How To DeF*ck Your Marketing Message With A “Before & After Transformation”

Brian: This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 137.

[00:00:19] Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm here with my beautiful bald. Well, I got it backwards today, but didn't matter cause you're not wearing a purple shirt anyways. Christopher J. Graham, you already said. Screwed up the day to day because I got the name wrong.

[00:00:36] You didn't have your purple shirt on,

[00:00:38] Chris: I'm sorry.

[00:00:38] Brian: how are you doing now? That you've ruined my day.

[00:00:40] Chris: I'm doing pretty good. I know how you're doing, but because this is a podcast, I'm going to ask how you're doing. What's new in your life, Brian.

[00:00:48] Brian: Yeah. It's like the intro of this podcast is always such bullshit cause like you and I talked for like an hour before we even recorded.

[00:00:54] Chris: Yeah.

[00:00:55] Brian: So it's like, we don't have anything to catch up on. You know, everything, since we last talked last time.

[00:00:58] Chris: This is true.

[00:00:59] Brian: Friday. It's like Tuesday now. So last Friday my wife got tested for COVID because her friend got it, that she was with for like a week, which basically guarantees my wife has it, which basically guarantees that I have it or we'll have it.

[00:01:11] So, uh, I've been sitting around waiting for the damn test results to get back in. And she called yesterday and they're like, Call back Friday. We'll probably have an answer by then. It's like, great. It's good to know that in this city of Nashville, Tennessee, when you get tested, by the time you get your results back, all of the symptoms will have probably passed by you.

[00:01:27] And I felt nothing so far. So like, if I have it, I could be just carrying it around town. If I didn't have my test results back, not that I would we'll do that because I know I'm in like high risk. So I'm self quarantining the shit out of myself, but like, There are people that they don't know, they have it, or they get a test and to make them wait over a week to get their results back is absurd.

[00:01:44] To me, it's like so dumb. So that's how I'm feeling. Hey, doing a kiss.

[00:01:48] Chris: I'm good. I have anxiety for you about, uh, all of this

[00:01:52] Brian: it's like an impending doom, which is an old death metal band that we toured with back in the day, impending doom. And so that's how I feel.

[00:01:58] Chris: impending doom. Speaking of impending doom, I wanted to share a little bit about what's been going on with me. Over the past couple of months here, we'll get a lot more into this. But I mentioned before on the podcast that I was having a bunch of panic attacks and I ended up, we're going to see a lot of doctors about this.

[00:02:16] And it turns out that I have unknowingly been struggling with PTSD four decades and wasn't diagnosed, didn't know it and had been having flashbacks all the time.

[00:02:30] Brian: So just to clarify, usually like this PTSD, I don't know much about it. Other than what you've told me, is this something that lasts like a short amount of time, a long amount of time for most people, like you have a different form than someone that maybe went to war or something like that. Right.

[00:02:41] Chris: Yeah. So the type of PTSD I have is called complex PTSD. We won't get into the really specifics of it, but it's something that happened when I was really young and complex PTSD. When you have a flashback, you don't have images or memories you have, what's called an emotional flashback. So all of a sudden.

[00:02:59] All the things that you felt at a really terrifying time in your childhood just comes back to you all at once. So it's been interesting, kind of going through my own mental health journey here, and I'm on Prozac for it now. And Prozac is sorta like the go to first line of defense for PTSD. And it's been amazing.

[00:03:17] I'm still navigating all of this, but in a lot of ways, I didn't realize this, but I felt like I was carrying a bear on my back for decades. And now it's more like a golden retriever.

[00:03:29] Brian: Why a bear? Why not like a yak?

[00:03:31] Chris: Well, cause the bear might bite your head off with a flashback,

[00:03:34] Brian: What about a mountain line?

[00:03:35] Chris: a mountain lion. Yes. Well, a bear weighs more.

[00:03:38] Brian: That's true. That's true.

[00:03:39] Chris: This is something like I'm completely in learning mode with this I'm reading nonstop.

[00:03:45] I've learned more about mental health than I have about anything else in a shorter period of time. And I am going to kick the ass of this PTSD by doing the work. And this is great banter because I bought something that you don't approve of.

[00:03:59] Brian: This is banter.

[00:04:00] Chris: This is banter.

[00:04:01] Brian: Oh, pretty heavy topic for some banter credits.

[00:04:04] Chris: It is a pretty heavy topic. So the sorta like number one bestselling book about PTSD of all time is this book called the body, keeps the score.

[00:04:11] I read it. I loved it. Yeah. Blew my mind. I cried a lot.

