Is This The Final Episode Of The Six Figure Home Studio Podcast?

Brian: This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 150, AKA the final episode.

[00:00:06] Chris: Sort of, kind of.

[00:00:23] Brian: Welcome back to the final episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm here with my bald beautiful, amazing purple shirted cohost Christopher J. Graham. Chris, how are you doin' today my friend?

[00:00:37] Chris: As always much better after being called beautiful. I'm really pumped to hang out with you today, man. How are you doing

[00:00:42] Brian: I'm doing good. This episode is sponsored by LaCroix lime flavor. Quench your thirst.

[00:00:48] Chris: the first time I hung out with you and I visited you in Nashville. The only part that was unpleasant about that visit was that you only had lime LaCroix.

[00:00:56] Brian: That doesn't sound like me. I spend dude, me and my wife started like hardcore budgeting again, just because we want to make sure we are like, really know where our money is going. And I, I looked up like order history, like bank statements and stuff. We spend like over a hundred dollars a month on their coy.

[00:01:11] And like every single week we use Shipt IPT. It's like a grocery ordering app. Cause we're millennials, we're too damn lazy to go to the grocery store. Every single week, they bring no less than five cases of LaCroix to our house, sometimes six or seven, and we try to get into storm in a flavor. So that doesn't, that's all that to say.

[00:01:29] That doesn't sound like me, but like here's the funny thing is it's so much that when I first started doing orders to them, I would just tell the shipped shopper who liked delivered. I was having a party that weekend. I've said this on the podcast before, but it's like, it's an absurd amount of LaCroix that we'd go through it.

[00:01:43] So yeah, this is where I put my money. This is what I value is LaCroix.

[00:01:46] Chris: That's amazing. Well, I think everyone's wondering why are we need the podcast? So let's talk about that.

[00:01:50] Brian: No. I wanted to like keep bantering for an absurd amount of time where people are just like, get to the point.

[00:01:56] Chris: Okay. We can do that. We can do that. Let's let other banter other banter.

[00:01:59] Brian: I'm just joking. Nobody is like, God, I really want more banter.

[00:02:03] Chris: You know, what we could banter about is Microsoft flight simulator, 2020.

[00:02:07] Brian: As much as our editor, James would love that James is an absolute aviation nerd to an extreme degree. I don't know what to say, but he's like, he, he can tell you anything about any plane. He knows more than anyone else I know about airplanes, which is crazy. So as much as he would love that, yeah. We're not going to do that.

[00:02:24] We're going to, let's get to the episode today. We're going to talk about a lot of things right now. One of those things is what to expect. What's coming up. Why are we ending the six figure home studio podcast? What does the end quote. I'm doing air quotes, but you can't see me. Cause this is in video. What is the end mean?

[00:02:40] And what is coming next? This is something we've been foreshadowing for the last four or five episodes. So let's actually dive into this thing. So Chris, this is the last episode of the six figure and studio podcast.

[00:02:49] Chris: Well, why don't we take a walk down memory lane first?

[00:02:52] Brian: we're not going, we're not taking a walk. What is that going to do?

[00:02:56] Chris: Well, I mean, I just want to say, I want to go on record that when you invited me to do this podcast. Well, when I went down to visit you in Nashville for summer Nam, it was my intent to do something with you. When I made you coffee, I was like, I gotta be friends with this guy. He's awesome. I don't know where this is going.

[00:03:12] I'll make him coffee. We'll work together on something at some point. And when you invited me to do the podcast, I seriously had no idea what successful was going to be. It eclipsed way beyond my wildest dreams. And that's also why we're ending it.

[00:03:31] Brian: No. Yeah. That's okay. So good little cliffhanger there, Chris. I'll get to the point. Here's what Chris likes to do. Chris likes to ramble on about something. When our blisters really want to know what is like actually happening. So there's a reason we're ending this podcast. And the reason is partially, like you said, because of the success of it, we felt like we've hit the upper limit of what we can do in our industry with this podcast. And we feel like. We are able to actually serve our listeners better people that listen to this podcast regularly, even better with the change that we're about to do. And we have two options at this point, we've hit basically the ceiling with the podcast choice. Number one is to continue to do exactly what we've been doing and serve the people we've been serving and nothing changes.

[00:04:14] We hit our growth ceiling for the most part. And we can still grow a bit here and there, but we are one of the top podcasts in the audio industry. Option. Number two is to niche up, I guess, would be the term.

[00:04:28] Chris: Copyright Chris Graham.

[00:04:29] Brian: Yeah, we'll talk about that in a second is to niche up and shift what we're doing while still serving our audience and being more accessible to a larger audience.

[00:04:38] So let me just talk about this. I just want to lay it all out there. Instead of like beating around the Bush, we are changing our name of the podcast to the six figure creative podcast. Boom. There it is. Now before anyone gets like, mad about that, why are we making change? It's because of this we've thought like, how can we add more value to our listeners, Chris and I get on here every single week.

[00:04:57] And with the exception of maybe like eight to 10 episodes, Chris and I were just talking back and forth about a topic. There's a few episodes we have that are actually interviews. And all of those interviews, there's probably only like 20% of the interviews are actually studio owners. The rest are people that do something else in a different creative field.

