How To Grow Into A Better Niche By Embracing What Makes You Unique – With Andy J. Pizza

Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 117

[00:00:19] welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I am not unfortunately here with my bald, beautiful, amazing. Purple shirted cohost, Christopher J. Graham. The sad truth is, Chris is not here with me today because I'm still in Thailand. Actually. It's actually not bad news or anything.

[00:00:39] Uh, he is in Ohio. I'm in Thailand. The time difference is too weird here, uh, for us to do an episode that we'd normally do. So we actually have a treat for you today with a guest host. But before we get to that, just let me know. I am wrapping up. My second week in Thailand, I've got about three weeks to go and, uh.

[00:00:57] It's been a really fun trip. Actually right now I am actually recording this intro with a really, really sketchy set up on, uh, I'm actually not going to mention specific gear because I don't want to be a gear sledded Oh, my own podcast. But, uh, I'm recording on my laptop with some very basic gear and I'm a right by a pool at our resort, which is kind of cool.

[00:01:15] So if you want to see, see this, he can follow me on Instagram and check my stories. I've been doing a lot of updates while I'm on this trip. That's Brian. Good.  two zero so Brian H zero zero D and you can find me on Instagram and there'll be stories from this specific one if you follow me within the next 24 hours.

[00:01:31] Anyways, some of our highlights so far, we had a awesome cooking class in Bangkok where I, uh, selected a frog to be cooked and I had some, uh, Tom yum soup with frog in it. Uh, and we cooked a bunch of other stuff there as well. We went to an elephant, a rescue park in Chang. Mine is actually the name of the elephant rescue park in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

[00:01:50] I where we got to interact and feed and kind of lead around a bunch of elephants that were rescued from a, there are a few from a circus. There were some that were just too old to do 'em to stay healthy at the farms they are at. So they had to, uh, since the medical costs were so high, the farmers basically sold or gave away the elephants to this rescue park.

[00:02:08] And, uh, one was rescued, uh, just a few months ago from a logging farmer logging community in Lao. I think. And it's blind in one eye. And it's really, some of these elephants have really sad stories, but it's, it's a coy to do elephant tourism in an ethical way. Instead of going to Thailand. I don't ever ride elephants, don't go to any circuses or anything where they have elephants that are being written or jumped on.

[00:02:31] Uh, but if you want to see elephants and pet them and interact with them and feed them, I highly, highly recommend the elephant rescue park in Chiang Mai, Thailand. And then, uh. If he's probably heard, the coronavirus is here in Asia, and, uh, it's, there's quite a few cases in Thailand as well. So, Meg and I, uh, my wife here, we decided to escape up to PI Thailand.

[00:02:52] Uh, and we've been here for like the past week or so. We leave tomorrow. We're actually heading out to SIEM reap in Cambodia tomorrow. But we spent the last week here at just mope heading around. I kind of being lazy, getting some work done by the pool. You've been following me on Instagram. You've seen me pretty much post every day, Al by this pool, just working on my laptop, gins and stuff done.

[00:03:09] So like I said earlier in a previous episode, this is kinda like a work workcation workcation for us where we're both working and traveling at the same time. But it's been a whole lot of fun. So this episode specifically, like I mentioned at the very beginning, is co-hosted by Andy J pizza. If you don't remember any Jay pizza, go back and listen to episode 78 it's called motivation mindset, and getting out of your own damn way.

[00:03:33] He has been. Hugely successful on his own podcast called creative pep talk. And I think his podcast is probably 10 times the size of ours at this point. So it's very successful and it's amazing for Andy to even give us the time of his day to spend an hour and a half ahead of his time on a co-hosted episode.

[00:03:49] Take a my spot on the podcast. So, uh, I felt like, honestly, in this episode, I was a fly on the wall listening to just the two of them talk about business and there's gonna be parts that are not relevant at all to you. If you're just trying to do a studio, there's parts that are really relevant to you if you eventually want to branch out and do some other type of business or entrepreneur endeavor.

[00:04:06] But the core of it all is trying to find your niche through finding your purpose. And, uh, I just think if you are at all doubting yourself on what you should be doing, especially when it comes to finding a niche, if you're all at all doubted yourself, if you feel like there's nothing that you  bring to the table that's unique, this episode will be.

[00:04:25] A massive pep talk for you because that's what Andy J pizza does better than probably anyone else in the business. So without further ado, here is this episode with Chris Graham and Andy and Jay pizza.

[00:04:40]

[00:04:40] Chris: [00:04:40] Well, dude, I'm excited to hang out with

[00:04:41] Andy: [00:04:41] too, dude. I love our, I feel like every conversation we've recorded, I've thought a lot about at later, and really it's like, yeah. It's good. I think we have some similarities in the Venn diagram of our brain, and then I think we have some, it's almost like a missing piece to my brain, or it's like I'm throw stuff at you where  it's stuff that I couldn't generate in my head of like a response from that.

[00:05:04] Does that make

[00:05:04] Chris: [00:05:04] That's exactly how I feel. Yeah. There, there is like a weird, and Brian and I are kind of like that too. Like there's, there's a lot of overlap. And then there's other areas where I've got strengths and he's got weaknesses and a lot more areas where he's got strengths and I've got weaknesses. And man, I was thinking, I was talking to my wife last night about the two of you.

[00:05:22] I'm going to get so cheesy.

[00:05:24] Andy: [00:05:24] Do it, dude. Do you know who I am?

[00:05:26] Chris: [00:05:26] So we're

[00:05:27] Andy: [00:05:27] I'm like, most, I'm like crying on most of the episodes of my podcast, right? Yeah.

[00:05:32] Chris: [00:05:32] So last night trying to decide what movie to watch. Yeah. And like, it's been really fun lately cause we bought a really nice new couch. That's the most comfortable couch I've ever sat on. We've got like 70 inch, four K TV. And like a Bowers and Wilkins surround sound system. Oh shoot. I'm not allowed to say brand names on our podcast.

[00:05:51] So

[00:05:51] Andy: [00:05:51] Oh, really?

[00:05:52] Chris: [00:05:52] noise that people are hearing right now is, I'm getting a gear

[00:05:54] Andy: [00:05:54] Uh,

[00:05:55] Chris: [00:05:55] Sorry about that guys. But it's a nice, it's really, really nice. So we've been watching a lot more movies cause we'd never had a four K TV, let alone 70 inch one. We're looking for movies to watch. And my wife, I just learned this, has never seen the Shawshank

[00:06:08] Andy: [00:06:08] Me neither.

[00:06:10] Chris: [00:06:10] Why?

[00:06:11] Andy: [00:06:11] thought we already had that

[00:06:12] Chris: [00:06:12] Oh my gosh, I forgot about it, but so

[00:06:15] Andy: [00:06:15] know. I'm going to get hate mail.

[00:06:16] Chris: [00:06:16] so good.

[00:06:18] Andy: [00:06:18] really want to watch it.

[00:06:18] Chris: [00:06:18] It's like if you take all the movies, I'm going to be opinionated here, but if you took all the movies from the eighties and nineties and said you can only watch 10 of them,

[00:06:26] Andy: [00:06:26] Forrest Gump.

[00:06:27] Chris: [00:06:27] Forrest Gump is on there like some of the star Wars, Indiana Jones in Shawshank redemption is definitely on there, especially as far as drama

[00:06:35] Andy: [00:06:35] I know. I know that it's going to be my jam.

[00:06:38] Chris: [00:06:38] Oh, you're going to

[00:06:38] Andy: [00:06:38] whatever reason, I never had the opportunity to watch it,

[00:06:41] Chris: [00:06:41] Well, shoot. Well, this kind of ruins my story a little bit, but it's bad research. But there's the, this friendship that forms in these two guys, and it's amazing because they're both, they don't really have any friends. And I was talking to Alison after this movie and I was like, you know, I look at my life like two years ago, and like I had friends, but I didn't have friends like you or friends like Brian.

[00:07:06] And it was kind of this like, I had never really got the relationship between these two main characters before. I was like, Oh, yeah,

[00:07:13] Andy: [00:07:13] Yeah.

[00:07:14] Chris: [00:07:14] Yeah. It was just like, ah

[00:07:16] Andy: [00:07:16] the sweetest thing ever. And I had a very similar conversation because I realize that. I don't know. I think there's one thing when you're growing a lot. I think if you're really obsessed with self-help and personal growth, and maybe this is an ego thing, I don't know, but I do feel like I change a lot over time.

[00:07:32] So like, and I think that does make some friendships, especially like long from high school friendships, kind of strange. And so there's that element. And then I think on top of that, there's the business of doing your own business. And then. I dunno. I'd had some similar thoughts really recently. Actually. I was just talking to Sophia about it too, and just saying like, it's great that we have a studio together, because before that, the amount of human interaction that I had was so low.

[00:08:02] It's just been really amazing.

[00:08:03] Chris: [00:08:03] Same. Yeah, totally. And so there's like an element there of like you are a grower. Brian is a grower. I am a grower, and I think that's like this sort of constant commitment to self up. I'm not like throwing any of my other friends under the bus here,

[00:08:19] Andy: [00:08:19] Me neither. Yeah.

[00:08:20] Chris: [00:08:20] yeah, there's like a weird,

[00:08:21] Andy: [00:08:21] also, sometimes people grow a lot and they grow in different directions too, so you can be a grower and it just doesn't even, it doesn't even have to be opposite. Just might not be in sync. Yeah.

[00:08:31] Chris: [00:08:31] So I was talking to Alison after we watched the movie and like the two. Okay. I guess I can't tell you too much. I cannot, I'm not going to like sport. I'm not going to spoiler Shawshank redemption. It'd be terrible.

[00:08:42] Andy: [00:08:42] I always think about the statutes of limitations. I don't know how to say any of that, but I always know that. I always think that there's got to be some spoiler correlation there. Like there's a timeframe in which you can spoil something and then after that it's your problem. Yeah.

[00:08:57] Chris: [00:08:57] Yeah. And there's this element of like, I'm watching it and I'm like, Oh man, they're more than brothers and less than wives.

[00:09:03] Andy: [00:09:03] I love it. Right back at you, man. Yeah. I love you buddy.

[00:09:07] Chris: [00:09:07] Well, dude, same. Let me tell you, man. Well, let's, uh,

[00:09:10] Andy: [00:09:10] so sweet

[00:09:11] Chris: [00:09:11] is great.

[00:09:12] Andy: [00:09:12] funny because I feel like it's because I why we've talked about how. I, uh, I don't know if I want to,

[00:09:23]

[00:09:23] I don't know if I, I always feel like if you don't want to talk about it, then you have to on a podcast, because

[00:09:28] Chris: [00:09:28] Yeah. It's a good sign that, yeah.

[00:09:31] Andy: [00:09:31] But I, I have noticed that like, you know, if, if my podcast, Lester and ship has anything like my Instagram, it's heavily female, and I don't think that has to be the way it is, but I just think it's funny that. I'm on your podcast for like 20 minutes and we're talking about love and friendship. That's so funny.

[00:09:49] I'm like, no wonder like they're so probably macho man or I make them very

[00:09:53] Chris: [00:09:53] for audio engineers like they don't have that, that emotion that we don't have that emotion in this industry.

[00:09:58] Andy: [00:09:58] your editor can just cut it out. It's going to be way too touchy feely, but that's, that's what you get when you sign me up.

[00:10:03] Chris: [00:10:03] I love it,

[00:10:04] Andy: [00:10:04] you go.

[00:10:05] Chris: [00:10:05] Let's talk about what we're going to talk about today. One of the things that I think is fascinating about you and your story. Is that you are living the dream in a lot of ways. You are an extremely accomplished illustrator, an extremely accomplished podcaster,  in demand, creative business coach.

[00:10:28] You have other things that are more impressive that we're not allowed to talk about yet. You have irons in the fire. All of them. Like if you met someone at a party and I was like, Oh, this is Andy. He, I listed all the things like most of you won't be like bullshit, like w you can't be that good at that many things.

[00:10:46] And I think what's interesting about that and our industry is audio engineers, this idea of being all singing, all dancing of like,

[00:10:52] Andy: [00:10:52] Jack of all

[00:10:53] Chris: [00:10:53] yeah, I'm the best at everything. You know, like we all, that's the fantasy that all of us have. And usually we talk about this on the show all the time. Usually what happens is someone starts a business and they start doing everything and they're obsessed with the idea that they can do everything.