[00:04:16] Brian: Chris show me his highlights in that book.

[00:04:18] Chris: I went all out.

[00:04:19] Brian: And it's like, you literally have every three pages. You have a very neatly done sticky notes sticking out of it.

[00:04:26] Chris: Sticky tabs. Yeah, I did the sticky tabs highlight

[00:04:29] Brian: I've never seen such a. Meticulously studied book in my life.

[00:04:34] Chris: Yeah. I'm pretty into it. And one of the things I learned about PTSD in here, we'll get into little bit of brain science, but the way the human brain works is the thalamus encodes, all the information, things, you see, things, you touch things you hear. And for me, a lot of my triggers, I don't love the word triggers, but that's the word that they use for PTSD, our auditory, which is hilariously ironic, given that I am in the audio field and you've experienced flashbacks with me.

[00:05:03] One of the first times we hung out, we went to summer Nam and we walked onto the floor and all the drums are playing.

[00:05:08] Brian: I don't even have this thing that you've experienced. And I feel like a piece of shit. When I walked through the drum area of Nam,

[00:05:15] Chris: It was like a hell for me. And we ended up going over to a headphone company and buying like in yours, like a gym and my ears, just so I could stay on the floor.

[00:05:23] Brian: there was no we involved with that headphone purchase just for full clarity here.

[00:05:27] Chris: I bought a pair of headphones, just so I was like, Oh, cool. New headphones. And I can not hear everything.

[00:05:32] Brian: I just tried them on didn't like the way they sounded and sat there while you purchased them.

[00:05:36] Chris: Yeah. And so I'm like, it's weird now that I'm learning about what a flashback is with complex PTSD, I'm looking back and I'm seeing all of these times when I was having them in the past and just thought I was having like a lot of anxiety apparently. No, it was much more intense than that. I didn't know that.

[00:05:53] And in this book, the body keeps the score. This is pretty cool stuff. I'm excited about it. There's all kinds of therapies that they recommend all kinds of mindfulness techniques stuff we're going to get way into in the future because mindfulness and the stuff that you do to recover from PTSD is stuff that you do to be healthy.

[00:06:09] It's good mind stuff for everybody. And one of the things this book recommended that blew my mind is called neural feedback. We are not sponsored by this company, but I ended up buying a super dorky star Trek style headband called the muse too.

[00:06:25] Brian: And that's the gear sled alert for anyone. Who's wondering what that noise is right there.

[00:06:28] Chris: There we go. Yeah, it's like 220 bucks and you put this on your head and it measures your brain waves. And then you put headphones in your ears and you open up the muse to app and it plays a soundscape for you. It could be a forest, could be a desert, could be an ocean you choose. And the weather in the soundscape reflects.

[00:06:47] Your mental state. So if you are not calm and focused and meditating on your breathing, you hear a lot of wind where a lot of rain, the storm gets more intense. As you calm down, you get auditory feedback based on your brain waves. And eventually if you do really good, you start to hear some little birds chirping and it gamifies meditation, and it's freaking cool.

[00:07:10] Brian: It's like a Bob Ross, audio painting, happy little trees, happy, little wind, happy little birds.

[00:07:15] Chris: I'm pumped about this. So back to the brain science of the thalamus in the human brain and coats, all the information, then it goes to the amygdala, which is where my disorder is messed up. And the amygdala we'll take things that are not dangerous and it will say, Oh, this reminds me of that time a long time ago.

[00:07:33] And it smashes the alarm button. And all these chemicals hit your bloodstream. And then a little while later, your conscious mind becomes aware of whatever is going on, whatever stimulus, whatever trigger, et cetera. So it's weird. You feel, at least for me, I sense the danger before I'm aware of why. And all of a sudden knowing about complex PSD or see PTSD is, is what it's called for short.

[00:07:58] Now, as I recognize these triggers, I'm like, Oh my gosh, Mmm, like field danger in my skin because I heard a noise behind me, but I didn't hear the noise first. I felt the danger first.

[00:08:11] Brian: I can see how this ties into panic attacks. A lot, because you have this feeling of impending doom surrounding you at any given time and you don't know why.

[00:08:20] Chris: Yes. Well, and that's my first panic attack. There was this really weird moment where I had this super intense impending doom thing. And then it just, a lot of times with the previous panic attacks I was having, they would just kind of go off the rails. It would cycle, you know, I start to have a panic attack, which would cause more anxiety, which would trigger me again, which would cause more anxiety, which would like, I would just kind of go downhill and it would spiral out of control.