[00:05:14] So Kristen, I've been talking since like episode 100. We want to do more interviews on this podcast, but we just never made that shift. But we've gotten through the last 50 episodes. We've really felt like interviews are the way to go. And. We have learned so much from these interviews we've done with people like Andy J pizza from the creative pep talk podcast with people like Brandon Reich of tension division.

[00:05:35] Who's a big design agent through my old roommate and friend Brandon Brown, who is an agency owner for a social media management company through my cofounder for file pass. Who has. Also a cofounder for another software company, Trevor . He was on episode like 70 something was on my honeymoon. You interviewed him.

[00:05:51] And all of these people are still in the creative field and they still bring a ton of value to the six figure home city audience, but they are not even part of the recording studio industry or the audio industry. So our goal with the six figure creative podcast is to bring in more and more interviews with people outside of the audio industry.

[00:06:07] And yet we'll still do people in the audio industry. That's still Chris and I's background in our core. And like our heart is in the audio industry.

[00:06:13] Chris: And I have to continue to find ways to get more free audio gear.

[00:06:16] Brian: That's true. Chris still is a gear sled at heart and we will still, yes, we will still have the gear select alert on the six figure creative podcast because the gear slots are not just in the audio world.

[00:06:25] They're in any creative world. People obsess over gear and we will continue to make that a trend of our podcast, but I just know that we can get some great interviews. While also expanding the audience outside of the audio industry while also bringing tons of value to people that already listen to this podcast and love this podcast.

[00:06:43] To me, it is a win, win, win change.

[00:06:46] Chris: Totally man. Well, and I think about my own friend group. And who I've been encouraged by when I hang out as a small business owner, you guys all know if you are trying to start a small business and you are any amount of the weigh in on it, it gets lonely. You have a lot of family members, probably with real jobs that think you're a loser and think you're irrational and it think you're.

[00:07:07] Brian: I think that's only in Ohio.

[00:07:08] Chris: Well, that might be true, but it was really encouraging for me as I met people like John Rubin and Brandon Rike and Andy J pizza to be like, Oh, cool. These are other creatives. And their spirit is the same. I don't want to work for somebody else. I want to run my own show and I want to make stuff on my own terms and I want to grow it and be free.

[00:07:29] And there is a tribe of us. The six figure I'm suited community. If you're working in a home studio, you're working at a major studio, you're part of a larger tribe and that's the tribe of creatives. So niching up is for us to say, okay, well, we have served our subtribe home studio owners, studio owners, audio engineers, producers, mics, engineers, et cetera.

[00:07:48] We've served this subtribe as much as we can. And we feel like if we serve the larger tribe as a whole, that we can also serve you guys. Even more because we can bring in people who have an outside perspective, it makes it easier to kill sacred cows. If someone said to me, what was like one of the biggest turning points in your business?

[00:08:06] I would say without a doubt is when I began to hang out and hear stories from people with other businesses. And a lot of ways I modeled my mastering business off of a dentist office. Except instead of a hygienist, I built automation and the goal was like, I'm still going to be the guy that's signing off on everything.

[00:08:23] I'm still gonna make all the decisions, but I want something that's gonna make it easy to do all the other stuff first so that I can just walk in and do my thing. Be social as a dentist often is, and then move on. And we feel like if we. Niche up to this bigger tribe of creatives that it gets interesting because here's the thing that's so frustrating about our podcast.

[00:08:42] Most of you are recording studio people and you know, so many creatives, all of your clients are creatives. If you guys are anything like me, half your friends are graphic designers. All the musicians are creatives. You're probably friends with videographers, just people that are rock and roll, man. People that are wolves in a way world of domesticated dogs.

[00:09:04] If you will. I don't know if I endorsed. So I just said there.

[00:09:07] Brian: I love that phrase. That's great.

[00:09:09] Chris: Okay, but we feel like this is a hard podcast because you've already shared it with everybody within our subtribe of audio. There's not really a whole lot of other people to find out about the podcast. At least that's how it seems to us. I feel even weird saying that, but we know that there's an opportunity for us to make a bigger impact and to help more people by serving creatives as a whole.

[00:09:31] That just seems like the natural fit. And what's been amazing. Is all the time. Brian and I are both getting people reaching out and saying, Hey, I just, you know, recommended your podcast to this guy that owns a brewery. Hey, I just recommended your podcast to this guy that owns a cannabis shop. Hey, like it's well, I guess there's stuff outside of

[00:09:50] Brian: Well, let me, let me, let me try to say what Chris is saying here.

[00:09:53] Chris: yes, please.

[00:09:54] Thank you, Brian.

[00:09:54] Brian: We're not going to be interviewing dentists or cannabis shop owners or people like that. That's not what we're doing. We're going to be starving people in the creative world, graphic designers, illustrators, videographers, photographers, people that are in the creative freelance world and their business model is the exact same thing as yours.

[00:10:10] They just have a different. Angle on the way things may work. There may be different norms or things that you can bring to the audio world. And this is some of my favorite types of people to talk to because you get to see something in a very well established well-oiled niche, like photography or wedding photographers or whatever, where it's like, you understand best practices to a T because some very highly sophisticated business owners do those things.

[00:10:34] Whereas the audio world, we just kind of stumble into it and figure it out as we go. And so I think just from. Hearing some of these people that are, you know, pulling in multiple six figures as a solo freelancer. I don't think that there's many people in the freelance audio doing that. And I think it would be really cool to get these people's perspectives on how they do things.