[00:11:08] And what they don't know is they're actually not amazing at any of the things that they

[00:11:13] Andy: [00:11:13] Yeah.

[00:11:15] Chris: [00:11:15] they don't know that cause they've never deep dived for a couple years on one or two

[00:11:21] Andy: [00:11:21] yeah, 100%.

[00:11:22] Chris: [00:11:22] This is my story for sure. It's like I started making records with people and I was like, Oh, I'm a singer, songwriter, man.

[00:11:28] I'm going to like help and write their songs. I'm gonna help them. Vocal coach, I'm going to let record everything. I'm going to engineer everything. I'm going to like disassemble the vintage electric guitar amp and like modify it with like better capacity. Like I do it all. Um, and it was funny cause I wonder why I wanted that.

[00:11:46]

[00:11:46] And I think a lot of that came down to was ego. I wanted people to be like, Oh, he's so smart. He's so smart.

[00:11:51] Andy: [00:11:51] He's a , what do you call it? Yeah, I don't, I PO poly. Yeah.

[00:11:56] Chris: [00:11:56] And so the interesting thing there is, this is embarrassing to admit, but I think that that had a big influence on why I niched down into mastering. I think part of me was like, wait, so I could say, hi, I'm Chris Graham. I'm a mastering engineer. The word master  in it. There's like a Jedi

[00:12:13] Andy: [00:12:13] call you master Chris green.

[00:12:16] Chris: [00:12:16] Not nearly enough. Not nearly enough.

[00:12:19] Andy: [00:12:19] I have introduced you like that on several occasions. This is master

[00:12:23] Chris: [00:12:23] Yeah. Gradients, young paddle

[00:12:26] Andy: [00:12:26] yeah. Oh,

[00:12:28] Chris: [00:12:28] like I, I, I look at my business story of trying to do all singing, all dancing, and then when I niched down and was like, Braze, I'm only going to do mastering from now on. I'm not saying this happens to everybody, that niches, but I got pretty lucky things. Exploded for me once I decided to focus on one niche.

[00:12:47] And the thing that's been interesting to me, this is one of the things I want to talk about, Jim Collins, one of like are dudes, he writes all these great business books, most of them not super applicable to people building recording

[00:12:59] Andy: [00:12:59] Solopreneur people. Yeah. It's mostly big business.

[00:13:03] Chris: [00:13:03] exactly. And so I'm not saying go on and read a bunch of Jim Collins books, but I read a couple of them and I miss applied them to my life.

[00:13:10] Like I'm only just now recovering. From reading the wrong book and taking the advice. His advice, and a lot of times is for corporations that are like a hundred years old. And I'm like, uh, you know, one person business. So one of the things he talks about that fascinates me is this idea of if you want to

[00:13:30] Andy: [00:13:30] Hit an inflection

[00:13:31] Chris: [00:13:31] yeah.

[00:13:32] If you want to hit it Viacom, a great business and have it grow and thrive, there's a Venn diagram and that Venn diagram has got three circles on it. One of those is I think at the top here is something that you love doing. It's your passion. The other one, visualize the low left circle here in this like triangle of circles.

[00:13:51] This Venn diagram, or as Brian likes to say, concentric circles. And uh, that one's got the money symbol in it. So that circle represents, you can make money doing it. And in this circle on the far bottom right as hashtag one, you're the best at it. And if you can figure out. How to build a career right in the middle of all three of those circles, you'll be really, really successful, but

[00:14:12] Andy: [00:14:12] What stuff you love. There's an economic engine, so you can make money at it.

[00:14:16] Chris: [00:14:16] totally.

[00:14:17] So I kind of took

[00:14:18] Andy: [00:14:18] the hedgehog.

[00:14:18] Chris: [00:14:18] that's the hedgehog. That's a hedgehog principle that Jim Collins talks about. The problem I've run into with this that I've been learning over the past maybe two or three years, is that there's actually another circle in here and that this is growth, so you can figure out where you're passionate at and where are you going to make money.

[00:14:35] But at the same time, there's this other circle here with growth and Oh, you're fine and you're fine. If you pick an industry, it's got nothing to do with your own personal growth. You're gonna eventually run into problems. You might be really successful for the first 10 years or so. And this is kind of what I'm learning, is that like I niched down to mastering.

[00:14:56] And then I've started to add other side projects is anyone that's listened to this podcast knows like I've got a bunch of other projects and we're working on home studio lessons.com bounce butler.com business coaching. And it's kind of funny because on the one hand, you know, Brian and I are like, Oh, you got to niche down.

[00:15:11] You got to niche down. But then you look at, Brian is the same way. Brian has a bunch of things that he does, and that can be kind of confusing. And I think the important lesson there is that for everybody. Even after you niche, there's the opportunity to be like, okay, I've mastered this thing. To be honest, like audio mastering, very easy for me.

[00:15:31] Now I sit down and my brain immediately gets in the mode that it needs to. It never fails to like once that switch has been flipped. I'm making good choices and it's extremely rare for anything other than that to happen, but at the end of the day, I'm not necessarily like, wow, I'm a better man. As a result of that.

[00:15:49] Andy: [00:15:49] I mean, it's, to me, there's a bunch of things going on there that I think are worth thinking about. One is a flow state. It's about the perfect balance of challenge and mastery. If that balance is out of whack, you can't get in flow state. So if it's, it's too much mastery and you're like, you've mastered the mastering mastery and then then it's out of whack and all of a sudden you're not, your brain isn't challenged enough to be, to get in that pocket.

[00:16:17] You know what I'm saying? And so I think that that's probably what's going on. But the other thing, I think it's interesting, I think about this all the time, like when it comes to cliches or business advice or creative advice, whatever it is. I think that they're, you know, you adding this circle, to me, the growth component is about how, it's almost always like when they want to give advice.

[00:16:37] It's like a fact when everything is narrative, everything is, it's never a fact. A fact is always duel. I always do this. Don't do that. When the truth is, it's almost always less. Like that. More like a story or more like the seasons in a year is that you don't say to somebody, harvest, you got to harvest.

[00:16:55] Don't plant seeds. Harvest like, no, that's insane. They're seasons for planting seeds and seasons for harvesting and the, and so the same, like this growth element. That's a time element. It's like, you know, do this. But for me, you know, as you're talking through all this stuff, you're mentioning like, Oh, you're a pod, you've done well in podcasting and illustration and a bunch of other areas.

[00:17:15] Chris: [00:17:15] Oh yeah. I didn't even mention like children's books and, yeah. Yeah. Like I forgot

[00:17:20] Andy: [00:17:20] an illustration, it's, you know, advertising, editorial, kid's book, a bunch of stuff. The interesting thing is the hedgehog principle and the niching down principle happened in each one of those. You're looking at a 12 year career where I did, you know, for two years at a time, niched to one particular thing until I had found some level of mastery and some level of breakthrough.

[00:17:45] And then kind of let that plate spin and then move on to another thing. And so it looks like I'm kind of defying the hedgehog principle because if you look at it all at once, rather than over time and growth, it looks like Jack of all trades doing a bunch of different things when in actuality and practice.

[00:18:01] It was a series of events and a sear enact dots on a line. Uh, they were hedgehog principles. And the other thing about that is it's all been through the lens of growth because it's all been. A systematic action oriented way of finding what do I really do best. So every time I would take that hedgehog principle idea and it would create a hypothesis of this is where I need to niche down and I would spend two years making work actively testing that hypothesis, not just in my brain, but like by trying it out, trying to break in, trying to get good at it.

[00:18:35] And then at the end of that, I would pivot. Now back. Okay, well this is what I liked about that. Like when I did a project as a good example of one that didn't go anywhere, as I spent a really significant amount of time, probably about a year where my side project was this thing called a novel view, where I did new book covers for books from the public domain, and I'd made screen-printed posters out of it.

[00:18:58] And so I

[00:18:58] Chris: [00:18:58] why have we not talked about this? That's awesome.

[00:19:01] Andy: [00:19:01] because I don't read those books. So that's what I learned. I did that process and I thought, I don't, I should not get into book cover illustration. I don't read any fiction. That's a really, that's so inauthentic. It's such a, but I only knew that all these illustrators find for them to sit around and be like, I wish someone would hire me to be a book cover illustrator.

[00:19:19] And that's as far as it goes. Like, well, I hope that, you know, red shows up and says you're a wizard, or you know, Haggard doesn't was like you're a book cut. Like everybody's waiting for someone to, to be told what their niche is rather than the way that I've done it is a systematic experiment. And so instead of, for the longest time I'd watch my friends who were book cover illustrators and think, man, those jobs look so fun.

[00:19:42] I want to do that. And then I spent a year trying to do that. And after I was done, I was like. No, this is such a bad fit for me because I don't read fiction. So how could, why, what? I want to make that my niche, but I only figured that out by a year of making those posters.

[00:19:59] Chris: [00:19:59] Oh,

[00:19:59] Andy: [00:19:59] Does that make sense? Yeah. And so you string enough of those together.

[00:20:02] Some failed, some not lots of pivoting, and you get where I am today

[00:20:07] Chris: [00:20:07] I love that. So let me kind of bring up a couple of vocab words for you guys right now. So pivoting is when you're building a business and then you figure out you have a new strength or a new opportunity, or like the circle has probably changed. So you've got these four circles as you try to figure out how to make your business run.

[00:20:23] One of them's the thing you love. Another circle is making money. Another circle is your, you're the best at it. And then this other circle that we're talking about, we're bringing in, we're adding to the Jim Collins picture here is growth that eventually, and I love what you're saying, there is this growth circle.

[00:20:37] It's probably the one that changes the most, right? In different seasons of life. I remember like when I first started mastering every project, I'd be like, Oh my gosh, I learned something new on this project that I'll be able to use occasionally in the future. That doesn't really ever happen anymore. It's just, okay, this is exactly the way I think it should be.

[00:20:55] I'm done moving on. Had a great time. I'm patting myself on the back. I'm smiling at the end of the day, but there's no like, wow, I need to dig into this more in my soul.

[00:21:03] Andy: [00:21:03] Can I just give a real quick example of pivoting that I think is my, one of my favorite examples is Instagram started as a company, I believe it was like, I don't actually know what geocashing is, but I think it's something, do you know what that is?

[00:21:16] Chris: [00:21:16] it's like

[00:21:17] Andy: [00:21:17] Something about location

[00:21:18] Chris: [00:21:18] You like find a GPS source and you have to go to that GPS location and then,

[00:21:23] Andy: [00:21:23] I think originally it was something to do was something location-based. That's what Instagram was at the start. And what happened is they noticed all their users were using their app just for the filter function, but there was a photo function within this location based thing where people were getting on this app.

[00:21:38] They weren't doing any of the location crap that the whole app was about. They were just using the filters for the photos cause everybody liked the filters and then they pivoted to being a photo company. So that, does that make

[00:21:47] Chris: [00:21:47] I love that. One of my favorite stories on that

[00:21:50] Andy: [00:21:50] But you can't do that if you don't make an app.

[00:21:52] You can't do that in your navel gazing, setting back and not writing on stage. I know we're getting in way, I'm getting into all my jargon. I'm just, I apologize cause it's a million

[00:22:01] Chris: [00:22:01] you're fine, man. This

[00:22:02] Andy: [00:22:02] maybe we'll go there and maybe we won't, but

[00:22:04] Chris: [00:22:04] Well. Okay, so a couple stories on this. I'm going to tell a story about pivoting, but first I want to talk about, we've said hedgehog principle a bunch when I explained that, so the hedgehog principle and something Jim Collins came up with, I believe it's in built to last, or is it in good to

[00:22:18] Andy: [00:22:18] I don't know. I haven't read those books. I just heard him talk about it.

[00:22:20] Chris: [00:22:20] It's funny because those books are like sisters. They're very, very, very similar, at least in my memory. It's been a while since I've read them, but he talks about this idea of the hedgehog principle, and the basic idea is it's kind of a rip off of Wiley coyote and Roadrunner. And so the idea is like there's this Fox and he wants to eat this hedgehog, and the Fox keeps coming up with all these elaborate ways to get the hedgehog and right as the Fox pounces and tries to surprise the hedgehog in a new way.