[00:08:43] And now that I finally understand what a panic attack is, what that feels like. And most importantly, yeah, an emotional flashback feels like I recognize when my body's aligned to me. And, you know, it's a terrible disorder because what happens is people that have complex PTSD and traditional PTSD will have flashbacks and they feel attacked.

[00:09:05] They feel like they're in danger. So they often lash out at people around them. And I'm looking back at my life and recognizing, Oh, that's why that happened. That's why I reacted in that way, this mental health thing. And my pursuit of my own mental health is going to be my job for the rest of my life.

[00:09:20] It's going to be the most important thing because. It has to come first. Everything else that you do in life is affected by your mental health. And I'm on a new journey with this. And so we'll be talking about this a lot more, and I think this is going to be really applicable Mmm. To us as an audience, because one of the things just going to throw out a theory here, one of the things that helps with PTSD is music and rhythmic things.

[00:09:43] It brings you into the present moment. The problem with PTSD is you get obsessed. With either the future or the past, and you're not in the present. And music is really helpful in that. And I think that's one of the big reasons I got into music in the first place that I was self medicating by doing things that forced me to be in the present moment, which helped me alleviate my PTSD symptoms.

[00:10:03] So I would play guitar or I would wanting to work in a studio. I felt music was helpful for me, and it was on a deeper level than it would have been for a normal person. So I suspect that there are a lot of people in our industry who struggle with this, who are medicating with music. And that's why music has such a strong draw, because it really does help with certain types of mental health issues in particular PTSD.

[00:10:26] Brian: Yeah. So if you go back to episode number eight and we had a replay of it recently, episode talks about why marketing is not the solution for most struggling home studios. That entire episode, the core of that is based around something. I called the studio business hierarchy, and it's basically like Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

[00:10:42] The very bottom of that pyramid. The thing that your entire business is built on is your mindset and psychology. So if your psychology is fucked, it's really difficult to build a business that is going to be either short term successful or longterm successful. If you have underlying mental issues that are unresolved and all that being said, like this sort of stuff is going to definitely be a big part of what we talk about in the future.

[00:11:04] Especially as you get through this journey and you learn and learn, and like you find ways to adapt and cope and ultimately deal with the core issues. So again, this is something that we will be talking about a lot in the future, because I know, I know our audience struggles with this, like. As a whole, not everybody obviously, but there's a large segment of our audience that struggles with mental health.

[00:11:23] And so this is something, it is like, it is our duty to help out as much as we possibly can.

[00:11:27] Chris: Super pumped about that. Yeah. You know, honestly, you hit the nail on the head there. And one of my thoughts as I've been on this journey the past couple months, and especially the past couple of weeks, as I'm learning more about this, as I look back at my businesses and their success, and I'm like, wow, I pulled this off.

[00:11:45] I would have flashbacks. Well, I'm working and would think that I was frustrated about something in work. No something else had triggered me from it. Yeah, probably a sound probably behind me, but there's a number of other things that have an impact as well, that we'll get more into in the future. And as I'm starting to kind of grow through this, I'm finding different areas as I work again, as I'm back at work and.

[00:12:09] Finally catching up and I'm noticing like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to be so much better at ABC, D E F and G. Now that I understand how to manage this piece of my mind, that would run off the rails sometimes. So I'm super excited to talk to you guys more about this in the future. This isn't the topic of this episode.

[00:12:26] But if you want to check out the muse too, a lot of people use it for performance enhancement as well. There was a study done that was mentioned in the book. The body keeps the score where musicians did this neural feedback training that help them get into the zone, help them clear their mind before they perform.

[00:12:40] And this was like in classical music. The AB split test basically saw a 10% improvement and the performance of the piece of music after they had done neurofeedback training.

[00:12:50] Brian: And just so everyone knows in my show notes for the outline here, the bullet point for this topic is talk about your stupid head band. When Chris got on the call, like we're on zoom right now. So there's a video of me and him right now. And so he had this really dumb looking headband on his head. And it was this neural thing that he's talking about.

[00:13:07] I still don't believe it. I still think it's like snake oil bullshit,

[00:13:10] Chris: It's crazy, man.

[00:13:11] Brian: but I will say, man. Yeah. And for teach throat. So if you think it's real, then I won't fight it too much on it. And our audience can make up their own damn minds. If they want to spend $220 on some snake oil.

[00:13:21] Chris: Well, I'm still, I've only used it three times so far. So far. I've been really impressed. So some people use it to treat add, because add attention deficit disorder, which I was also diagnosed with a long, long, long time ago, which might've been a misdiagnosis. It might've been PTSD all along.