[00:10:53] So I just know that we already have a lot of those types of people listening to this podcast and we brand ourselves as the six figure home studio, even though we already target the audio industry as a whole, we have started to get. Some of the broader freelance, creative market, listening to our podcast.

[00:11:08] And this is just us saying, Hey, we see you. We hear you. We know that you're there. We're just going to actually plant the flag in the ground now and say, we are going to be a part of the general creative world and bringing business advice to these people who may struggle. They may be people who just got, let go through COVID and now we're trying to make it as freelancers as graphic designers or videographers or whatever thing they may have a passionate about.

[00:11:30] And they need people that can help guide them along the way.

[00:11:33] Chris: So I think, you know, you could look at the six figure home studio and be like, well, where could they niche up to, Oh, I know the seven figure home studio.

[00:11:41] Brian: No.

[00:11:45] Chris: Well, I mean, seven figure sounds great, but freedom sounds better doing what you love for living sounds better. And that there are so many people like us in these other industries, videography photography, graphic design, et cetera, where did this? They have the same soul. They have the same spirit that we do, but they're doing it differently.

[00:12:02] And what we want to focus on is people that are in the service industry, people that are creatives, making things with and for other people, and that are struggling to grow their business and to make their business not driving crazy. So we're still gonna talk about tactical stuff. We're still gonna talk about mindset stuff.

[00:12:17] We're still gonna talk about mental health. We're still going to talk about marketing, all the same things that we're talking about.

[00:12:23] Brian: Moving forward 90 to 95% of what we talk about will be directly applicable to your business as a studio owner. And also likewise, anyone that finds our podcast in the future, if they're in one of these other creative fields, we've talked about so far 90 to 95% of what we've talked about in the past will be relevant to those people.

[00:12:41] This is the main reason we're making this shift. It's because we can serve 10 times more people.

[00:12:46] Chris: It's probably more like a hundred times more people.

[00:12:48] Brian: Maybe. Yeah. And not alienate our current listeners in any way, if anything, we're adding more value to our current listeners. So let's, let's shift now that what our listeners can expect, because with this change comes a few things that need to be noted.

[00:13:00] If you want to continue to be a part of this podcast and enjoy it. The first thing is, as of right now, we are planning to continue it on the same podcast feed. We're not going to shift to a new podcast feed, so you don't have to go find another podcast and subscribe to it. You're already subscribed to the six figure creative podcast.

[00:13:15] Right now, episode 151 will be the first episode of the six figure creative podcast.

[00:13:21] Chris: Side note, if you're not subscribed, please do that.

[00:13:24] Brian: If you're trying to make more money, it's this guy to this podcast. So that's the first thing is we're going to continue on the same feed. And so if you all of a sudden, see the six figure creative podcast with new art and a new title, that's because you are already subscribed to it right now.

[00:13:36] If you're subscribed to the six figure home studio podcast. Second thing that's important to note is that we are going to have a break between, you could call it season one and season two of this podcast, if you want, but there's going to be a break between. Episode 150 of this podcast, the one you listen to right now, and the next podcast episode that you hear, that will be a break and it will be, I want to say at least a month, it could be longer.

[00:13:59] But I think because of the fact that I close on a new home in less than 14 days, and I will be spending a lot of time moving and relocating and setting up shop and new office and new studio and everything. Like it's going to be a lot of work for me. So while I'm doing that, we have to also juggle a lot of the moving parts that is basically launching a new podcast from scratch.

[00:14:17] Cause there's a lot of things that we have to do to get this new podcast ready. So there will be a break. So when you get to your podcast at Brighton early next Tuesday morning at 6:00 AM, there will not be another episode waiting for you. It will be at least four weeks from now, if not longer.

[00:14:33] Chris: Yeah. So man, it's been about, it'll have been about three years to the day that we started recording this podcast. Yeah. We started recording September three years ago and it's September 17th for us. The day we recording this.

[00:14:47] Brian: Another thing to note is that the six figure home studio.com the website will not be going anywhere, but we will be launching.

[00:14:54] Chris: We even talked about this

[00:14:55] Brian: Yeah, we will be launching a new website. It should be six figure creative.com. We'll see what happens. It'll be there. Maybe.

[00:15:02] Chris: sounds delightful. Are we going to do a new Facebook group too?

[00:15:04] Brian: I don't know yet. That's pending. We can also rename the community.

[00:15:09] We don't have to start a brand new community.

[00:15:10] Chris: That's true. Let's chew on that. So we have some decisions to make.

[00:15:14] Brian: We're happy to hear anyone who has ideas of things. They want to see our questions. They have. You can always post in our Facebook group right now. It's called the six figure home studio community on Facebook. And you can also just always email us podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com.

[00:15:27] Chris: Yeah, but I want to underscore here, we're doing this change because we feel like we can provide more value. Not because we want to be. Like famous business. Pod-casters, there's a lot of other business podcasts out there about startups and how to make your first million and all that stuff. That's not where we want to go.

[00:15:44] We want to talk about people who want to have a freedom lifestyle. That's Hey, I work with people. I make cool stuff. I get to be creative and I'm having a blast.

[00:15:55] Brian: I think we've basically covered the, what to expect conversation. And again, if anyone has any questions or things, we didn't clarify that they want to know about just email podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com. But there is actually a business lesson in this change that I think we need to talk about just for a nice educational aspect of this episode.