[00:22:45] The hedge leg is like, Oh, Hey, it's the Fox. I'm going to roll into a spiky ball. And then the Fox is like, Oh, he got me again. I tried to buy them and he's.

[00:22:53] Andy: [00:22:53] the road runner runs fast.

[00:22:54] Chris: [00:22:54] Yeah. Road runner. Yeah, exactly. So it's hilarious cause he could've just called it the road runner principle until the hedgehog principal, but the, yeah, Wiley coyote does everything.

[00:23:03] He can various

[00:23:04] Andy: [00:23:04] resonates a lot better for me.

[00:23:05] Chris: [00:23:05] me too. Yeah. Yeah. There's like, Oh, he's going to use an anvil this time. Oh no. A rocket. Oh. Trying to think of T and T. Oh, a huge piano falling from a cliff. All these crazy creative ideas and the road runners, just like Mimi, again with the sounds back to it is a good sound. So he just does the same thing again and again.

[00:23:23] And so that's niching. So niching is, you do the same thing again and again. And a couple things happen when you do this.  is one, it makes it really easy to communicate. We've had this guy, Mark Eckert on the show in the past, and his, I don't have my computer on in front of me, but his website's amazing and it's basically like.

[00:23:42] You look at his headline and it says, it's something along the lines of like, the only thing I give a fuck about is making indie pop music, something along those lines. And he's just so all in on like, Oh, well if you're not this, his headline in his website tells you like, I'm not your

[00:23:59] Andy: [00:23:59] yeah, yup.

[00:23:59] Chris: [00:23:59] And like just, he's amazing at this.

[00:24:01] So one niching makes it really easy to communicate too. Niche-y makes it really easy for people to tell your story. Which is something I want to talk into, talk about a lot more with you. This idea of like, Oh dude, man, you should, uh, you should go to Mark Eckert. He's this amazing indie pop producer. Oh, cool.

[00:24:18] All right. There's a one sentence elevator

[00:24:20] Andy: [00:24:20] Like I've heard, you know, my book coach at told me that like the books that spread or the the ones that people can talk about. So can you talk, can you, and it really in two sentences say, is the book a container for a really transferable idea? If it is, then boom,

[00:24:37] Chris: [00:24:37] I love that. Yeah, I love that. And there's a lot of books, man. Some of our podcasts episodes break that. Like there are some episodes that I'm like, Oh man, these are our best, but we haven't packaged it in a way that makes it as like, Oh cool, cool. That's what this episode is about, which is tricky.

[00:24:53] So let's talk about pivoting again. So one of my favorite pivoting stories is somebody decides, Hey, we're going to build a remote payment system in like the 90s and at the time there was no way to accept money online. Like it was really, really complicated to navigate. Banks who are really slow moving, like organisms that don't change quickly, and two different companies, PayPal, and I forget what the name of the other one was, decide.

[00:25:20] We're going to try to solve this. Eventually these two companies come together. Elon Musk is at the helm and their product essentially was back in the day. There are these things called Palm pilots. They're kind of the predecessor of the iPhone except sucky and. It's like a little handheld device and it's got like a little stylist and somebody wrote a piece of software and it allowed people with Palm pilots to transfer money from one Palm pilot to the other revolutionary.

[00:25:47] And they got really fixated on this idea. And then what they found is there like looking through all their data and they're like, wow, all these people, are you using this payment system in order to make transactions on eBay? But neither of them owns a Palm pilot. Like they're using like the web and, or severe version of this, like the crappiest part of the product.

[00:26:10] And Ellen had to have this moment of like, Oh, this isn't what we are. This isn't what people think about. And

[00:26:17] Andy: [00:26:17] good. Yeah. Okay. Keep

[00:26:20] Chris: [00:26:20] Okay. So, yeah, absolutely. So one of my favorite sayings ever is that branding is what people say about you when you're not there. It's kind of niching as well. So. I've been struggling with this, and we'll talk about this a lot more because the success of the podcast has created some kind of weird branding moments for me because I see myself as a mastering engineer.

[00:26:43] I've seen myself as a mashing manger for years, but most people see me as like a talky, business-y, Thinkery guy. I'm a, I'm a podcaster, right?  so there's some, what I would call brand business, like sync issues there. Who I see my

[00:27:02] Andy: [00:27:02] product market fit

[00:27:03] Chris: [00:27:03] product market fit.

[00:27:04] Andy: [00:27:04] A product that you think you're selling isn't what the market thinks  trying to get from you, and there's a disconnect, which means you're going to get a lot of churn. You're gonna get a lot of all kinds of, you're going to miss all these opportunities. 100%

[00:27:18] Chris: [00:27:18] It's gonna feel weird and feel off. And so back to Elon Musk and PayPal, is that when they learned this, it was really difficult for their team to process. Hey, you were trying to build this. We're going to kill it. We're going to end this thing, and we're going to transition to being the number one place four online payment on eBay.

[00:27:42] So this is really difficult for the engineers that built the product initially because they are really tied to it is their baby. Yeah,

[00:27:48] Andy: [00:27:48] let me just say something real quick because this perfectly goes back to this non dual advice thing, because here's the thing. What you're going to usually get is, uh Oh, like grit to like stick to your guns. Do like focus on the one thing. Never let it go until it's 100 times I hurt

[00:28:06] Chris: [00:28:06] I love your passion here.

[00:28:08] Andy: [00:28:08] You know, like there's grit and then there's pivoting, right? So. Which one's right? Grit is all about like, you know, you're familiar with us. Perseverance. Just stay on it and then there's pivot. Like, you know, hold things loosely. Always be changing up, move on to the next thing. Fast, quick, you know, pivot fast.

[00:28:23] And to me again, that is a narrative. It's missing the seasonal narrative based version of this. And this is where the processes that I come up with bake into the system. There is a season where you have your blinders on and you are all in disciplined, not just dipping your toes in a pool. You set your target and you say, that's the pool.

[00:28:45] I'm going to jump in and you can't embark into that pool. Now, once you're in there, once you've really, like for instance, when I started my podcast, I decided before I started. I'm so sure that this is something I need to deeply explore, that I need to Cannonball into and not dip my toes into. I'm doing a hundred episodes no matter what.

[00:29:05] No matter what, I'm doing a hundred I don't care. I don't care if it's five people that listen to it. I don't care. I'm going to do it for a hundred episodes and I'm so glad I did because the first 50 episodes, which is a year of making podcasts, by the way, my numbers were really low. What I did have though it was, I had the quantitative data wasn't great.

[00:29:25] Qualitative data was unlike anything I'd ever seen, so it was, I'd never, you know, never had I had anybody write me emails that said. I just bawled my eyes out about this. You changed my life, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, nothing I'd ever made had the depth of connection in residence, which I always am like attuned to that, but it's this idea of like, there was a season of, I'm going to do this, I'm going to be blinders for a hundred episodes, and then after that, then I'm going to explore pivoting.

[00:29:52] So there's this weird push and pull, because what you're saying, these engineers know, engineers know you've got to be disciplined. You've got to have laser focus on your goal. Right. But that same thing, if they would've just taken that advice wholesale binary, dual thinking wise and thinking, always persevere, they would have completely missed this huge

[00:30:13] Chris: [00:30:13] Enormous opportunity. And let's talk about this transitioning idea.

[00:30:17] Andy: [00:30:17] Love it.

[00:30:18] Chris: [00:30:18] This idea of like finding a new niche is you take that

[00:30:21] Andy: [00:30:21] transmission. Yeah.

[00:30:24] Chris: [00:30:24] Oh my gosh. A transmission. And, and, uh, so you take Ellen's story. And so I read a lot about this and he's got a biography that's got kind of popular. , you know, he makes this transition.

[00:30:35] Andy: [00:30:35] is it called musky? That'd be a good time.

[00:30:39] Chris: [00:30:39] Oh, musky.

[00:30:40] Andy: [00:30:40] Muskrat. Um, anyway, so I'm sorry.

[00:30:44] Chris: [00:30:44] no, you're fine. So like he captains the ship and it's like, okay guys, I know that sucks. But like, our circles have changed. They pivot, they start focusing on eBay, and then eventually eBay is like, Hmm. We would like to buy you for a lot of money. So Ellen gets a huge payday.

[00:31:03] He buys like a McLaren F one I think is what it's called, million dollar car. And there's this famous video of like him getting a delivery and it's amazing to watch . He ends up starting a bunch of other companies. I think he's like number one in solar companies right now with solar city or, or close to the number one.

[00:31:22] He's number one. And obviously Tesla, he's number one in private rocketry.

[00:31:27] Andy: [00:31:27] Hmm. Crazy. Yeah.

[00:31:29] Chris: [00:31:29] Like he's, uh,

[00:31:30] Andy: [00:31:30] he's number one in cheese.

[00:31:31] Chris: [00:31:31] he's number one in cheese.  he probably is also number one in lithium batteries right now, because guess what? Teslas run on lithium batteries. And in order to make that happen. At least if he's not number one in lithium batteries, he will be someday, eventually they're going to vertically integrate, which means they're going to buy all the companies that are their suppliers and then they own all the means of production.

[00:31:53] This is like, you know, business history when a one, so it's fascinating to me that like their response two, the circles have changed. Our number one is somewhere else, and at first we're not sure how we feel about that. And the money circle is totally different too. I'm sure. They saw this and the engineers were like, Oh, that's stupid.

[00:32:12] It bugs me that someone's using my baby in the wrong way. But then Ilan, I'm sure is looking at it and is like, yeah, but eBay might want to buy us for like millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars. So I think what's so interesting about that is we see this in everyone's business story, is it these circles grow and they shrink and they change, and the marketplace changes.

[00:32:33] I love what you're saying about grit. If the engineers and Elan and just been like, no, this is for Palm pilot payments and we will not, we will persevere. We will educate like that would have been a train wreck for him and for society.  even once just getting started. Clearly there are all these amazing opportunities of like, well, what happens if all these things play out successfully?

[00:32:57] Because Ellen made these trans niches. Over time, we might be a two planet species if he's successful, and global pollution might go down.

[00:33:09] Andy: [00:33:09] the transmission. I don't know if I'm saying that right. I don't know if there is a way to say that. Right, but I think that it's an integrated model of the hedgehog model, integrate integrated with a timeline. So this, you know what I'm saying? Because the thing is what you're in number one right now.

[00:33:25] First of all, that's what you know of yourself. That's a self knowledge thing. This is your best bet based on what I know about now. This is my spot. But as you make stuff, you actually learn more intimate knowledge of what you're really good at and you're like, actually, I need to pivot away from that cause I'm actually better at that.

[00:33:40] The other thing that happens is the demand in the market changes. So both his timeline, the more you do, the more you understand what you're good at in new opportunities mixed with how the demand changes over time and what, you know what I'm saying? So there's just, yeah, it's integrated with the timeline kind of.

[00:33:56] I think there's probably, yeah, some kind of spinning wheel version of it.

[00:33:59] Chris: [00:33:59] Totally. This is my story right now is that I was a mastering engineer who was friends. Yeah. This guy Brian, who had a blog, Brian invited me to go host a podcast with him. I just wanted to hang out with Brian. And the podcast was a great excuse to do that, and I could tell my wife, yeah, we'll probably get maybe two or three customers Sunday a month from this podcast.

[00:34:21] If it goes extremely well, knowing like I've done podcasts before, this probably isn't going to go

[00:34:26] Andy: [00:34:26] yeah, right? Yeah.

[00:34:27] Chris: [00:34:27] and then it explodes. I haven't told you this yet. The podcast December was 25% larger than any month we had previously had, and then January was 25% larger than December. So you know, Brian and I went out to Nam.

[00:34:43] It's like the Mecca of audio and music people, 150,000 people there and everyone's walking around and it was this really weird experience that like I met a ton of people, a bunch of people walked up, I saw the purple shirt and we're like, Oh dude, love the podcast. And I'm like, I'm a mastering engineer.