[00:13:36] Brian: I don't know either.

[00:13:37] Chris: Because sometime add in PTSD, have overlapping symptoms, but people with add will use this treatment as well, because it teaches them how to clear their mind and focus and get rid of all the noise and the intrusive thoughts and stuff like that.

[00:13:49] So I'm obsessed with all things tech, especially if it involves headphones. So I thought it would be worth bringing up.

[00:13:56] Brian: That's true, man. You can sell pretty much anything to Chris if it involves headphones. So if you want to scam Chris out of some shit, just make sure there's a headphone involved with it.

[00:14:04] Chris: This is true.

[00:14:04] Brian: Oh, sorry. You want to move into the actual topic today, Chris, now that we're like 15 minutes into the intro.

[00:14:09] Chris: Yes, please. Let's do

[00:14:10] Brian: So today our topic is sales and marketing conversation, which is a complete shifting of gears.

[00:14:16] From what we just talked about. This is we're getting away from the mental health thing. That is something we will definitely be coming back to again and again, in the future and in full on future episodes. But we wanted to talk about this topic today, because this is something that I've seen recently, a lot in our group coaching calls with PPC.

[00:14:31] This is something I've seen in a few one-on-ones that I've done with people. And this is like a. Fundamental issue with people's businesses, specifically studio owners that I see time and time and time and time again. And me and Chris are going to try to dissect this issue. And I'm going to try to do the best I can to explain this issue.

[00:14:47] And Chris, you might want to have to back me up here because I tend to go off the rails with this sort of thing. But the issue I see is this people tend to list their services on their website or social media, or when they're talking to someone in a sales conversation, They just talk about their services.

[00:15:01] As it pertains to the service itself, I offer mixing services period, or I offer mastering services or I do editing, or I do ramping, or I do recording where I do production or I do demo work or I do on location recording. That's the extent of their marketing message and where that falls short. Is they in no way, paint a picture, they in no way do anything to help the potential client understand the before and after state involved with you getting hired.

[00:15:30] So our message today and what we're trying to get our listeners to leave this episode with is getting you to think through the before and after transformation that your services bring to your clients. Chris, do you have anything to add to that before we actually dive into this? Cause I feel like I did a half ass explanation there.

[00:15:46] Chris: Well, this conversation reminds me of how I started Chris grand mastering. You know, I we've told this story before, but I remember sitting on my couch. And I want to say 2007 or 2008.

[00:15:57] Brian: Not only did you tell this story before you tell it about every two or three episodes? So make it short.

[00:16:01] Chris: This is true. This is true. So I'll make sure I started wondering, you know, let's assume it's five years from now. I'm a successful master engineer. How did that happen? And I said, well, the first problem is people don't understand what mastering is. So I would imagine I would have had some kind of website with a before and after player where you can switch back and forth in real time.

[00:16:17] We talk about this all the time, but that was why the business took off. I made it easier for people to imagine, what will this be like after Chris works on it and that made it so simple for people to be like, Oh, cool. That sounds way better. Yeah. I'll hire him.

[00:16:30] Brian: And this is where I see people. The before and after players, way more common now. So I see that a lot more often, so it's good for people to visualize, but usually what I see is at best, they will have a brief explanation of what mastering is, and it will usually be too technical for the person to understand, or it'll be too broad to sound useful.

[00:16:47] Those are the two camps I see mastering engineers fall into on their websites. And what that does is it leaves it up to the person to kind of paint their own picture in their head of how that's going to help them. And if the picture is not painted clear enough, they will not hire you mixing engineers, same issue.

[00:17:02] They in no way really paint the picture of the transformation, their musical go through recording studios and no way do they think about the transformation their client is right now, they have the songs. And they want them recorded, but they don't know how to pick a studio. They're confused about this.

[00:17:16] They're confused about that. At the end of the day, this is what they want. They desire these outcomes. They want songs to sound incredible, that they can show off to their friends, that they can put on Spotify and launch to the world or whatever. Like they have these visions in their head, but you're not painting yourself as the bridge between that gap of where they are and where they want to be.

[00:17:34] So this episode, I'm hoping we can kind of dissect some ideas about not only where people fall short in this. But how they can fix their broken marketing message and also sales message, because this is something you have to use in both sales and marketing. This is what you can do to get people over the hump of actually reaching out and contacting you.

[00:17:51] So when there are droves and droves of online mastering studios or online mixing studios, and you're in this red ocean, this sort of marketing message where you're talking about the transformation that your customer will go through, if they hire you for your services. Well be that momentum that carries them through the friction of filling out your form on your website and contacting you.