[00:16:13] And that is the concept of niching down versus niching up. We've talked about in the past many, many times on this podcast, the power of being part of a niche, but there is a time when it makes sense to expand your niche to something larger and broader.

[00:16:27] Chris: So Andy told me something about this that blew my mind.

[00:16:29] Brian: He's talking about Andy J pizza of the creative pep talk podcast, a great podcast.

[00:16:33] Chris: Andy likes to talk about concentric circles when a Brian's favorite things.

[00:16:38] Brian: Inside joke.

[00:16:39] Chris: This idea of industry, market and niche. And so industry would be the big circle market would be a circle within industry and the niche would be a circle within market

[00:16:50] Brian: If you want to know what a concentric circle is, it's basically like a bullseye target, basically.

[00:16:53] Chris: as circa within a circle.

[00:16:56] Brian: What was that? We can't breeze past

[00:16:58] Chris: don't even know that was a brand new

[00:17:00] Brian: was that?

[00:17:01] Chris: A second within sick.

[00:17:03] Brian: it was an attempt at a British accent that sounded more South African than anything, but wasn't either of the two,

[00:17:10] Chris: I wish I could do a good South African accent ever since I saw what is it? Area nine,

[00:17:15] Brian: no district nine,

[00:17:17] Chris: district nine. There it is. What a movie?

[00:17:19] Brian: Yeah. Well, can you get to a point here because we've lost 87% of people listening.

[00:17:23] Chris: So keep that in your mind. So we've got your concentric circles, industry, market, and niche. The best thing you can possibly do to grow a business is to kill a niche is so that when potential clients find you that are perfect clients, they say, Oh my gosh, this person is perfect. They are exactly what I'm looking for.

[00:17:40] Hell. Yes. The problem with not niching down is when you say I provide Nixon, mastering editing, vocal tuning, melodically belief, surround sound, sound, design, all that stuff. No one says hell yes to that person. Nobody they say, Oh, maybe they'd work, but they're a commodity. And we can probably find somebody else just as good, who might be cheaper.

[00:18:01] Brian: Yep. A great example of what you just talked about, Chris, or the first part of like dominating a niche. You said killing a niche, but I think dominating a niche is a better. Ample cause killing this sounds bad. Dominating a niche is great because this podcast is an example. When someone is a studio owner and they mentioned having any sort of monetary or business question or problem, anyone who knows about the six figure home studio podcast is going to recommend our podcast to that person or someone who's just getting started in the business and wants to know how to get started or how to find clients or whatever they're going to mention.

[00:18:31] The website or the podcast to that person, because it is a very valuable resource to anyone who is struggling with the business of running a recording studio business

[00:18:38] Chris: Which is everyone.

[00:18:39] Brian: is everyone. Yes. So that is the power of dominating a niche. If we had started with the six figure creative podcast, I don't think we would be as big as we are today. The reason is we are not the first thing that comes to someone's mind when they think of a business struggle. If we're just the general creative world, creative as a kind of a broad term, to be honest with you. And I struggled with that name at first, but then I thought about the fact that we already have a really, really good core audience who is going to hopefully fully share our podcast with other people in the creative field.

[00:19:11] Any average studio owner knows. Four or five or six or 10 creatives that are doing graphic designer, videography or photography, people that have gotten married, know their wedding photographers. So all these people

[00:19:21] Chris: Other people with tattoos is what you're

[00:19:23] Brian: that's actually, that's actually a good point. Anyone with tattoos says two guys that have no tattoos.

[00:19:29] Chris: I know thinking about getting one, one of my closest friends,

[00:19:35] Brian: I mean, you're about to hit your midlife crisis mode. You know, how far away from 40.

[00:19:38] Chris: the PTSD thing, that is my midlife crisis, but case in point, like if you are going to play any game settlers of Catan

[00:19:45] Brian: Nerd

[00:19:46] Chris: chess, Doesn't matter. Like you look at any strategy game or war itself. It's never like, just attack everyone at the same time. It doesn't work. You have to build a stronghold. And once that stronghold is as enforced as it's going to get, then you expand.

[00:20:03] And, and right now that's where the six figure I'm studio is. Like, we're constantly feedback from you guys that, Hey, I'm telling my other friends about you. Hey, I get people that reach out all the time that, Hey, I don't work in the recording industry, but I do listen to your podcast religiously because it applies a hundred percent to my own business.

[00:20:18] Brian: Let me bring this back to the person listening right now. What does this mean for you? So we've talked about at length, the importance of dominating a niche, but at a certain point, here's the big pushback we hear from everyone. It's like, well, so, and so does six different genres or. So has seven different services and it's like some Grammy winning person who's been in the industry for 35 years and has had like AAA artists after AAA artists coming to their studio, I would almost guarantee that person started in some sort of niche and expanded out from there.

[00:20:49] They've just been doing that same process for 35 years where you've been doing this for a year and a half. You've made $200 so far in your entire career. And you're trying to be that person who's, you know, level 700. And you're a level one right now. You're not going to beat level 700. If you're level one right now, it just doesn't work that way.

[00:21:07] Chris: Perfect example. I mentioned it in the Facebook group this past week. I challenged you to play this iPhone game with me called idle miner. Idle miner is a business game and you have mines and you are trying to mind resources and hire managers and manage, and basically build an efficiency engine that generates income in the game.