[00:35:00] Okay. I'm more than just a podcaster and, and it's been like a weird transition because. You know, as far as like the mastering thing, my niche initially when I got into mastering was I noticed that most mastering engineers aren't very nice and that I was good at mastering. I said, wow, I'm just like the nicest mastering engineer on earth.

[00:35:20] I'll probably do it right. Yeah. That worked. The great niche, and then the podcast started take off and it was sorta like me processing, okay, well this thing's going a lot better than the mastering thing, but the mastering thing still. Works great. It's still killing it. But I'm hearing from the marketplace, it's as if like humanity as a whole is speaking something of like, well, we want more of like, how do we build successful careers?

[00:35:46] We don't really want a mastering course from you. We want more podcast episodes and more stuff like that. Business coaching. And so one of the things that was crazy of this last year was business coaching. I started doing the business coaching thing in large part because of you. We moved into this space and I was next door, and you were in the room that we're currently in now, and I would be working on something, you know, one of the businesses?

[00:36:10] Yeah. You'd be shouting on a coaching call. And so I would like

[00:36:13] Andy: [00:36:13] lovingly shouting. Yeah,

[00:36:14] Chris: [00:36:14] I would hear you doing this and be thinking, wow, that sounds really, really fun. I want to do that. And then lo and behold, the particular individual that was very influential in our industry said, I want you to my business coach.

[00:36:27] And I was like, what the hell are you talking about?  it was this like sync issue between what people were saying about me when I wasn't there and who I saw myself in the marketplace as. And so when I started doing the business coaching thing, just like really just a couple times a week, I noticed something interesting about it.

[00:36:46] It was that, as far as I know. I might be the only guy that's like the one on one business coach who specializes in businesses that provides services in the music industry. Exactly. That's the clearest I've ever actually explained

[00:37:00] Andy: [00:37:00] Good job.

[00:37:00] Chris: [00:37:00] thank you.

[00:37:01] Andy: [00:37:01] Good thing it's recorded.

[00:37:02] Chris: [00:37:02] Good thing. Yeah, and so I started to see that and I was like, Oh, that's interesting.

[00:37:06] And the demand for it was crazy. I couldn't keep up with it, but the thing that I found that was most interesting was the growth component. Was I get done with the coaching session and be like, Oh man, that was great. I've got an idea for a podcast episode and I've got clarity on how to ask better questions.

[00:37:22] We just did an episode on the Socratic method. That's my primary coaching method is asked so many questions before you start saying anything, and what I've found through that is I've become a significantly better husband and a significantly better dad, and I think a better friend. Too. Cause I'm not like actually what you should do is, which would have been my default mode of operation in the not so distant past.

[00:37:46] And so it's been kind of interesting for me to process this transitioning process of like I want to keep mastering. I have every intention of continuing to do that for the foreseeable future. But I'm also, the growth circle is not there for me. You know, it's, I'm good at it. I can make a lot of money.

[00:38:04] still be the nicest mastering engineer on the planet. Maybe. I feel like mastering engineers have gotten nicer over the past like 15 years, so my lead is has shrunk significantly. But anyways, man, I think what I'm trying to say here  this is a really real process that I think we all experience. I love what you said about there's a timeline.

[00:38:25] As an engineer, my temptation is to be like last Venn diagram represents truth under all circumstances. Yeah, that's what I want. Yeah.

[00:38:34] Andy: [00:38:34] truth. I don't think you set me up to tell the story. And actually I told, I told this story last week on the podcast on my podcast, pretty pep talk, and I'm just kidding. But I

[00:38:43] Chris: [00:38:43] I'm going to pitch the hell out of this and the intro and outro, so, yeah.

[00:38:46] Andy: [00:38:46] But I did in the last, cause you told me I should tell the story. Yeah. Everything you just said set this up.

[00:38:50] So back in the day. This is maybe like six or seven years ago, I had a huge project. So like an illustration, one of the biggest projects you can get is packaging because it's part of the product. So the usage of the money that you get paid for, like the person that illustrated that little farm scene on the hidden Valley ranch, bang is raked in the cash.

[00:39:13] Huge pay out for that because it's part of the product

[00:39:17] Chris: [00:39:17] Yeah, it's the product and then it's the dressing of the

[00:39:20] Andy: [00:39:20] Oh no,

[00:39:22]

[00:39:22] I'm under the table now. That's the dad. The dad jokes are coming and they don't stop coming.

[00:39:29] Chris: [00:39:29] I feel like I'm at my bike. This season of life is kind of, when it comes to ponds, like it's my salad

[00:39:34] Andy: [00:39:34] Oh, dad.

[00:39:35] Chris: [00:39:35] like,

[00:39:38] Andy: [00:39:38] I knew it was happening. I knew I could, I was feeling it. Am I good to

[00:39:43] Chris: [00:39:43] you're good. You're good. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

[00:39:45] Andy: [00:39:45] All right, so anyway, I had a, I got a job for one of the biggest, if not biggest vodka brands. I can't, again, India can't say what it is. You've heard of them. And they wanted me to do an illustration for one of their bottles for one of their new products and everything that I came up with.

[00:40:03] We got really far in the process. Everything I came up with, the lawyer rejected because they're like, this looks like it's made for kids and we can't do that. It will get sued if we are an alcohol brand that look, that looks like they're selling stuff to kids. And so then later on, that became a trend where I would be on a project and I'd get an email in the middle of the project that would say, you know, can you.

[00:40:24] Make this feel a little bit more grown up. It feels a little bit like it's for kids and I, as soon as that would happen, it'd be a huge red flag. I was like, this project's gone down in flames because, huh? I can't. I can't. Like I can make playful stuff for grownups, but I can't not make playful stuff. It's always playful, but the thing that happened to me, what I realized from reading Jim Henson's bio his whole career is him trying to convince people he's more than a child's performer.

[00:40:50] And to me, there's just this weird thing happening of, you know, the, what people are saying behind your back, but people are saying when you're not there in terms of your brand, there's this weird ego thing. I don't know if it was ego for him. I'm just, I'm putting my me in those shoes. For me, the thing that said, I don't, I'm more than a kid's illustrator.

[00:41:08] Again, it's this thing of like, you know, I feel like when it's you in your niche, you feel like I contain multitudes, but if Jenny's ice cream says we make the best ice cream in the world,

[00:41:19] Chris: [00:41:19] which they do.

[00:41:19] Andy: [00:41:19] which they do, but there's a thing of when other person's niches down, you're like, Provet  really? You think you're the human on the planet that makes the best ice cream, but when you do it for yourself, you're like, I'm more than making ice cream.

[00:41:33] I'm more than that. Like. How'd the humility and the confidence to be like, I'm going to focus on this thing. And so for me personally, I've listened to that over time where I'm like, you know what? I do think my illustration is primarily for kids. And actually when I look at my lesson from Henson as he was one of the best.

[00:41:52] Child's entertainment creators of all time, and there's nothing better than that. There's nothing more glorious and honorable to be someone who gets to speak into children's lives on a mass scale. Why do you need to be more than

[00:42:08] Chris: [00:42:08] yeah,

[00:42:09] Andy: [00:42:09] You're not more than that. And that's like, anyway, that's an example of people kept telling me, people kept telling me.

[00:42:17] You should make stuff for kids. And I kept saying, okay, I think I'm going to focus on, uh, men's tee shirts from age 18 to 35. And I, do you have any kids tee shirts? And I'm like, no, I don't. I only made one. Like, does that make sense? So there's this thing of like, what is the market telling you? You are like, take that raw data, filter it into.

[00:42:41] Your messaging and who you are, and there's a humility and an acceptance to all that. Does that all make sense? This is what you're talking

[00:42:47] Chris: [00:42:47] yeah,

[00:42:47] Andy: [00:42:47] Yeah, yeah,

[00:42:48] Chris: [00:42:48] I love what you said about humility and confidence. So the reason I didn't niche down that I was like, I'm a producer for when I first started out, I'm a producer for every genre. Mostly singer songwriters and I do everything. I'm the engineer, the writer, the producer, the vocal coach, the technician like the app tech, the guitar tech, seriously.

[00:43:07] All the things that there was a lack of humility. Insane. Like, man, I just want a kit. Great at this one thing.

[00:43:16] Andy: [00:43:16] Oh, keep going. Well, I have

[00:43:18] Chris: [00:43:18] no, you go.

[00:43:21] Andy: [00:43:21] All right. This is my favorite example of this, and there is a spiritual component, but I don't think that's really the takeaway. And we talked about this. Oh, I love this story. It's one of my all time favorite stories, and it's George Washington Carver.

[00:43:33] He's having a conversation with God and he's saying, tell me why you created the universe. And God's response to them is ask a question more your size. And then he's like, okay, why did you make people? And he's like not small enough. And he's like, okay, why did you make peanuts? And then God's response says.

[00:43:55] Let's spend the next, the rest of your life answering that question together. And so he spent his entire life focused on the peanut and dead amazing things with the peanut. And you think, man, his legacy is peanut butter. Huge. Like, you know what I'm

[00:44:12] Chris: [00:44:12] yeah, yeah.

[00:44:13] Andy: [00:44:13] do you know how much of an impact that made in humanity?

[00:44:16] Like, but it wasn't too small for him? Oh

[00:44:20] Chris: [00:44:20] and wide.

[00:44:22] Andy: [00:44:22] come on. Get him out. How many more you got.

[00:44:25] Chris: [00:44:25] when he, when he started to lean into this niche, into his calling, he really came out of his shell.

[00:44:31] Andy: [00:44:31] Oh my gosh, that's, that's my jam.

[00:44:33] Chris: [00:44:33] Oh, there it is.

[00:44:35] Andy: [00:44:35] It's a little bit of a reach, but, but do you know, I love that idea of like, you're w a human's life. It's not too small of a thing to obsess over this little tiny thing. And then I want to speak to, cause I, I think my other side, the other place that's a blind spot where I think some people go wrong with net chain is, and again, we're like integrating Simon cynic's model into this because I think what happens is they want to niche down in a house or a what.

[00:45:05] So, uh, how for an illustrator is your style, how you go about making something, you know what I'm saying? And a lot of people niche down in that. Or a lot of people niche down on the what of like I make magazine illustrations. That's what I make. And I actually think for me, this long process of going through niching down into a bunch of little places and then kind of slowly but surely finding my real sweet spot.

[00:45:30] I feel like the deeper I dig, I dig past house and past what and I get to why. And there's a niche of why. And so for me, I realize what I'm here to do on this planet is say something. That's what I do. And it's almost always storytelling. It's almost always storytelling. Whether I'm making illustration or I'm doing a talk, it's storytelling.

[00:45:53] I want to tell a story, and so that helps me realize like I don't want to do projects and illustration where I don't feel like I'm writing with pictures. If I feel like I'm not getting any, none of my opinions are in here. It was dictated to me. I'm a hired hand and a million other people could do it.

[00:46:12] That's not my niche, my niches, so deeply connected to my voice and what I want to talk about.

[00:46:27] Chris: [00:46:27] Totally makes sense. One of the things I love about our friendship, so basically the, our story is I was looking for office space in the uptown Westerville area just North of Columbus, Ohio. We have a mutual friend, Collin and Michelle Rigsby. Colin used to play drums in this band called house of heroes.

[00:46:44] They were like a bands band in, you know, sort of this like Christian heavier

[00:46:49] Andy: [00:46:49] Tooth and nail kind of seeing he wasn't

[00:46:51] Chris: [00:46:51] goatee. Yeah, like

[00:46:52] Andy: [00:46:52] of stuff. Yeah.

[00:46:53] Chris: [00:46:53] so I think it was mostly Michelle, his wife. I've known colony Michelle for years. I went to middle school with Colin . You mentioned to Michelle, you were looking for office space.

[00:47:02] Michelle's like, Oh, she's dr Chris Graham. You called me. I had no idea who you were.

[00:47:06] Andy: [00:47:06] wonder if she's a connector.

[00:47:08] Chris: [00:47:08] Yeah. Back to the Go-Giver thing. Yeah. So she did the connector thing was like, you guys should talk. We met, and I remember like a couple of things from that, and one of the things was we're sitting down at Northstar cafe and you said, you know, I've got a D D too.

[00:47:25]

[00:47:25] And I was like, hold on, hold the phone.