[00:18:09] And when you get them on the phone for a conversation or you're exchanging emails, the words you use to paint the picture of the transformation and the way you customize that message for that specific client and their needs and desires is going to be the difference of them handing over that one to two to $3,000 paycheck that they could've given to someone else.

[00:18:27] So this is a really important part of both sales and marketing that I think we need to discuss today.

[00:18:31] Chris: Yeah. There's a lot of businesses out there that really lean heavily on the before and after. No, obviously weight loss products come to mind. Fitness products come to mind.

[00:18:40] Brian: That specifically is such a powerful thing before and after that Facebook ads ban you from using before and after photos in health products.

[00:18:48] Chris: This is true.

[00:18:49] Brian: They will not let you do it in health pro. You cannot use before and after photos in Facebook ads for like a weight transformation or muscle gain transformations or anything like that, it is against their terms.

[00:18:59] They will reject the ads at best or at worst, they will ban your entire ad account. If you do that.

[00:19:04] Chris: Did you also learn that on the digital marketer podcast?

[00:19:07] Brian: Sure. She did actually, it might've been that or their membership site. I was a member for like four or five months of their membership site.

[00:19:11] Chris: I liked that podcast.

[00:19:12] Brian: Yeah. So that shows you like I have a mixing course. I never push it still. I get sales every single month. I don't know how I have a mixing course. And I'm just, I'll pitch it here.

[00:19:20] Cause I never do from shit to gold.com. I launched this thing like 20, 15, people still love it. They still buy it. It's still transforming their mixes. And on the sales page I use before or after mixes of. The mix before and the mix after. And I show every single step along the way. Not only that I show my own students results.

[00:19:36] Here's a mix of a song they did before they joined the course. And here's what their mix is sound like after they joined and go through the course and learn from me and those two things alone account for a lot of the cells I get, because people can visualize the transformation that they will go through with their own mixes.

[00:19:50] Chris: It simplifies to try to explain to somebody like, well, you know, what you're going to find is that like the low mids are going to have a more Milky, do you know, espresso, Zoe chocolatey, almond extract

[00:20:04] Brian: Oh, God, I hate that.

[00:20:06] Chris: That doesn't work. You can't use this flowery language because you are one relying on their literacy, which is a pretty intense assumption that the person on your website is as literate as you are.

[00:20:19] Brian: Or the fact that they even, I have the same terminology chocolatey to one person means something completely different to another person because audio terms are bullshit.

[00:20:27] Chris: What do you mean by that? Brian?

[00:20:28] Brian: I mean, it could be like, sure. I mean, what does chalky mean? What does, what does smooth mean in audio? What does color mean to adding color to a mix like these all in people's ears and heads are completely different for a lot of these terms.

[00:20:40] Chris: Yeah, one man's warm is another man's muddy.

[00:20:43] Brian: Sure. That's actually true. So like all this to say, show don't tell.

[00:20:46] Chris: Exact show don't tell there it is. Yes. So that's what we're talking about is when you're having a conversation with somebody or whether they're on your website, you have to simplify it as much as possible to be able to explain you're going to go from this, to this. Ideally when I'm doing business coaching with somebody, what I want to see is that they double their income in a year.

[00:21:06] That's like, if I'm talking with somebody about doing business coaching and I think I can double their income in a year, I will pitch the crap out of them of like, you should absolutely do this. You should actually do this. If I don't think I can, I don't pitch them that hard. I give them an honest thing.

[00:21:18] Yeah. We could help with this and with this and with this, but you know, you might want to work on this before you hire a business coach. To me, it's such an easier sell to explain to somebody, well, my goal is to double your income in a year.

[00:21:30] Brian: Yeah, and that is such a much more clear transformation than say. Dang. Well, first we're going to do this and then we're going to do that. And then, then we're going to do this and that you take this roundabout way to eventually actually, if they're still listening to you, even if they haven't tuned you out by then eventually getting to the point of where the transformation leads.

[00:21:47] So last week's episode, if you listened to the episode, we talked about going for the raw talent and putting it through your machine out to the other side, where you have helped someone go from like. Talent and idea, or talent and aspirations into a fully released track. That is a really good example of a really clear before and after state, you're taking someone who has the desire, the means and maybe the raw talent, but then understand how to do it.

[00:22:10] They don't have the connections to do it. They don't have any other means to do it. And you're really their only key to achieving their dreams. That is a really good example of a really clear marketing message that focuses on the before state of where they are now. And the after state of where they want to be and how you are the bridge two, making it across that giant chasm that they have to cross.