[00:21:26] Brian: Yeah, you start hiring managers and this and that. I want to mention one thing I told you I was going to dominate your empire. I held off all week. I just connected my Facebook profile to this so I could see the leaderboards right before this episode started. I have about a hundred times the income, passive income as you on this app.

[00:21:45] Chris: Did you spend money in the app

[00:21:46] Brian: I haven't spent a damn dime yet. Here's the thing. It's such a, it's such a stupid game. I'm going to talk about it for one second. It's such a stupid game because like, by the end of day one, you are past the trillion dollar Mark. You're like into currencies that they just start making shit up instead of like 100 trillion or 999 trillion, then it just goes to one AA, one, a B 100 AC.

[00:22:09] It's just like it just making shit up. So anyways, all that to say. I am the top between me and you, but someone else in our community has like wrecked us. I think it's somebody in our community. I want to give shout outs to any other dummies to play this stupid game on the leaderboards. Chris Hummel is by far in the lead.

[00:22:23] And then ticky ticky is just above me a little bit.

[00:22:27] Chris: It's amazing. Well, yeah, so we'll put a link in the description, the idle miner.

[00:22:30] Brian: It's going to be my share

[00:22:32] Chris: No bro, come on. This is mine. We gotta use my link. And for every person that signs up, I get 5% lifetime more income. It's fake money. I don't make any money

[00:22:41] Brian: Yeah, this is just a stupid game for us to compare our stupid cell Stu.

[00:22:45] Chris: I've been loving it. My son texted me this morning and said, dad, I just got a Ruby mine. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, but it's been cool. Like this game really is a 10,000 foot view of business and supply and demand and inefficiency.

[00:23:01] Brian: Yeah, because you have to learn how to eliminate bottlenecks. You have to learn how to hire the right people. You have to learn. So I don't know how we got to this and maybe I'll edit this part out. But the cool thing is it does teach your kids like actual business principles that are important.

[00:23:14] Chris: son is kicking my butt. He's crushing me.

[00:23:17] Brian: I'm kicking your bite too.

[00:23:18] Chris: Well, probably I'll look at that later. I'm sure you are. Anyways. I think what we're trying to say here. I'll try to steer us back on course, even though that's Brian's job, not mine is. As we talk about niching down. I want to come back to something I said before, the point of niching down is so that when a potential client finds you, that they say, hell yeah, this person's perfect.

[00:23:39] If you can get a bunch of people to say, hell yeah, your business is going to grow. If you can't get anyone to say, hell yeah, you're going to have a really hard time growing. Once you have critical mass enough people that are saying, hell yeah, those people start to talk to other people. And they say this guy's great.

[00:23:54] This girl's amazing. This company that I hired was absolutely fantastic. And it's at that point that the trust that you've built up as a business podcasts or YouTube channels starts to get interesting to niche up to a wider audience.

[00:24:08] Brian: You know, I've seen this all the time in the metal world. So like my genre is pretty small in the grand scheme of things like heavy metal, hardcore, like super low tune screamy bands. The interesting part is I see people do really well in this niche and then they niche up to a larger industry. So they'll go too.

[00:24:26] I see a lot of people they'll go to one of two. Initially, they'll go to pop or they'll go to hip hop and they'll do really well in either of those. And I don't, I don't know if there's any sort of tie in to the skill set involved, but I think the transition is easier because those are really tough niches to break into.

[00:24:41] And if you have another niche that you're doing really well in that's supplying income, it's a lot easier to create a side hustle doing pop music or hip hop music until you build your name in that world. And even if there is no real direct benefit of going from metal to hip hop, you're not getting hip hop clients from your total clients.

[00:24:59] None of that really works. If anything, you have a stable income, that's helping you support this new niche. That's how, another way I see people niching up is they have that stable leg to stand on John while they're trying to dip their other toe in another niche. And so even if we were doing that, we would still be better off than if we were starting from scratch in a large, broad niche.

[00:25:18] With no experience and no connections and no way to do that. One thing we already have now that other podcasts don't I have that are just now starting out in the design niche is we already have 300 plus reviews and ratings. And that is huge. When it comes to us trying to get guests for this podcast, we already have more reviews and ratings than most creative podcasts.

[00:25:38] And so we can get guests that a lot of these other newer podcasts can't get. And so we can get some really cool creative freelancers that can come into our podcast now and teach you guys a lot of cool stuff.

[00:25:48] Chris: Yeah. So as we're talking about this, if you guys are excited about this, let's talk about it in the Facebook group, but I think there's two things that we're asking for. Well, let's call it three. One is your input on the Facebook group. Let's get conversations going about this too, is the more reviews we get.

[00:26:04] The higher caliber of interview that we can get to be able to get. Who'd be a good example of like the most ridiculous Elon Musk.

[00:26:12] Brian: We already said that if we get Elon Musk on the podcast, that's the last episode we ever do.

[00:26:16] Chris: It's true. But like an Elon Musk is not going to come on a podcast with 300 views, 3000, maybe.

[00:26:22] Brian: Maybe 30,000 plus.

[00:26:23] Chris: Maybe 30,000. So we would need a lot more reviews and a lot more clout to be able to get people who are willing to share their secrets about how they niched up about how they grew their businesses. And I keep thinking about Apple in this conversation.