[00:47:27]

[00:47:27] I didn't tell you. I've add. But I know, and so there's this instant connection, but also it was like, Whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait. You mean to tell me the, you created it like a business podcast for creatives. And I also have a business podcast for creatives in this niche of audio.

[00:47:48] Whoa, weird. Like there's not that many of those shows, like they're very, very, very rare. It was interesting because you are way farther down this road that I've pretty much just started on, and I remember you told me this story about how you were killing it and illustration. Yeah. You know, like New York times, Nickelodeon, Google, like all these huge companies are coming to you and saying, Hey, we want you to draw a picture that we want to show millions and millions of people.

[00:48:17] In a way that explains who we are and what our brand is. And so you're making a killing. You bought a house with money you've made from drawing pictures. Yeah. So

[00:48:26] Andy: [00:48:26] Yeah, yeah. It's like, I do like an illustration in terms of business, how it's like alchemy. You literally take a piece of paper and turn it into money. Yeah. It's

[00:48:35] Chris: [00:48:35] exactly. Yeah. You're literally printing something like you could in back in the old days, you would literally turn in a piece of paper. And then you yet another piece of paper back with the net with zeros on it. You know? Pretty cool. And I remember you told me about, and your story, that you were an illustrator.

[00:48:52] You started your podcast and you were explaining sort of all these things within the creative world and how business and creativity intersect. And you would have to tell these stories too, illustrate the points that you were making.

[00:49:05] Andy: [00:49:05] actually I had like an identity crisis first. So identity crisis first was, I did this talk and it was like super metaphor and analogy heavy, just a little tiny talk. And when I did it, my wife was there. It was a small group. So sometimes I'll do a creative thing and I'll think. Whoa, that was magic.

[00:49:24] And then I'll show my wife and she's like, no, it's not. She's the most honest critic. So helpful. I got almost so many of my bag. Really, I've gotten so much more self-aware by being with her. Even early days, like help me niche down in all kinds of ways of like, yeah, don't do that stuff. And just super helpful.

[00:49:45] And so usually I would do something that I thought, I think that was kind of magic. And then she'd be like, no. But after that talk, she was there. I was like, I, something really weird just happened. And she's like, yeah, it did. I've don't even know what happened. That's when I started the podcast. It was after that.

[00:50:02] Because I was like, I don't know. I don't think illustrations as much my thing, I think it's something about the stories, metaphors, analogies, it's all that kind of stuff. I don't know what that is. And so I started doing talks and I did the podcast, and then one day, like two years, and I'm making the podcast, I heard a public speaker say, all right, I wanna explain something to you.

[00:50:21] I'm going to give you a little illustration. But he was talking about analogies and I was like the same thing. I just spit on you. I'm sorry. They're the same thing. That gets back to the why thing is that the why underneath get past the veneer layers of how and what you get down to like what is the essence of what I do?

[00:50:41] Because then if you niche down into that, the ecosystem of things you can do in terms of a business, they're not so limiting. Once I understood that I could work with. All kinds of different people and do all kinds of different things. Essentially, I'm doing the same thing. Okay. That's my point about illustration.

[00:50:57] I don't want, I don't want to do illustration. That is all what and how. It's all the style. It's all like draw a pig, whatever it is. It's got to have some of that sauce of, this is an illustration. This isn't a visual analogy. This is . You know what I'm saying? It's gotta be in that little core center. Why.

[00:51:17] Chris: [00:51:17] There are so many wisdom bombs that you're dropping here that I can see that a lot of people that are listening to this show would just be like, Oh my gosh. Okay. Essence. I think in our industry there's the temptation and my gosh, have I been guilty of this? There's the temptation to look at yourself as the collection of skills that you possess that you're like, well, I really know signal flow and I really know compression and I really know.

[00:51:41] And that's what makes me marketable. But I think, I think that were created not to get awkward and spiritual here, and I think that each one of us, it was made in a way that was revolutionary and figuring out what that is  so freaking unbelievably

[00:51:59] Andy: [00:51:59] mean that. Aye  here's the thing. I agree with what you're saying. But I love to also flip it on its head and say, you don't have to agree with that. It can be a divine creation, a divine design, or it can be evolution, but either way, you are one of a kind and you contain the universe as most complex machinery.

[00:52:17] If you find, what is it? These two things combined, my unique DNA that will never be recreated, and this complex machine, it's the most complex bang in the known universe is your brain and you put those, you figured out. What's the thing that that combination does  super valuable to my tribe.

[00:52:36]

[00:52:36] Like that's it.

[00:52:38] That's your essence. You know, your pun thing is a good example of it. It's like a function and to me there's a function that's pattern recognition. So it's just an analogy. It's just a pattern. Same thing. It's like, that's like that. Like, yeah, I'm not going to go into examples cause clean a way, rabbit trail, but Oh, that's kind of like that.

[00:52:57] Yeah. And that's a function that my DNA and my brain together do. And I just do that all day long. And that's really good. You string enough of those together and you have a good story.

[00:53:07] Chris: [00:53:07] Yeah. Well, and let me dive down deep into this. So we've had this conversation a couple of times and the idea then I'm fascinated with this. You think about gold and its value. Gold  is an atomic structure. It's a bunch of the exact same thing. Again, and again and again in itself is a pattern. Yeah. It's a couple of molecules.

[00:53:27] I forget what it is like specifically,

[00:53:30] Andy: [00:53:30] gold is an element

[00:53:31] Chris: [00:53:31] it's an element.

[00:53:32] Andy: [00:53:32] it's just one, right?

[00:53:33] Chris: [00:53:33] Oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah. There's no,

[00:53:35] Andy: [00:53:35] literally that Adam,

[00:53:37] Chris: [00:53:37] there's one Adam and every piece of gold, every atom of gold is exactly the same. Yeah. And a giant piece of gold is just a bunch of those Adams. And so the unique thing here is that the Adam of gold is unique.

[00:53:49] And compared to other Adams, yeah. And a bunch of gold Adams together is the same as a whole bunch more gold atoms together. And I think it raises an interesting question. Stick with me here guys.  how many gold atoms are there?

[00:54:01] Andy: [00:54:01] Well, you can do a Diamond's, cause I looked this up, there's 150 million carats of diamond on the planet and we still consider that level of rare to be high levels of value. Right, right.

[00:54:14] Chris: [00:54:14] And there's only one of you,

[00:54:15] Andy: [00:54:15] Yeah. There's only one.

[00:54:16] Chris: [00:54:16] every single person that's listening to this show right now.

[00:54:19] Andy: [00:54:19] And go check out the science. The scientists say, this equation is such that this pattern of your DNA will never repeat.

[00:54:29] It will never repeat. Yeah, yeah.

[00:54:30] Chris: [00:54:30] That doesn't even include the nature nurture thing. Yeah.

[00:54:33] Andy: [00:54:33] yeah. Well, I've said that too. That same idea is like, if that's just your DNA. Compound that with your experience. Compound that with like your skills, the things you've learned, a million other things. Right. The thing I want to get back to with all of that, when it comes to your function, when it comes to your hedgehog, when it comes to your niche, the one thing, if I have something to transfer from may to other people as.

[00:54:55] Don't do it like a personality test. Don't do it like a career aptitude tests. Don't do it in an afternoon while you're thinking about what is my niche? See your life's purpose as that journey. Joseph Campbell called it the hero's journey. Carl Young psychoanalyst, psychologist called it the process of individuation.

[00:55:17] It is the purpose of your life is to act. And that's why I love my whole seven step process is about making stuff as a tool, not just for self expression, but self excavation. How do I use it? And I think it was Bruce Springsteen talks about how he had the exact same problems of his dad, but what his dad didn't have was music.

[00:55:41] And so he used music to work out all that stuff. It's as a tool. Or individuation a tool. So all this niche thing for me, don't just say, I think my niches and allergies prove it. Go take that hypothesis and do a hundred episodes of a podcast. Then you'll find what Palm pilot found is that who was Palm pilot that, Oh, I thought it was in this personal handheld device.

[00:56:05] I was actually as out there on the road out there with my hands in the

[00:56:10] Chris: [00:56:10] Every device on the planet.

[00:56:11] Andy: [00:56:11] Every tech company, every startup like that, that is their PR, like Twitter. Twitter started as like some kind of a program for like cops or something where they were. It was like a, a really shorthand way of like, you should go look it up.

[00:56:24] Like almost every, I mean, Facebook was a dating app for college people, like every single one. And the whole point of that is, this is what drives me. Super bonkers the way that we think about career, like this linear thing I've, you know, you start to level and just do the work in front of you and you just level up until you die.

[00:56:44] Don't do that. It's an open world and its side quests for me.

[00:56:48] Chris: [00:56:48] Yes. That's what I want. That's where I want to, I wanted to talk about.

[00:56:50] Andy: [00:56:50] I hope we're linear enough on

[00:56:52] Chris: [00:56:52] No, we

[00:56:52] Andy: [00:56:52] I hope people are, can follow

[00:56:54] Chris: [00:56:54] totally are. So here's how Chris Graham, 16 years ago would have heard this. I would be irritated cause I'd be like, wait, so you're saying like there's no, the truth of who I am and what my career is going to be, it's going to go through seasons and there'll be seasons when I lean into different things.

[00:57:10] And it's not just one straight path. And I think what most people in our industry do is they look at the heroes in our industry. And they say, I want to be just like him. Just exactly what I did. I wanted to be ed cash. Ed cash was this super successful Christian music producer, and I was like, dude, I just want to, I want to do, I even want my individual projects to mirror his, I want to be an all singing, all dancing producer most of the time.

[00:57:36] And then occasionally I want to go do singer songwriter shows at young life camps. Yeah. And I'll be this special music guy. That was the dream. That's what I did on a considerably smaller level. Then it had cash because

[00:57:48] Andy: [00:57:48] I love this, by the way.

[00:57:50] Chris: [00:57:50] for a lot of reasons, I was not as experienced as smart, as talented, as gifted, as connected.

[00:57:56] I didn't have like a coaches in my life the way ed did, and of course it didn't

[00:58:01] Andy: [00:58:01] Probably also didn't have some of the GeneSight quad that he had. Right. Like

[00:58:05] Chris: [00:58:05] how do you say,

[00:58:06] Andy: [00:58:06] Yeah. That it's a 0.1% of DNA that made him like this super freak

[00:58:11] Chris: [00:58:11] Yeah, totally. And I didn't realize it's silly to just see someone else as a straight path to success. I'll just Emily everything they did when it's like, bruh, let's back up. Let's talk about gold. Let's talk about diamonds. We got plenty. We have a lot of it. And guess what? Here's this. The scary thing about gold,

[00:58:29] Andy: [00:58:29] I'm so excited right now,

[00:58:30] Chris: [00:58:30] people, there's a lot of, so I like lean, libertarian, right. I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican. Sort of skeptical of the whole beast, but a lot of like hardcore libertarians are like, man, gold, invest in gold. Gold's is the way, and gonna be like, dude, it's like we live in a technological period of time, and it any moment you could pick up a newspaper and be like, no machine discovers 1 trillion pounds of gold below your surface.

[00:58:57] Boom. Gold is no longer valuable. Another example of that is aluminum. The guy who first isolated aluminum. Brought it to, I think it was like in Spain. He brought it to like the King and the King was like, awesome. Kill him right now so that we can have the monopoly on aluminum and aluminum was worth way more by weight than gold, and now it's trash.

[00:59:18] It's the cheapest thing on planet earth. So back to myself. 16 years ago, I would hear this podcast or I'm kind of jumping all over the place here.

[00:59:27] Andy: [00:59:27] Well, you don't have to apologize to me. That's the way my brain works, but

[00:59:30] Chris: [00:59:30] This is true. We're both that

[00:59:31] Andy: [00:59:31] we'll just apologize to the audience.

[00:59:32] Chris: [00:59:32] Yeah. We apologize to you guys. So for most of my life, I would have heard this podcast and had been like, Oh, but I want a simple path that I can follow so that I can be the next fill in the blank.

[00:59:43] You know, Grammy award when he makes engineer Grammy award winning producer. And I'd be really frustrated by this. I'd be kind of fascinated by this idea of like, wait, so I'm more rare than gold. Mm. I like that. But I would be. Egotistical, Chris Graham would want to go all in right away on like whatever the fulltime thing is.