[00:22:29] Chris: Yeah. You know, a really great before and after on that would be, if you are helping someone build a career. You're taking someone with raw talent and you're helping refine that and make that into a product to be able to say, Hey, we created a new artists name and they went from zero, two 30, 5,000 monthly listeners on Spotify in two months.

[00:22:49] And here's a graph that demonstrates that.

[00:22:51] Brian: Yeah, this is where you get into case studies. When you're doing something that complex case studies are really good. What, I mean, interviews are a good way to show that sort of stuff off, but here's the thing I don't want to confuse people because the more complex of a thing that you do, the harder tends to be.

[00:23:03] To show that transformation. But in audio we have the wonderful job of just being able to show people the transformation. We don't have to explain it. We don't have to do any sort of long form thing, although that helps, but just showing an example of here's what this sounded like before they work with me.

[00:23:18] And here's what they sound like now, after working with me, that's good enough for most of our listeners. In most cases, there's a few examples where there's outliers, obviously, but you look at, you have some pushback there, pushback back risk.

[00:23:28] Chris: No, no, I'm totally green here, but I'm thinking about shoes. I'm thinking about sneakers. Well, you think about the revolution that there's been in shoes over the past, say 50 years. And then all of a sudden, you know, let's, I don't, I'm not a shoes expert, but like 30 years ago, Nike and Reebok and whoever else was like, we want people to understand the before and after of our shoes, if you wear air Jordans, you will be more like Jordan.

[00:23:59] Brian: That's getting often to me, the false marketing message, which is not what I'm trying to push here, but it's a good example of. What worked really well, instead of saying here's the shoes, here's the features and benefits of the shoe, buy our shoe, buy our shoe. They said this, and this is a complete, mostly a bullshit lie.

[00:24:14] But they said, if you wear our shoes, you'll be more like Mike  people bought that shit up. They bought into that message. They bought those shoes. And that's the message that a lot of companies still use to this day is if you buy this product, you will be more like this person. And while that's not true,

[00:24:30] Chris: Be like Mike was the,

[00:24:32] Brian: exactly.

[00:24:33] Chris: yeah, it was literally the tagline, which brings us to, we've mentioned this before, but brings us to the topic of an elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is so important. The idea behind an elevator pitch is you get on an elevator and you turn to your left and you see a very powerful influential person.

[00:24:51] And, and, you know, they press four 17. You're on the ground floor and you're like, I've got 17 floors to pitch them on my thing. To get them to be a fan and you turn to them and say, Hey, no, you're just sewing. So I'm a big fan. Hey, I've got a product I'm working on. I want to tell you about it real quick.

[00:25:05] You have to hook them in. You only have them captive for a little bit. You have to get them to buy in instantaneously. And Brian, you did a great job with our podcast. If you listened to the intro, our elevator pitch is the intro. I don't even remember what the intro is cause I don't listen to this show, but.

[00:25:22] Brian: from the cohost of the fucking show, the number one business resource for the audio industry, something like that. I actually don't remember either, cause I always skipped the fucking intro.

[00:25:30] Chris: Yeah, that's our pitch. And so incidentally, I can't take any credit on this at all. This is all you, but calling it the six figure home studio is also part of the elevator pitch. You hear that? And you're like, Oh man, that sounds kind of lame and a little, wait a minute. I wish I had a six figure home studio.

[00:25:47] Brian: Well, let's bring this back to our audience because people are not running blogs here. They're not doing what we're doing here. I wanted to point out that you came up with a really good elevator pitch for your coaching. And that was my goal is to double your income in a year. That's a quick elevator pitch for Chris Graham coaching.

[00:25:59] So go to Chris Graham masters. Dot com slash coaching. If you want coaching from Chris Graham,

[00:26:03] Chris: We're still doing free mini coaching sessions. Oh, a lot.

[00:26:07] Brian: basically, you're going to get in line. If you want free coaching session.

[00:26:10] Chris: Yeah, there's a fairly long line there, but yeah. Please apply Chris grandmaster.com/coaching, and I'll do a free mini session for you.

[00:26:17] Brian: So with our audience, it's a little different and everyone's a little different with this. So if you're getting into the elevator pitch world, there's like a full format. I teach my students that I'm not going to get into today. I don't want to make this about the elevator pitch, cause that's not really the point here.

[00:26:29] The elevator pitch is that part of this thing. And it's a good exercise to get you to start thinking through. What sort of transformation do you bring to your customer? How do you bridge the gap between where they are now and where you want to be? You don't have to be responsible for the whole transformation, by the way, you don't have to get them from, I am this hopeless musician and I want to be a rock star, a millionaire.