[00:26:38] There's an amazing story about Steve jobs got ousted from Apple. I want to say in like 95, He went and he started another company called next. Eventually Apple was like destroyed and he came back and he got back into the company and eventually became the CEO again. And he sat down and he said, I'll tell you what guys.

[00:26:56] We have something like, I think at the time it was like 87 different products. He said, we're going to sell four products. We're going to sell a portable professional computer, a portable consumer computer, a desktop professional computer, and a desktop consumer computer. And they killed all their other products.

[00:27:12] They niched down and they focused on one thing and they went from their stock being worth like a dollar to them being the most valuable company on the face of the planet.

[00:27:20] Brian: Yeah, over $2 trillion in less stocks have slid lately. And I don't really pay attention to that.

[00:27:24] Chris: Right. In the meantime, they nailed that niche. They nailed the personal computing niche. And then they redefined what personal computing meant. And they said, let's do the iPod to that scope computer. This portable computer does one thing and then it, okay, well, we got that. That's going well, let's niche up again.

[00:27:41] What if we include in personal computing cell phones with MP3 players built into them. Okay. Well, what if we do iPads? Okay. What if we do Apple watches? They continue to niche up and use the momentum that they have generated on a smaller niche to dominate a larger niche and to help more people.

[00:27:59] Brian: Their example is pretty crazy. Cause they didn't just niche up. They just created new niches. There was no iPad niche. There was no smart wearable niche. Like when they launched the Apple watch.

[00:28:08] Chris: They're a great example of continually doing that and doing it in blue ocean as well. When the iPhone came out, I mean, like my reaction, every single time, we haven't even talked about AirPods yet, but my reaction, every time that Apple releases a product is that stupid. I'll never use that. And then I try it.

[00:28:25] Brian: It does the same thing too. Now I own an iPad. Now I will probably one day get an Apple watch, which I don't have one and I don't really want one, but.

[00:28:32] Chris: If I could only have an Apple watch or an iPhone, I would probably go Apple watch. I love that, but I lost my AirPods and I, I lost my air. Pod pros. New ones are getting here today. I have to have them. They are essential.

[00:28:44] Brian: Oh, God dude. That's the saddest thing. I use mine every day for hours per day. Like for hours and hours, they're in my ears podcast walks when I'm listening to music, when I'm sitting and working like.

[00:28:56] Chris: The case in point, there was nobody in the Bluetooth ear, bud market, Apple has something like 80, 85% of the market locked up with AirPods or air pod pros. They created that niche. It was blue ocean, and that's kind of what we hope that we're doing on some level. We know that there are other business podcasts in the creative space.

[00:29:15] Brian: The last thing we want to do is just be a business podcast. Like how many business podcasts are out. Like, there are so many, the whole that we found, like, just like I found when, when I launched a six figure home studio, nobody was talking about the business of running a recording studio right now. There are not that many people talking about.

[00:29:32] Running a creative business of any sort, especially freelancers. That's kind of, our focus is freelance, creative businesses.

[00:29:37] Chris: And especially from the techie kind of tactical. CRMs and Google ads and Facebook ads and Zapier and Google analytics.

[00:29:45] Brian: Our specialty is marketing and systems, and those are two huge levers to pull when it comes to running a successful freelance business. And so it's going to be really interesting to see how those play into the businesses that we interview on the podcast. Moving forward. If you go back to listen to episode one of this podcast, Chris and I talked a lot about doing mostly interviews.

[00:30:03] We talked about doing hot seats for people. Those are two things we never really did. Most episodes are Chris and I just talking. So I can't see us moving away from that completely, but I will say my heart is set on doing a lot more interviews than we've been doing in the past. And I think that's going to be really valuable to our listeners,

[00:30:19] Chris: Well, and let's kind of open the kimono a little bit more.

[00:30:22] Brian: or you can be creepy and say open the trench coat a little more.

[00:30:25] Chris: Open the trench let's sort of like be vulnerable here. There are other reasons we're doing this as well. Business coaching, especially as I've had my health issues, which thank God are so much better. I feel better than I ever have in my life right now.

[00:30:38] But through those health issues, it really kind of peeled back this epiphany that like, Oh my gosh, when I was unhealthy, I did not want to master, I still love mastering, but I always looked forward to coaching. So this transition makes a lot of sense to me from the coaching standpoint, there's also other software products that me and Kyle are working on that fit the creative industry as a whole.

[00:30:58] And Brian, why don't you talk about how it butters your bread?

[00:31:01] Brian: Oh, yeah. So file pass. Just launched beta for our design functionality. So if you're a graphic designer and illustrator or that's part of your business, we have tools built out to make collaboration. 10 times easier than it was before. So it's just like file pass. We've been talking about it for like the last 50 episodes of this podcast where we help audio engineers in revision hell.

[00:31:21] So they can leave timestamp comments. They can stream the full resolution wave file, all these fun bells and whistles, and it's all behind a paywall. So they can't download their files until they pay you. And then once they pay, they automatically download it. All that stuff is now built out for the design and industry.

[00:31:35] So we don't do anything to compress the images. You can leave pinpoint comments directly on the images. So if you're designing a logo or doing a little illustration for an icon or something, your clients can actually put pinpoint comments directly on things they want changed or want adjusted or colors changed.