[01:00:04] I'd want to be like, well, as of right now, I am a full time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which is essentially, I did with mastering. I was doing all the things and then one day it was like, screw it. Mastering is going pretty good. I have a good marketing idea. This is the only thing I'll do, and I shut down every inquiry, including inquiries.

[01:00:22] Did I regret shutting down, which I'll get into maybe someday in the

[01:00:25] Andy: [01:00:25] I know exactly what you're talking about. Not even I know what you're talking about for you, but I also, I've experienced this a million times myself and other people. Yeah. Because of, yeah. Anyway, keep going.

[01:00:34] Chris: [01:00:34] So you talk a lot about side quests,

[01:00:38]

[01:00:38] right? And I look at sir, my own personal journey with this podcast of like going from, Hey, business is really, really good, but like my inbox doesn't perpetually overflow with like, cool new friends.  know me really well from listening to this podcast. And

[01:00:56] Andy: [01:00:56] Okay.

[01:00:56] Chris: [01:00:56] let me just kind of start over again.

[01:00:58] What we did right with the podcast was we did it as a side quest. We were like, Hey, we're going to record three episodes and we're just going to keep saying again and again again in the episodes, Hey, this is kind of an experiment. We didn't want to waste anyone's time. We're giving this a try. If you like this, go ahead and write a review on iTunes and if we see a bunch of reviews, we'll keep doing it.

[01:01:19] Total experiment. And it was nice cause we were open and honest about like this could be a huge waste of time. Let's make sure it's not, and be open about the fact that it might be a waste of time and it was through that side project. Of talking about the business of running my mastering company, it totally changed my life and change the mastering company.

[01:01:39] I used to spend a ton of money on ads. I do not need to, can't anymore, like can barely keep up as it is  almost all of that is podcast driven at this point. So I'm talking about myself a lot right now guys. I'm kind of embarrassed by that, but I'm trying, I'm trying to like bring this home

[01:01:55] Andy: [01:01:55] You give an example.

[01:01:56] Chris: [01:01:56] Yeah.

[01:01:56] For a good example of you should do side quests to explore.

[01:02:01] Andy: [01:02:01] I'll just say a few things. So you were saying young, you would say, can't you just give me the straight path? I don't want to do this, but it's the obvious thing to do is just sell my product.

[01:02:11] Chris: [01:02:11] Do it. Yes. No, no. Go

[01:02:12] Andy: [01:02:12] So I have a, I have a class on Skillshare called, it's about side quest, skillshare.com/creative pap. You can go get two free months and do it.

[01:02:20] Uh, but, or you can go to my shop and you can get my creative career path that. Framework is an integrated model with a timeline and a narrative. Okay. And the other thing that it is, is in the same way that you don't need a walkthrough guide,  climb the corporate ladder, right? It's the same as playing like super Mario brothers one.

[01:02:41] Every level just is comes to you. You just keep walking, keep getting better at the thing that's in front of you. You don't need to think about where to go. You just go straight forward, right? But open world video game where the possibilities are endless, which is a creative career. You could get a walkthrough guide or a handbook.

[01:02:58] It will not fight any of the dragons for you. You still are going to have to make some decisions, but it'll give you this narrative thing to help you walk through it. That's what I tried to create. And the reason being is exactly what you just said. So as an example, this happens all the time. It's one of the reasons this content exists for me.

[01:03:15] You kind of downplayed this idea of being like your hero, right? And there's a season of that accounted for in my process. There's why, because. Here's something that drives me absolutely bonkers is that it doesn't get good until you niche down into your unique thing. It doesn't get good. It doesn't really hit the inflection point until Luke Deso Bez Yoda and becomes a different kind of Jedi who prioritizes different things.

[01:03:45] Then Yoda, that's when he becomes a Jedi. Right? It doesn't get good until then, but you can't get there. Without listening to Yoda, you can't get there. And this is why it's a narrative based system that is not duel. It's a what season are you in? Okay, so you're in a season where it's time to find your people and try to be like them.

[01:04:07] And the reason I say all that is because. One of the things that drives me absolutely bonkers is there's creative cliche of like, think outside the box, you know, kill your darlings. Like Kelly Kelly, your heroes. Like, you know, don't be singular. Be only like, you just screw everything else. And that comes from people like George Carlin, George Carlin, who was singular.

[01:04:26] Here's a comic who we know him as like this breakthrough comic legend . He goes on into interviews and says, you know, things didn't get good. Until I quit trying to be exactly like my hero. I can't remember his name. I keep thinking of Jack Benny, but I don't know if it's Jack Benny, so apologize for that.

[01:04:45] But he actually has a fine career mimicking this hero of his, trying to be just like him. He's even like on Johnny Carson.

[01:04:54] Chris: [01:04:54] Hilariously, and they look almost like brothers. Willie Nelson's story story's the same.

[01:04:58] Andy: [01:04:58] Okay. Every huge artists story is this way. So much. So there are exceptions. There are exceptions to the rule, but generally this is true. And this is why that advice drives me so crazy. I've just be, you just do your thing. No, because that's in my process. Step three. Step two is about. George Carlin. So what happens where he really, the person that we know of as George Carlin was born the time where I think he goes on Johnny Carson and he has a cardboard cutout of him in a suit, which is the same kind of suits that has here at war.

[01:05:33] And then he's wearing this casual stuff that we always have seen him in, in the future. And he says, this guy's dead. And he throws him off the stage and it's a metaphorical killing off of this version of him. And he's like, that was it. Do that. He was the only in that position after trying to be like other people for a long time.

[01:05:54] There is a gap is I read glass thing. There's a gap that you bridge. Bye. Trying to be like other people. It's a season that's actually so powerful. So important. Gandalf can only take you so far, right? Like you know, Yoda can only take you so far. There's a thing that you're here to do that is a little bit like what they did.

[01:06:15] But we're talking about the inflection point that happens when you can't go any further without disobeying them. So there's a bunch of things, like my heroes would never have called themselves pizza. They wouldn't.

[01:06:28] Chris: [01:06:28] So your, your real name, Andy J Miller. At some point you decided to rebrand as Andy J

[01:06:33] Andy: [01:06:33] And when I did it, I knew, I knew, I can think of three or four of my favorite illustrators of all time.

[01:06:39] And if they heard that they would turn their noses at it and be like, that's not. That's not

[01:06:45] Chris: [01:06:45] Dude. Same story on a smaller scale with this podcast.

[01:06:48] Andy: [01:06:48] Well, podcasts was the same for me too.

[01:06:50] Chris: [01:06:50] Yeah. So real quick with this, as I remember when Brian invited me and I was like, six figure home studio that is aggressive, that is a real yet is you're really leaning in to like money counts and

[01:07:05] Andy: [01:07:05] A really same thing when I started my podcast was creative career. I thought my industry is going to hate me. Creatives are going to freaking hate my guts.

[01:07:15] Chris: [01:07:15] I wondered if Chris mastering would go under because I was too open about money and its importance and uh, yeah,

[01:07:21] Andy: [01:07:21] disobeyed Yoda. That's the idea.

[01:07:23] Chris: [01:07:23] exactly.

[01:07:24] Yeah. Like my mentors would have been like, don't do that June, not make a podcast about the enemy money. You know, business, you're coming out as a bad artist. If you do that, you're coming out as, yeah, you don't have magical sensibilities. You're evil. And it's been mind blowing to look at this and be like, Oh my gosh.

[01:07:47] Hilariously, and this happened with my website, so when I launched Chris Graham, mastering.com one of my, I've mentioned this on the show before, but one of my mentors was like, that'll never work. Nobody will ever hire a stranger to master their music. There's absolutely zero chance. And luckily I was like, mm,

[01:08:02] Andy: [01:08:02] did so

[01:08:03] Chris: [01:08:03] I disagree.

[01:08:04] I was right. Thank God I've been wrong about a lot of stuff. But on that massive, like. You're not going to have to have a boss and you can like make your own hours and do what ever you want within reason, eventually like it. So there was a while there, but it was like 90 hours a week.

[01:08:22] Andy: [01:08:22] Can I throw? I'm gonna throw one little thing in here, but we're not, we shouldn't go deep. It's just a cool little bang that I love. It's from the hero's journey. One of the stages is getting in the enemy's clothing. So you'd been brought up like you're the enemy. And actually I've realized like I spent five years in the business mindset and I'm literally putting on a storm trooper outfit to get in.

[01:08:41] I'm literally, you know, same as an wizard of Oz. They put on the guards uniforms and they

[01:08:47] Chris: [01:08:47] Lord of the ring. They dress up like,

[01:08:48] Andy: [01:08:48] exactly. This is a . It's a trout. Right? I just find it really interesting. I've like, I'm the business enemy thing and so actually I think now I'm taking my clothes off. You can't see it right now.

[01:09:03] Chris: [01:09:03] edit this out, James.

[01:09:05]

[01:09:05] Keep going. Keep going.

[01:09:06] Andy: [01:09:06] a good one. But no, I'm T I'm taking the enemy's clothes off because I feel like, um, there's that, and I'd mentioned this before, what off record, but, um, I think it's Picasso quote of like, learn all the rules, then forget them. But there's a thing of, like, I spent about five years. Hardcore in business world, like hardcore thinking, really about how do you make the most money with your art and best business practices and all that kind of stuff.

[01:09:29] And then I think I've just recently been like, you know what, F that I'm not going to do that anymore. But when you forget all the rules, subconsciously they're all there. So that I have all those business lessons and everything now, but I can go full into art. Totally huge tangent. But it's just an interesting thing as you talk about, you know.

[01:09:47] Chris: [01:09:47] Well, that I think probably hits home for a lot of people listening. Yup. Almost everybody. This is kind of been the weird thing. We keep getting people reaching out. They're like. I'm not in the audio industry, but man, I love your podcast. And it's like, Oh, cool. All right. Maybe like the circle

[01:10:02] Andy: [01:10:02] It sounds like they're all in the South too, based on, you've got a whole other niche

[01:10:08] Chris: [01:10:08] there's a whole other niche. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, what I was gonna say with this is a, what was I going to

[01:10:14] Andy: [01:10:14] I am sorry.

[01:10:14] Chris: [01:10:14] No, you're fine. Welcome to our

[01:10:17] Andy: [01:10:17] you're talking about how all these people that are in the audio industry

[01:10:21] Chris: [01:10:21] Ah, yeah. So like, forgetting the rules. Uh, and then doing new things is so fascinating and it's so raw for us as an industry because the Grammy's just happened. And Billie Eilish crushed so hard. Yeah. And you look at the studio, she recorded these songs in, and I would venture a guess that everyone listening to this show who owns a recording studio, depending on how you want to define that, has an objectively better recording studio than what Billie Eilish used.

[01:10:52] Hers is a. Is it a wreck? Like it looks like all the furniture in there was found in the trash. Yeah, and I mean it really, really does, but you can't argue with results. Her music breaks a lot of rules. And the intro to their album is, some is like her removing her Invisalign, like retainer. It's kind of weird and gross, but she broke all these rules and that's what has made her so successful.

[01:11:18] And you look at everybody, you know. Jimmy page, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, bony bear. You too. Name a band

[01:11:27] Andy: [01:11:27] Iron mine.

[01:11:28] Chris: [01:11:28] iron and wine. Yeah. Mumford and sons. You name a 21 pilots.

[01:11:32] Andy: [01:11:32] Let's just name

[01:11:33] Chris: [01:11:33] Let's just name bands for the rest of the show if you want to. Faster to the part where we stopped naming bands. Yeah.

[01:11:38] Andy: [01:11:38] I dunno.

[01:11:39] Chris: [01:11:39] Um, Rafi

[01:11:41] Andy: [01:11:41] uh, modest mouse. Matchbox 23rd eye line.

[01:11:46] Chris: [01:11:46] It was brilliant and I must be alone.

[01:11:48] Andy: [01:11:48] Yeah.

[01:11:48] Chris: [01:11:48] Gosh, I was

[01:11:49] Andy: [01:11:49] mouse rat. Oh, I dunno. You watch parks and rec. Yeah.