[00:26:50] You can just be. Bridging part of that gap, but you have to know where that gap is. You have to know where you are, the bridge, which part do you get them through and then understand how to properly explain where they are and where you help them get to and make that part of your elevator pitch. So see if I can come up with a bullshit example off the top of my head, but if I am a mixing engineer, which I am, and I can help you or mix not sound like shit, which I can, then my elevator pitch, which would not work for most people, it would be.

[00:27:20] I help heavy musicians would their mixes. So they don't sound like shit.

[00:27:24] Chris: No, no, no, no. That's how your elevator pitch. It's like, some of them are angry mixes. What's your tagline.

[00:27:28] Brian: One pissed off heavy mixes. Yeah. So like that's not the greatest tagline, but it speaks to my audience in a way.

[00:27:33] Chris: No, it is. It's a great tagline. So when you say, do you want pissed off heavy mixes? I immediately know what that means. It's visceral.

[00:27:41] Brian: When we start talking about the specifics, like I actually want a elevator pitch and honestly, a headline on your website that disqualifies the people that are not your target customer and qualifies the people that are your target customer. And again, the whole point of this isn't necessarily to get into the technicalities of an elevator pitch or your website headline.

[00:27:56] This is more like let's zoom out and look big picture and think about. What is the transformation that you bring to them and how do you explain that to them in a way that it makes sense, but not that, just explain, try to show them. Remember, show don't. Tell.

[00:28:11] Chris: Show don't tell, but if you have to tell, use visceral language, like Brian did pissed off had he mixes. So a good example of this and why this is so important is if you're going to run ads in Google or Facebook, you need a headline that, like you said, disqualifies the people that you don't want to click on the ad.

[00:28:28] So if I'm a folk musician and I'm scrolling and I see an advertisement for your mixing service, and it says, want pissed off heavy mixes, I say, Nope. And I don't click on it and that's good because you don't get charged money because I'm not a qualified lead. If I'm in a heavy metal band and I want pissed off heavy mixes, and I want my sound to sound heavier and more pissed off.

[00:28:50] I'm like, yup. And that momentum that like, yes, it resonates with me. That is exactly what I want. That momentum will drive me through your quote form because it's a perfect fit. It is one so much more effective to tell that consistent story. And to so much cheaper, if you're doing paid advertising to have a pitch that qualifies and disqualify simultaneously to do the opposite that we do in our industry.

[00:29:15] So long of what? Hello. If you've got audio, you want it to sound better. Come on over to my website, that doesn't work very well because all these unqualified leads are going to click on it. If you've started to mess around with ads like we've talked about, and you found that your traffic is low quality, you've got one of two issues.

[00:29:32] In my opinion, one bad targeting. You're showing the ads to the wrong people or two you're not disqualifying bad leads using your ad copy or video.

[00:29:40] Brian: Yeah. And just to clarify, most of our listeners don't run ads. So this is not necessarily a topic that's going to be really relevant to them. But the overarching message is very relevant because this is the same deal on your website. Sometimes people are gonna find their way to your website. There aren't good matches for what.

[00:29:55] Sometimes people are going to get referred to your website or your social media page, or you as a producer or a mixer or whatever it is that you do. And they're not going to be a good fit for you. You want to quickly and efficiently as possible. Get them the hell out of there because they're going to be somebody that sucks up your time.

[00:30:09] They're going to be somebody that's not a good fit for you. And if you follow through and actually work with them, despite that fact it's going to do nothing but hurt your business in the long run. So part of this entire thing that we're talking about here, where you're talking about the transformation and thinking through how you bridge that gap.

[00:30:24] Part of this is just admitting to yourself that 80% of the services and the shit that you do is in no way, part of this transformation, the number one thing I do want to do website critiques for my students. The number one thing I do more than anything else is I look at the long list. Four to six to eight to 12 services that these studios offer or claim to offer.

[00:30:44] And I'm like, what two of those services bring in most of your income? Because every single time, two to three services account for almost all of their income cut the rest of that shit out. And if you offer more than two or three services, You can usually find out that one or two of those is really your moneymaker and how you bridge that gap.

[00:31:01] And the third is just something you throw up because occasionally you get hired for that and you wanna make sure you're still in the running. If someone comes to your site, looking for that bullshit service that you make a thousand dollars a year off of like I'm from a professional DSN specialist. What a niche dude. Yeah. So part of this entire conversation

[00:31:19] Chris: we have hypervigilance for siblings.

