challenge.

Essentially what you have to do is you sing a song. You nominate three friends, you post it to social media using the hashtag social distance sing,

and then they'll then nominate three people and they'll know nominate three people at an exponentially. Hopefully this thing can grow and we can all be sharing music.

Now. You can sing a song about anything that you want, even if you're not a great singer. It's just a fun thing that we can all do at home while we're all in this and just show that there are so many people, so many musicians who are all in the same boat at the moment, and we are all in the same boat.

Our producers are really asked us as

Joe: [01:14:00] the

Brian: [01:14:00] management, you guys, everyone

Joe: [01:14:02] a

Brian: [01:14:02] pretty much around the world is stuck at home trying to work out what to do at the moment. And so we might as well make it as fun as we can and also as worthwhile as we can. So I would say if you want to apply for a job, absolutely do you get in touch.

It's really nice to hear people's portfolios when they come in and if you want to do something a little fun. Do the social distance thing, challenge and

Joe: [01:14:21] uh,

Brian: [01:14:21] yeah, hopefully in a few months time we'll be like, wow,

Joe: [01:14:23] that was the

Brian: [01:14:23] massive thing that everyone did. Two follow up questions to that one. Are you also looking for session musicians cause a lot of our audience, they offer remote instrument services or whatever, or are you just looking for producers and engineers, session musicians?

I think a would be useful. However, I think. Generally, our producers have their own musicians that they call upon. Now, there will be undoubtedly some instruments

Joe: [01:14:46] we're

Brian: [01:14:46] going to struggle with because either the instrumentalist

Joe: [01:14:49] doesn't have recording equipment

Brian: [01:14:50] at home or they don't know how to record themselves and would need that.

So I would say if you are someone who plays an instrument that isn't particularly common in terms of people asking for it, then do get in touch. But if you are a guitarist or a basis or a drummer, we're kind of covered at the moment. If that's just your only service. But if you also produce, then absolutely get in touch too.

Second question is how do they actually contact you? So you

Joe: [01:15:14] just send us

Brian: [01:15:15] a portfolio to info@onlinerecordingstudio.com. If you wouldn't mind not going through the website just because that complicates

Joe: [01:15:22] cause

Brian: [01:15:22] you might start getting emails to the Sally products, which goes against everything that I've just said.

Hiring one Oh one dictates you follow his instructions. Anyone who doesn't follow his instructions automatically disqualifies themselves from the hiring process. So don't go through his website, email info@onlinerecordingstudio.com and uh, sent him the portfolio of three songs. If you screw that up, you're not getting hired.

That's quite right. I always find

Joe: [01:15:45] it funny when

Brian: [01:15:45] I get emails from people asking how to apply.

It's like, well, you have my email address. They're like, they get an email being like, hi, hopeless, like really formal email. How do I apply for this position? Well, you kind of just did in not doing it, and unfortunately you're probably not going to get it because the answer was right in

Joe: [01:16:02] front

Brian: [01:16:02] of you the whole time.

But yeah, get in touch. It's always really nice to hit portfolios. We will try and listen to as many as we can. . Unfortunately, because we do get a lot of people who apply for stuff when we might not be able to get back to you about your stuff. But we will always try to get back to as many people as possible, but there'll be a few of us listening in because we kind of.

Ah, needing to bring people in now quite quickly. So if you are someone who is a great producer, good at talking with people, comfortable talking with people, and someone who people would consider to be likable and friendly, and someone who you can be seen as confident and authoritative in what you're doing.

And also have a laugh with them as well cause it is super fun. Then absolutely get in touch and we'll listen to your portfolio. If we like what we hear, we'll ask you for an interview and then following that we'll basically probably get you started on a project later that day cause they're there.

They're coming thick and fast at the moment. That's great. All right man. Well thank you so much for taking the time to come on here. I know how valuable your time is. So for anyone interested, there's your opportunity. Otherwise, this was a great episode for learning so many different aspects of marketing and sales and positioning and differentiation and how to have relationships.

Goodbye,

Joe: [01:17:07] Okay. Bye

Brian: [01:17:08] bye.

So that is if in this episode of the six figure home serial podcast, plenty of stuff for you to take home and start implementing with your studios right now. Joe is obviously a very knowledgeable guy, very smart businessman. So hopefully we'll get him back on the podcast again in the future. Cause I feel like I go talk to him for like six hours straight and he could teach this audience a lot of stuff.

So thank you so much again, Joe, for coming on the podcast. So after talking to Joe and recording this episode, I had the idea to see what sort of tools are out there. That I think would help studios transition to a 100% online recording studio or mixing studio or mastering studio. Anything that you're doing to where you're not face to face or not human human anymore because of the social distancing and the quarantine, depending on what country you're in.

So I put together a complete guidance, like seven videos and 22 different tools that I go through. And like six different categories of all these different tools that are gonna help you shift your business online. So if you want that you think is gonna be relevant for you right now, just go to the six figure home studio.com it's literally the first thing you'll see on the page.

And if you're listening to this episode, say weeks or months later, and it's not just on the six figure home studio.com anymore, then you can just go to the six figure home, studio.com/coronavirus and I'll forward that URL to wherever this guide ends up in the future. Next week's episode. I'm not sure what it's going to be yet.

I don't know if I'm going to do another interview or if Chris will be back and we can actually do a, uh, a dual episode, kind of going back to our normal podcast routine. But either way, you can be, rest assured we're gonna have another episode coming at you. Bright and early 6:00 AM next Tuesday morning.

Rain or shine virus or not quarantine or not. This podcast still happens until next time. Thank you so much for listening and happy hustle.