[01:11:52] Chris: [01:11:52] Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. I got that. That took me a minute.

[01:11:55] Andy: [01:11:55] Well, he, they're kind of like matchbox 20 anyway.

[01:11:57] Chris: [01:11:57] I loved matchbox 20 growing up I was a huge fan. But anyways, so the idea here is, ironically, as an industry, we are really familiar. Us musicy people that like, Oh wow. When someone breaks rules.

[01:12:11] That can sometimes go really, really, really well. And we talk about this all the time in the show. Distortion on a guitar was against the rules. At one time it was like, Oh dude, you have no idea what you're doing. Your amp is distorting, and now it's like people have made billions of dollars, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars making their amp sound bad.

[01:12:32] Andy: [01:12:32] mean, again, I agree with that, but I think I always go back to this little disclaimer about non dual non-binary

[01:12:40] Chris: [01:12:40] Mm, yeah.

[01:12:41] Andy: [01:12:41] of just think of it like breaking the rules is the inhale and then following the rules as the exhale and they're just, they just got to keep, to stay alive. You just got to keep.

[01:12:52] Ebbing and flowing. People will take that rule as the rule, as never follow the rules. You're like, Hmm, well

[01:12:59] Chris: [01:12:59] That isn't that a rule? Yeah. Yeah.

[01:13:01] Andy: [01:13:01] you know what I mean? Like to me, that's the way I think about it. That's why I like narrative better than less is that it's always a reason for a season.  which is a Rob bell thing. I don't know that might be polarizing to anybody, but I talk about, I want to shut my show, but by this, you know, this kind of finding out what season are you in?

[01:13:18] What part of the story are you in? And then with that information, find best practices and then also sometimes subvert them. One of my favorite, like best practices is always a good thing to know because it's just data. And I have one of my favorite things that my buddy Kyle, Sheila  told me about this comic who whenever he goes to a campus.

[01:13:40] He says, what's the one thing I'm not allowed to talk about? I just want to know right from the start. So just tell me. They're telling them best practices and then he starts every set with that thing. Right? And so you go into that season and you say, what does a farmer do in the summer? What did you do?

[01:13:56] And then once you know that you can do whatever you want with it, but that data is useful. Does that make sense? You can break the rules.

[01:14:05] Chris: [01:14:05] I struggle with that. I like, I am, since I've been a child, I've always been hesitant to learn the rules because there's always this really arrogant assumption that like, um, I'll figure this out better. Better than what's

[01:14:16] Andy: [01:14:16] Uh huh.

[01:14:17] Chris: [01:14:17] That's probably one of the things that you say that challenges me the most, but ironically, this is hilarious.

[01:14:23] So I was really reluctant to learn from other mastering engineers early in my career. I was really skeptical of like any book about mastering and was really just like, no, like I'm just going to try to make the song, give people more goosebumps and I'm going to use science to do that, but I'm going to be artistic about it.

[01:14:40] Then you look at like this whole business journey with this podcast is about, I have read my height in business books and probably then some . I am sort of like figuring out how to bend them and break them and aim them in different directions and figuring out when some of them are valuable and when some of them are actually poison.

[01:14:58] And so the perfect example back to Jim Collins was, you know, I read Jim Collins book good to great. Doctor about something called level five leadership, and the basic idea was, well, historically CEOs of companies that have done really, really well tend to be in the background. They don't let their personality shine through.

[01:15:14] They're not goofy, they're not charismatic. He sure as shit don't make dad jokes at every opportunity that they have. So I was like, okay, yeah, that's who I'm going to be. That is not who I am, like at all. And I intentionally had my foot on the brake with that up until like episode 70 of the podcast where I was finally like, Oh, well, I'm just going to.

[01:15:33] I'm not going to like filter at all.

[01:15:34] Andy: [01:15:34] Yeah. I think there's a ton of breads DePaul there, but like I think that's a typical creative thing too, of like. Only think outside the box. You know, you don't even want to know what your contemporaries are doing so that you can't copy them. To me, I always think about creativity. I always think about it through the lens of that we're social animals.

[01:15:54] I all, I never think about it as the individual. I'm always thinking about how the individual artists serves the rest of people. What's their place in it? And to me, when you think about, I'm not going to learn any. I'm not going to stay abreast to what's happening now and I'm not going to learn what happened before me.

[01:16:08] I'm just going to follow my own taste. To me, that sounds like a scientist who goes in the lab and they're like, I'm going to work on some kind of thing where you put it on a transportation thang and it makes it not, it's frictionless.  invent the wheel. That's what they're doing. That's such a waste of your time in, in this era of humanity.

[01:16:32] Go figure out everything we know, figure everything we know, and then build on that. That's your purpose.

[01:16:38] Chris: [01:16:38] my gosh. Let me take this home for us. You're talking about service, you're talking about the Go-Giver. You were talking about . You mentioned this on the show a couple of times. The religious piece of this isn't necessarily a takeaway as much as the truth of the statement. Jesus, his disciples are arguing about who's the greatest, and Jesus is like, no, you don't get it.

[01:16:58] To be the greatest. You need to be two things. One last and to the servant of all and servant of all in the year, like to be see your ADM. not sure how that math works, but that's really the big thing. And learning the rules. Tell me if I'm getting this right here. Learning the rules. It's about figuring out how to serve the most people

[01:17:19] Andy: [01:17:19] Yeah.

[01:17:20] Chris: [01:17:20] because you can break the rules in a way that serves people.

[01:17:23] Andy: [01:17:23] Ultimately, I think it starts with your taste, and I use that word liberally. I just mean your taste as they'll start with what you can do. Start with how you receive things. So you, and you're talking about the Jim Collins thing, reading that book, it's fine to read everything and it's fine to learn all of the rules, but never filter that stuff through anything but your own taste.

[01:17:49] So if it's not hitting your own tastes, you can't build a career as a chef. Making dishes that are disgusting to you, but you think other people will like, because, does that make sense? Because you've got to have an intimate connection with that stuff. Otherwise you're not going to be able to make the best version of that.

[01:18:07] If you hate Curry, you're not going to be able to make the best Curry ever. The person that can have to have the super taste of like knowing where all the intricate little pairings, being able to splice them out, reverse engineer the ingredients. Add to those recipes that comes from a personal taste and intuition and that's backed up.

[01:18:27] I didn't know we were going to get so religious on the show, but the golden rule do unto others as you want done to you. It sounds like. Be nice. Did you like it when people are nice to you? Go be nice to other people. To me, it is a service thing and it is the secret of how to find your purpose as do unto others as you want done to you, as you want done to you.

[01:18:48] Is your taste as you want done to you. And then you think about if you're a chef, what is the food that just you? When someone makes you that dish, it's the deepest levels of like, yeah, and Mateo. Absolutely. And I, I wouldn't be of AIDS of shaft if I was a chef. . But that's true about everything is can you speak from Garry Shandling, another spiritual figure?

[01:19:11] Ah, sad. Do you have what you didn't get? So what are the recipes that like, okay, your taste of what people did for you, do unto others as you want done to you. It'll take you so far to do what your heroes did for you. Right? But then at some point. Their albums just didn't. It's like, yeah, you should have turned that way when you, I wish, like I love what you're doing right up into that point.

[01:19:34] The time for you to make the song is when you're like, but you should have done that. You should have. Does this make sense? Are you following that? Cause that's where your service comes in, is that you start like, there were so many shows growing up. It's like the Muppets, I was obsessed with them. . But what I didn't like.

[01:19:49] This is so funny. I don't know if I've ever said this. I've come to appreciate him, but as a kid, I had no taste for Kermit. He did nothing for me. I know. Isn't that crazy?

[01:20:01] Chris: [01:20:01] I can hear, uh, miss piggy going.

[01:20:03] Andy: [01:20:03] I actually, now I re that's so good. I actually love Kermit now because of his purity, his purity of heart, and like, I love, you know, there's so much I love about karma now, but, but growing up I was just like. Just tell Gonzo story. I just like

[01:20:21] Chris: [01:20:21] Me too. I love guns.

[01:20:23] Andy: [01:20:23] weirdos unite. That's what it is. Right? And so, and it was always like that.

[01:20:27] So like on He-Man it was Orco. I was like, just put Orco in. He's so much cooler than He-Man. Like please, he's like mysterious, cool, weird, like please. And it's, I

[01:20:37] Chris: [01:20:37] I still don't even know what the hell that thing

[01:20:39] Andy: [01:20:39] nobody does. That's the best part.

[01:20:40] Chris: [01:20:40] a little ghosty. Yeah, like,

[01:20:43]

[01:20:43] Andy: [01:20:43] And so Mike properties visible things is. Gonzo and Orco all day, every is a different version of that, right?

[01:20:51] Because they, I took those recipes and I said, you know what? Can we turn up the cumin on that or can we tell, you know, this is missing cilantro completely. Does that make sense? Okay.

[01:21:01] Chris: [01:21:01] me chime in with this.

[01:21:02] Andy: [01:21:02] I have no idea what you're gonna do with this episode. It's so

[01:21:05] Chris: [01:21:05] Oh, this is great. I think it's going to be fine. Uh, so it's fine. I'll say this and then I'm going to tell a story. One of the best parts about being a podcaster  you get the opportunity to get free coaching from people, and so this is a blast for me. I'm being a little self-indulgent because it's a like a pointed discussion where I get to like learn more about what the hell is happening in my own

[01:21:28] Andy: [01:21:28] Uh huh. That's the best way though, cause that to me, again, that's going back to tastes like if it's not doing it for you, if you're not feeling it you, you don't have the metal detector to know where the gold is. Does that make sense? It's almost the only way I know how to do it is to be speaking to what I'm going through.

[01:21:46] What's resonating right now.

[01:21:48] Chris: [01:21:48] yeah. 100% yeah, and that's true authenticity to the story I would use to kind of illustrate what you're talking about before about. Taste and breaking the rules is related to a Columbus, Ohio favorite. This episode is brought to you by Jenny's splendid ice creams. So Jenny's splendid ice creams is this ice cream company based out of Columbus, Ohio.

[01:22:07] It's this woman, Jenny Britton Bauer, who is a queen. She is amazing.

[01:22:16]

[01:22:16] Yeah, and so her story really, really quick. She was in art school. She decided that she was into perfume. She dropped out of art school. She started taking like Haagen DAAs ice cream and approaching it as a perfumer would, and creating these really weird flavors off of vanilla and her first like big flavor was queen city.

[01:22:38] Cayenne. Or was it salty? Caramel? No, I think it was kind of him, and so it was basically a spicy vanilla ice cream. Weird. That breaks a lot of rules. Like the unspoken rule at the time was like spicy and ice cream. These things don't mix. She broke the rules and through a lot of interesting things. Her story is amazing.

[01:22:57] There's a podcasts got how I built this with guy Raz. It's NPR.

[01:23:01] Andy: [01:23:01] Joel saw a podcast called creative pep talk.

[01:23:04] Chris: [01:23:04] yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. She tells her story on on that. So.

[01:23:08] Andy: [01:23:08] guy Razi, that podcast is spirit anyway.

[01:23:12] Chris: [01:23:12] Okay.

[01:23:12] Andy: [01:23:12] It's good.

[01:23:13] Chris: [01:23:13] Her story is amazing of like breaking the rules after learning the rules and what's interesting. Yup. Interested about that too, is she's easy to talk about. It is one of the best things about Jenny's ice cream. If you're listening to this podcast, you love this podcast, Brian Hood, our faithful host got engaged at a Jenny's ice cream, like it's a huge part of like what Brian and I are obsessed

[01:23:37] Andy: [01:23:37] Oh yeah.

[01:23:37] Chris: [01:23:37] And if you have the opportunity to go to a Jenny's splendid ice cream, you should. It's like walking into this podcast except it's an ice cream shop.

[01:23:47] Andy: [01:23:47] And you and a smaller version of that as you can get a pint almost anywhere. I was in Sioux falls this week. They had them there.