[00:31:22] Brian: is that.

[00:31:23] Chris: Yeah. Siblings.

[00:31:24] Brian: Oh, so she had a P in there. I was about to say no, Chris.

[00:31:27] Chris: I might've had a P in there

[00:31:28] Brian: Okay.

[00:31:30] Chris: hypervigilance, also one of the main symptoms of PTSD. Anyways, moving on. Let's talk more about this.

[00:31:37] Brian: Good ad dude. No. So when we're talking about this transformation, you're helping people get through. It's just as much about cutting out the fat trimming, the fat and what you do as a studio. As it is focusing on that transformation because in my own studio, I mean, I think my own website, I'm a hypocrite here.

[00:31:51] My own website, I think still has ramping on there. I haven't updated that site in years. I need to, I just have other priorities right now. I still have ramping as a service that I offer. There's no reason why anyone should hire me for ramping. You can get my exact guitar tones through STL tones hub, and you can literally load up my exact tone in their plugin.

[00:32:09] Ramp your own shit. So like there's no reason for someone to hire me for that service. So they, even though that's part of my sound and that's part of the things I do when I mix the song is ramp the songs with my tones. That is not a standalone service that I should be offering whatsoever.

[00:32:21] Chris: Totally. Yeah. And I think FOMO comes into here.

[00:32:24] Brian: Oh, God. Yeah. That's the number one reason people try to offer every services under the sun is because if I cast my net wide enough, then I'm going to get enough climb. So I won't get more people. Cause I'm a pill in the more people in like I'm a fucking broken record. And I say this a million times, but if you try to appeal to everyone, You will appeal to no one part of that reason is because if you try to appeal to everyone, there's no way you can bridge all of those gaps.

[00:32:45] There's no way you can help all of those different people in all of those different situations, with all of those where they want to be and where they want to go. All of those outcomes that they want, you can't help with all of those. You're not remotely qualified. I don't care how good you are. You can't help all people with all things.

[00:32:59] So no, your strengths, no. What transformations you can help people. Actually achieve and set your services, all your marketing and all your sales around that transformation.  everything else can just be pushed to the side.

[00:33:12] Chris: Yeah, the thing you got to keep in mind with FOMO, cause I know what it feels like. You're on your website and you're making the services section of the website and you're thinking I'm pretty good at DSE. And I'm going to add this as a standalone service.

[00:33:23] Brian: That's like our go to bullshit example of like a shitty service now. Yeah.

[00:33:27] Chris: From now on, yeah. DSE. So you're thinking like, well, Mayan, if I put DSN on there, I'll probably get hired once every year for it.

[00:33:35] Brian: And that's at least $50

[00:33:36] Chris: Yeah. I don't want to miss out on that $50.

[00:33:39] Brian: dollars.

[00:33:40] Chris: So I'm going to put that on my website. What you're not grasping is that the FOMO that wants to put that on the website. So you don't miss out on that $50 probably cost you 500 or $5,000 because you've diluted the message of what you are and who you do.

[00:33:56] Brian: Because now you have to make sure that anything you say doesn't negate that message about we do DSE. So I can't just call myself a mixing engineer. I can't just call myself a mastering engineer. I can't just call myself a recording studio. I can't call myself a Motown model. Not that you would actually use that term.

[00:34:10] There's like certain terminology and certain words you can't use because you're trying to open your opportunities up to these additional things. Like  service.

[00:34:19] Chris: So you need to improve your branding by removing  so you can DF. I D I don't know where to go from that I was going to,

[00:34:28] Brian: DF your marketing.

[00:34:29] Chris: you can do half your marketing.

[00:34:31] Brian: There it is.

[00:34:31] Chris: That was so stupid.

[00:34:33] Brian: I can't wait for people to hear how bad you are. That's not, none of this is getting gut.

[00:34:38] Chris: I know it's so stupid.

[00:34:40] Brian: You have to recover here. This is all on you, Chris. You recover. Go.

[00:34:42] Chris: Mmm. After this, I'm going to meditate with my muse too. I got nothing. Bride I'm drowning.

[00:34:52] Brian: Let me save you real quick, Chris. There's nothing else to be said here. This episode's basically done.

[00:34:56] Chris: Yeah, you're right. Because again, if we keep talking, we're going to dilute our message.

[00:35:01] Brian: Yeah. This is kind of like the, we had a similar episode recently, didn't we?

[00:35:04] Chris: We did. Yeah. When we just sort of ended it. I liked doing that. So let's shut up. Bye.