[00:31:50] And you can put everything behind a paywall. So if you're delivering your final files for design or illustration work, you can put those behind a paywall. And once they pay you, it gets downloaded. So all of the same stuff is been rolled out for the design world. So if you already have an audio plan right now, All the design stuff comes included with that.

[00:32:05] If you only do design stuff, you can go to file past.com/design. And that is a sign up for our beta program for designers. Now you don't have access to drop in audio files and all that stuff. And the reason we do that is because the design plans are considerably cheaper than the audio plans. And that's because streaming wave files surprise.

[00:32:23] Is really expensive. So we have to charge more for the file pass audio plans, then we will be moving forward with the design plans. So yeah, either way, if you are a designer or, you know, a designer, just tell them to go to file, pass.com/design. And this is a huge part of why I think it makes sense for us to transition into the creative industry because we can continue to serve our current people in the audio world and brought it up to people that are designers or illustrators as well.

[00:32:49] So I just think it's a win, win, win all around. Like I said,

[00:32:51] Chris: Yeah, I'm super excited. Cause it's, you know, for me, if I'm going to a party, I don't like, yeah. I'd love to go to a party at least a couple of times a year. That's all audio folks, but what's really fun is when you have a wide variety of creatives, a wide variety of people that are doing cool stuff on their own terms, that's our tribe.

[00:33:10] Brian: Well, remember we were supposed to do earlier this year, we were going to try to do in the spring time, the six figure home studio retreat, we're going to do it maybe up in Jackson hole or somewhere. Cool. And then covert hit. And those plans just went to crap. And now who knows when code is going to be at a place where we can actually reschedule that trip, but it will actually be really cool to see what that trip could look like next year. Yeah, where we might actually have a mixture of creatives that are all doing similar freelance businesses, but can help each other in more interesting ways because there's actual collaborative piece. You may be able to find people that are part of your team. Now, people are going to do graphic design for your clients.

[00:33:45] Videographers are going to help your clients do music, videos, all these sorts of things. Comes up with so many more ways that you can work together and not just in the audio world, because a lot of people you'll have your two mixing engineers. There's only so many ways you can help each other of course, with advice and stuff, but not with sharing clients.

[00:34:02] Chris: Either.

[00:34:02] Brian: that's true.

[00:34:03] Chris: If they both say Woolman, you know, the only way to really professionally mix is to use analog.

[00:34:07] Brian: I would point them to episode one 49 of the podcast where we talked about total thinking versus problem thinking, but yeah, you're right.

[00:34:13] Chris: Right. But my point there is when you get people that are all thinking in the same way, they're all using the same tools. You get stagnancy

[00:34:21] Brian: That's the big thing. And I feel like if I'm being a hundred percent honest and vulnerable on this podcast right now, I feel like we have stagnated on this podcast, the last 15, 20 episodes a bit.

[00:34:31] Chris: a little bit.

[00:34:31] Brian: I think you and I didn't really come up with this idea till like five or six episodes ago.

[00:34:35] Chris: Yeah, it was pretty recent.

[00:34:36] Brian: It was, it was relatively recent.

[00:34:37] And I think Chris and I have not been as excited about this podcast as we have been, since we came up with this idea to shift to the sixth period, creative, when we had that, I think that breeds so much life into Chris and I as to what we can see looking forward, what this looks like. I think it's going to open.

[00:34:52] It's not just going to help our listeners. It's going to help us as well, continue to bring our best stuff to this podcast.

[00:34:57] Chris: Yeah. If there's a secret to this podcast is that Brian and I have fun and this will make it more fun for us.

[00:35:03] Brian: Yeah. So anything to wrap up or Zeta? I mean, I don't know what else we need to talk about.

[00:35:08] Chris: Well, you know, I think that's it, but I think what we'd be doing our audience, a disservice to not talk about when to know when it's time for you to niche up in your own business.

[00:35:18] Brian: That's a tough one. Cause like, There are some false positives that you may hit. You may hit these signs and it'll say, okay, it's time for me to niche up. I'd say the number one sign is that you've hit a ceiling in the niche that you're in. Like you've hit up against that ceiling. And there's two things you can do when you hit that ceiling.

[00:35:32] One is. Work harder and break through the ceiling. Cause sometimes it's a pretty easy ceiling to break through. And so if you try to shift to a completely different niche after hitting that ceiling, you're going to hurt yourself. And so business is hard. You're going to hit plateaus in your business constantly.

[00:35:47] And so that's the potential shortcoming of telling you to expand your niche is that you've just had a plateau. It's temporary. You need to work through it. You need to try something new. You need to be hire a coach, work with Chris, if you want some fresh outside input, but if you have truly hit a ceiling in your niche,

[00:36:04] Chris: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, you know, there are risks to doing it too soon and there are risks to doing it. Not soon enough. I would honestly say on this podcast, like you mentioned, Brian, we didn't do it quite soon enough. And Chris Graham mastering a couple of years ago, I probably niched up too soon. We started offering mixing services.

[00:36:19] We probably should have held off on that a little while longer, but there's a million different opportunities to niche up or to niche down and knowing when is the appropriate time to do that, can have a huge impact. If you are in a situation where you're not efficient, enough systems are going to help with that.

[00:36:36] If you're in a situation where you don't have enough customers, marketing is going to help with that. If you're in a situation where your margins are not good enough, but you have enough customers, you have lots of customers raising your prices can help with that. But sometimes shifting to a slightly different niche or adding an expansion service where it's like, Hey, we can also do this.