[01:23:53] Chris: [01:23:53] Interesting. Yeah. At least go to your grocery store and buy a pint. But yeah, it's amazing that she Chuck what made her unique and different. Leaned into it and created a unique story. She didn't look at Ben and Jerry's and I was like, I want to be the next Ben and Jerry's. I'm going to be a kind of a hippie, and we're going to do these weird, like, bizarre,

[01:24:11] Andy: [01:24:11] but she did start Flath. She started with making great vanilla ice cream, which by the way. Oh by the rules, can you get vanilla ice cream? Right? But what she learned from that  vanilla is an extract. That's very similar to what you would find in perfume. And that's where she broke it. She said, Oh, what about other extracts?

[01:24:31] Could we do this? Same thing? This, uh, you know, what does the word like nose, sensory,

[01:24:38] Chris: [01:24:38] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[01:24:39] Andy: [01:24:39] can we take that stuff that's traditionally that and put it in ice cream? That's where all these new flavors started to come from, is how do we take all these other extracts? And, and, uh. Flower extracts and essences and infuse them into ice cream in ways that aren't

[01:24:54] Chris: [01:24:54] Popcorn. She has a popcorn flavored ice cream. That's amazing. Amazing. I think Andy and I are both trying to tell you guys, Jenny Britton Bauer of Jenny's splendid ice creams, one of our, at least our favorite creatives on earth

[01:25:07] Andy: [01:25:07] She's a hero of mine.

[01:25:08] Chris: [01:25:08] and I think she's an interesting story of how she figured out the circles.

[01:25:13] We got this Venn diagram with four circles on it. We've got what you love to do. What will make you money, what you're the best at and in this growth component and Chiney is so interesting in this  story is I think so applicable. If I've told it before, guys, just hang with us. This is so worth it. Her story is she started a really small ice cream shop at a place called the North market here in Columbus and North markets incubator for restaurants and food shops.

[01:25:41] It's absolutely amazing. It's like. 150 years old, one of the the coolest places I've ever been in the country, and she started her little tiny ice cream shop and you'd go up to Jenny. She's the only person working there and you wouldn't pick your flavor. Jenny would say, today I've made her Santha mum lizard green tea.

[01:26:00] Would you like some yes or no?  sometimes people would walk up and be like, ah, nevermind. No. Or they'd be like, okay, this is too weird for me. What had happened was she made this flavor called salty caramel. She was the first person to do a salty caramel ice cream as far as I know. And people would come back and like, Oh, Hey, uh, you got any of that salty caramel today, Jeni Britton Bauer?

[01:26:23] And she'd be like, like,

[01:26:25] Andy: [01:26:25] There's all kinds of, you got all kinds of

[01:26:27] Chris: [01:26:27] she'd be like, no, no, super. You today only lizard chrysanthemum green tea. And what she found was this sort of like rebel commitment to what this is what I felt like making today. Didn't really work commercially. And so eventually she went into business and then she relaunched and she had two giant refrigerators, full of ice cream ones.

[01:26:50] Everybody has where you walk up and it's like a glass thing and you looked look down and you, you see the giant like five gallon containers of ice cream and one what's your go to every time you go to Jenny's now they always have salty caramel. They always have a, let's name some other, these, these flavors.

[01:27:05] Andy: [01:27:05] Bramble Berry crisp.

[01:27:06] Chris: [01:27:06] Berry crisp. They always have, what's the whiskey and walnuts, totally blanking on it. But they have all these flavors that are tried and true. Everybody loves him.

[01:27:14] Andy: [01:27:14] Right as

[01:27:15] Chris: [01:27:15] Greatest hits. And then on the next refrigerator, it's the weird stuff. And the weird stuff is seasonal and it's like, Aw, you know, peaches in season.

[01:27:23] So we got a peaches cobbler thing, and it meant. The Mitt farm just harvested their mint. So we're going to do a mint this season until they run out and show she's got on one side  go to standards and under other or side projects and every once in awhile she'll make a flavor that does so well that it jumps into the next refrigerator.

[01:27:44] Andy: [01:27:44] Oh yeah, that's what I was going to

[01:27:46] Chris: [01:27:46] Yeah,

[01:27:47] Andy: [01:27:47] This is the whole idea of like, it's the hedgehog thing on a timeline. So one day something in the crazy fridge. Mike, push out salty caramel, right? Like it might, like if she and that. So there's always this, you know, it reminds me of the writing onstage thing that comics do.

[01:28:05] They take all their , you know, they have there Jim Gaffigan hot pockets, right? Like that's his salty Carmel. We all know this thing of his and, but the way that he makes sure that that's not the only thing that he's ever done.  he gets up on stage with a few new ideas. This is the freaky fridge. It goes into the small clubs.

[01:28:24] He does that freaky fridge side enough to where he gets a whole new batch of greatest hits and then he makes a special,

[01:28:31] Chris: [01:28:31] That's amazing. And the tricky thing there for him is like those hot pockets, really, really those, those hot pocket jokes were really hot at first,

[01:28:40] Andy: [01:28:40] is this a fun?

[01:28:44] Chris: [01:28:44] but didn't

[01:28:45] Andy: [01:28:45] don't know if anybody ever did this though. It was, did anybody ever say hot topic like that? Whenever I go to hot topic, that's what I'm always saying is. A topic.

[01:28:53] Chris: [01:28:53] That's, I've also done that every time I walked by in the mall. Terrific.

[01:28:58] Andy: [01:28:58] but yeah. Yep. Yeah.  I think, again, there's this narrative component and actually, great, well, I think this is probably a good way for me to summarize it for me.

[01:29:07] Lots of the ideas in my framework, I've learned over the time, other people have had these ideas, I think because they're observing truths, not because, not copying, not whatever, but. I have people in my realm  in terms of the creative career realm, better established people like Austin Kleon and Liz Gilbert and Elle Luna and Todd Henry and all these people  have added a lot of these ideas, had these, a lot of these ideas.

[01:29:34] And really my way of disobeying Yoda was to throw that into a narrative to say, just, this isn't just a list of 10 things that are great to do. If you're a creative person, here's an order that you can do them. And let's also add this to a system that's action oriented. Like let's not just say do this, do that, do that.

[01:29:53] I'm saying ask yourself that question and test it with making something, look at the results and pivot forward. But all of those things were, I realized over time it's like almost none of these ideas are original. I like this either. When we talk about the DNA thing, I think a good way to like make it non dual.

[01:30:10] Let's look at the opposite side. The opposite side of your completely unique is that. You are 99.9% exactly like everybody else. Between you and may, we are almost exactly the same, but 0.1% of our DNA is not. And my point with that being as. That's my argument for learning the rules. Learn what we already know about the nine 9.9 people like you, that you have all this stuff in common with like that you might even have like 99.98 with those people.

[01:30:39] Get to really understand that. So there's all these people doing creative career staff or creative practice staff. A lot of the things that I have to say over time, even without realizing it, because again, I didn't even study these people for the longest time. I wasn't learning any of the rules when I started checking their stuff and I'm like, Oh my God.

[01:30:57] We're saying the same things. I was like, no, what's happening? I got like, I've got to quit cause I'm Enneagram four and a half to be individual and unique. And so that made me have a panic attack because I'm like, Oh my gosh, they're already saying this stuff. And then instead of panicking, realizing that, Hey, I can learn a lot of great things from them that can make me better.

[01:31:16] And then B, it can help me figure out what is my 0.1% what is my differentiator? What is my niche within that? And I realized my niche is, and not just say all these truths. But to give people a system for them that says, this is a process. This is a journey. This is a narrative. So don't just, you know, think outside the box.

[01:31:35] Do that in your season three. When you're ready for that, this is when you're ready for thinking outside the box. Don't just make a side quest. Do that after you've already had a goal that you can mirror it from like, so. You know what I'm saying? And again, this niche thing goes back to this little humble place.

[01:31:50] Yeah, 0.1% it's just a little humble. That's my little garden. I'll take care of it. We all took care of our own little 1% the whole system would flourish. Yeah. Right. But when we're constantly trying to be like a 99.9% different than any person that's ever walked this planet, you're not getting anywhere.

[01:32:06] You're trying to reinvent the wheel and it's not going to happen. That makes sense.

[01:32:09] Chris: [01:32:09] healthy. I love this. Well, I'll tell you what, man, this has been really fun. Why don't you tell us what people listening to this podcast could do if they want more of you, more of this topic, where would be a good place if you wanted to go listen to the create a pep talk podcast.

[01:32:26] Andy: [01:32:26] 61 the podcast. I go really deep into this idea of a niche recently, and I went through the lens of identifying how do you your identity, your core beliefs. All this list of things that make up your 0.1% and the reason I think you need to do that as an artist, again, isn't to be a singularity out there in the ether where everyone can wash up, how unique you are.

[01:32:53] We're all coming to your concert to be like, praise this person. That's not why people come to your concert. They come to their concert to learn something about them they didn't know. And when you find things about you. That no other human has articulated. There's a bunch of people that 0.1% resonates with a bunch of other people.

[01:33:11] So this is a toolkit or just a few buckets of like, think about these different things. Identify what, who are you in terms of like identity, for instance, I'm ADHD, right? That's part of my identity. It's like a molecular identity thing. That's part of my niche, but I have a list of those things and that's a good place to get digging.

[01:33:30] Chris: [01:33:30] I love that. So yeah, check out episode two 61 in the podcast. Create a pep talk. Andy is. More than a brother. Less

[01:33:37] Andy: [01:33:37] Oh yeah,

[01:33:39]

[01:33:39] full circle

[01:33:40] Chris: [01:33:40] Well, thanks for coming on the show, man. This was

[01:33:42] Andy: [01:33:42] dude. I had an absolute blast.

[01:33:49] Brian: [01:33:49] So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Thank you again so much, Andy J pizza. I really want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming on the podcast, giving us the time of day, uh, to drop all of those knowledge bombs on all of us. Make sure you go and listen to his podcast if you haven't already.

[01:34:05] Creative pep talk. It is an amazing podcast. I am a subscriber myself and, uh, I don't know about you, but I think all of us in this business need a pep talk from time to time. And so if ever you start to doubt yourself, Andy J pizza's is the man to Pepe back up. All right, so I've got a quick announcement here.

[01:34:19] A file pass. We've actually got a huge update coming. It's actually ready now. We're just kind of stress testing it right now. Uh, we are completely revamping our upload system. And essentially creating indestructable uploads. So when you start to upload huge files, if your internet fails or if you lose connection or something crazy happens, especially for those, for people in Australia, with the world's worst internet, you will have, uh, the ability to just resume it right where it started.

[01:34:46] So that's a huge update we're doing. And the second one is a new web player. We have a brand new web player built from scratch with zoom in and out. We have a new commenting system that makes it way easier for people to comment. We have clickable timestamps to where you can actually. Click the comments and it jumps to the timestamp and the song.

[01:35:05] Some stuff people will have been asking for for a long time, and we have higher resolution way forms. So you can actually see the peaks and valleys a lot better compared to what it is right now. And soon after this update, we will be releasing our client upload feature. This is where you can just send a link to your clients and they can upload massive files to your projects.

[01:35:21] So this is good for mixing engineers, for mastering engineers. Anyone who has to receive a large quantity of files and is pissed off by how hard other platforms make it. This feature will make this infinitely easier for you. So if you are interested in this. I suggest you go ahead and sign up for a trial right now so that you're locked in at the current rates that we have, because once we launched this update, quick spoiler, we're going to, we're going to be raising prices for new customers.

[01:35:44] So I recommend if you want to take part in these new updates and you want to be locked in at the prices that we have today. Go sign up right now@filepass.com and that comes with a two week free trial before you're ever charged and a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you sign up, you get charged, you decide within 30 days that you file passes, and for you right now, you can get a full refund right there.

[01:36:04] So just go to file, pass.com sign up and you'll get any of the new updates that come out, uh, over the next couple of weeks. So next week's episode will be coming out bright and early at 6:00 AM as always on Tuesday morning, which is weird. It's like 6:00 PM where I am in Thailand right now. I'm not sure what the topic will be at.

[01:36:20] Chris and I are kind of figuring that out right now. The rest assured there will be an episode that comes out, rain or shine. Coronavirus and no coronavirus. I should actually not speak too soon. Which just luck for continuing to Dodge that. But anyways, the episode will come out. We'll figure out something.

[01:36:34] 6:00 AM brighten early next Tuesday morning. As always, thank you so much for listening and happy hustling.