[00:36:57] Can add an additional layer of income.

[00:37:00] Brian: And even if they call it line expansion, I think

[00:37:03] Chris: mine extension.

[00:37:04] Brian: line extension. And it's a very dangerous thing as well. They talk about that's number one killer of businesses as well.

[00:37:08] Chris: Yeah. So it's something you get if you do. That's very, very cautiously, but it's also very, very powerful to be in a situation and to say, you know what, I've got some more time. I'm a little bit bored. I'm going to do something new. And that's honestly the six figure I'm CTO podcast was that for me, business was humming.

[00:37:26] When I launched this podcast with you and I was looking for other ways to kind of keep myself excited and engaged and in community, and it wasn't like a brand strategy. It was just like, hell yeah. Brian's fun to hang out with. I'd love to hang out with them once or twice a week.

[00:37:39] Brian: Can you imagine if we wouldn't have started this podcast,

[00:37:41] Chris: No, I don't know what life would look like.

[00:37:44] I have no idea what that would look like.

[00:37:45] Brian: I will say this. I think both of us are genuinely better off with the fact that we have done this podcast. And I hope that our listeners feel the same as people that have listened to this podcast. And we're hoping that this shift to the six-figure creative podcast is going to open up the doors to more and more people that have that same exact experience where, Hey, my life is different.

[00:38:05] It's better now. And I can't imagine life without that. And I'm not saying that we are anything special to bring that to people, but I think that some of the guests we bring on, I think it's some of the things we talk about. It's just like, I want this to be a rising tide that lifts all ships with everyone involved.

[00:38:22] And I'm excited to see what comes of this shift in the future. And I hope our listeners are on board with this because if they're not, I'm going to be really bombed.

[00:38:30] Chris: Are behind this. This will go really well if you're not at wont. And one of the things to kind of keep in mind there too is we're doing this because we genuinely think we can serve you more. You listener more by doing this, we can provide better content. We can help you look at this from a different angle.

[00:38:46] Brian: This would be a completely different podcast that is completely separate from the six figure home studio podcast. If we didn't think that we could still serve our audience just as well, if not better with this change, that's why it's on the same page. As feed is because we genuinely in our heart. We know we can do you all justice with this new podcast.

[00:39:03] So if you have feedback for us, we would love to hear you in one of two ways. Again, the six figure home studio, community. At least that's what it's called right now. Maybe we change the name in the future or email us podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com. So between now. And the launch of the six figure creative podcast, make sure you join our Facebook community called the six figure I'm city.

[00:39:22] I've mentioned it several times, and that is where we'll keep you up to date with the progress. That's where you can stay in touch with our community members. That's where you can stay in touch with Chris and I in this little downtime. Again, we're going to have some time off between, so prepare yourself for that.

[00:39:35] That is all I have for you today.

[00:39:37] Chris: Join the Facebook community. We think Facebook is a dumpster fire, but our Facebook community is fantastic.

[00:39:42] Brian: It's the shining light in the dark waters of Facebook.

[00:39:50] Chris: I mentioned, I used to be a beekeeper as a hobby.

[00:39:53] Brian: I love that random ass fact about you.

[00:39:56] Chris: And as I've back to when I was the most healthy, it was when I was working with my BS.

[00:40:02] Brian: Can I quote you on that? Like,

[00:40:04] Chris: Yes. Well, it, it's not like a subtle distinction, but when you're sitting down there with a bunch of BS, you're listening to them. And as an audio engineer, as a mastering engineer, I'm paying close attention to the sound of 50,000 bees humming and it changes based on their stress levels.

[00:40:19] And as you're working with the bees, you're moving very slowly, especially for those of you being nerds out there. I was really into not Langstroth hives, but Kenyan, top bar hives, which are very hippy dippy.

[00:40:28] Brian: Oh, dude, those are the best. Yeah. I love Kenyan. Top bar hives. Yeah.

[00:40:31] Chris: Yeah, so great. But you come in the back of the hive?

[00:40:35] Brian: Is that gear. Is that B gear?

[00:40:36] Chris: No, I made it so,

[00:40:38] Brian: Oh, I'm just, does that warrant a Gearson alert.

[00:40:41] Chris: no, it's not a company. It's a style,

[00:40:43] Brian: Okay. Got it. Okay. Fair enough.

[00:40:45] Chris: Lisa. I think that's true.

[00:40:46] Brian: You've avoided the first ever gear slut alert for bees. Tough.

[00:40:51] Chris: When I was working with the bees, you would have to consciously suppress your fight or flight drive because it's like, Hey, there's 50,000 things with a poisonous dart on their ass and you are in their home taking it apart. And if you move too fast or too aggressively, or you make too much noise or you don't.

[00:41:11] They sense, your fear, you will have a very visceral reminder to calm down. They'll sting you.

[00:41:18] Brian: I ask a couple of questions here. First question is, are you not wearing a full body suit?

[00:41:22] Chris: Well, at first I started wearing a full body suit, but as I get better at this, I stopped wearing a bee suit. I'd showed up with no shirt and shorts and I'd open up my beehive and start working on it. I got stung one time.

[00:41:33] Brian: All right. Second question now is what is the point of this in relation to this episode?

[00:41:38] Chris: The point of this in relation to this episode, I forget, but I'm gonna keep going.