The Key To Running A Profitable Online Mixing Studio In 2020 – The Blue Ocean Strategy

Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 113.

[00:00:19] Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm here with my bald, beautiful, amazing purple shirted cohost, Christopher J. Graham, how are you doing today, buddy?

[00:00:31] Chris: [00:00:31] I mean, I'm always better with that intro every single time. So

[00:00:35] Brian: [00:00:35] You've learned to handle it better. Again, we've, we've had issues with you in the past where you cannot handle

[00:00:40] Chris: [00:00:40] I mean, it's a lot of compliments, man. I really appreciate it. And I'm in compliment debt to you.

[00:00:46] Brian: [00:00:46] Compliment debt.

[00:00:47] Chris: [00:00:47] I'm also here with my friend Brian, who's an actual genius. What are we talking about today, Brian? Hey,

[00:00:53] Brian: [00:00:53] it's, it's the new year, by the way.

[00:00:55] Chris: [00:00:55] it is a new year.

[00:00:56] Brian: [00:00:56] New decade. Uh, by the time you've heard this, we will have had our third annual anti new year's party. I think I talked about this last year. Christie, are you aware of our anti annual new year's party?

[00:01:07] Chris: [00:01:07] Remind me.

[00:01:08] Brian: [00:01:08] Okay. So every single year, this is my wife's least favorite holiday when we started dating, and she hates it because there's like everyone dresses up and it's like so much expectation and it's, it's almost always kind of like a dud depending on what party you go to or who you're with, or you feel like you're a complete like lame person if you were like, just don't feel like doing anything.

[00:01:30] And so we decided we're just going to open up our home for anti new years and all it is is show up or don't. Dress up or don't, it's like pajamas or whatever you want, bring food or don't, and party's over at 1201 you know, it's like

[00:01:46]

[00:01:46] is how we, this is how we roll and, and uh,

[00:01:50] Chris: [00:01:50] two, one. Get them outta

[00:01:52] Brian: [00:01:52] yeah, exactly. And it's been a huge success because like for, for example, this year I can say this cause it's, this comes out after we've aired, we have a shootery spread for our friends.

[00:02:02] Chris: [00:02:02] love Shukui

[00:02:04] Brian: [00:02:04] Right.  Lunchables.

[00:02:06] Chris: [00:02:06] huh?

[00:02:08] Brian: [00:02:08] It's Lunchables. We have flavorless LaCroix. It has to be underwhelming it. We have unsalted chips.

[00:02:14] Chris: [00:02:14] That's amazing.

[00:02:15] Brian: [00:02:15] We have all of these like awful things.

[00:02:18] And so it's a blast because it's so underwhelming. And so that's what we do every year.

[00:02:21] Chris: [00:02:21] In the gram household, we are big fans of cheese and crackers. We love Bri grew year really high end Cheddar's.

[00:02:30] Brian: [00:02:30] We love legit, like Chakota, like my wife does like this $80 she could or spread at any special event of like all these cheeses and meats and all this stuff, and she makes it look all fancy. I think an Instagram story recently, but no, they get Lunchables for our anti new year's party.

[00:02:45] Chris: [00:02:45] That's amazing.

[00:02:46] Brian: [00:02:46] It's cheap.  for children.

[00:02:48] That's what Lunchables are.

[00:02:49] Chris: [00:02:49] It's true. This is like the dumbest banner we've ever had. Right now we're talking about cheese plates and charcuterie, and we're completely. Off-brand, but my wife went to Costco the other day and we had like a little get together with Andy J pizza and his wife and my wife got a three pack of Brie and it was different types of Brie.

[00:03:09] And I'm embarrassed to say it was like my favorite thing of all time.

[00:03:12] Brian: [00:03:12] I am proud of you, my friend, I, I'm not a huge fan of Bree. The only one I've had that I liked was literally we took a cooking class in Paris on our honeymoon and  part of the cooking class involved. Like we walked to the market around the corner and shop for the stuff we were going to cook, and he bought us a bunch of cheeses and stuff to try and the air.

[00:03:31] It was good. Let's talk about things that people give a shit about. Chris.

[00:03:34] Chris: [00:03:34] That sounds like a really good idea for our podcast.

[00:03:37] Brian: [00:03:37] didn't mean to get into cheeses, but it went there.

[00:03:42]

[00:03:42] That's more than enough banter for today. Let's actually talk about stuff that's actually going to be interesting for our audience. So, Chris, what are we gonna talk about today?

[00:03:49] Chris: [00:03:49] Well as I've talked to you guys, and I've talked to so many people that listen to the podcast over the course of the past year or two. Probably the most popular dream business that people talk about wanting to get into is to be an online mix engineer. People send you files and money. You make them sound good, you send them back the end.

[00:04:08] Right? You don't have to worry about scheduling someone coming to the studio. Your studio can be considerably cheaper. You don't need to do it out of out of a commercial space. And if you're really, really good, you can sit on a beach with a laptop and headphones, like Andrew chefs, that's what he does, or an airplane or whatever it happens to be.

[00:04:25] And you can trade your talent for dollars. So today we're going to talk about if Brian and I had to be online mix engineers and we were had to start from scratch. How would we do that? How would we break in and how would we launch? What would be an eventually successful business as online mix engineers

[00:04:44] Brian: [00:04:44] Yeah. Again, it's obviously appealing for many, many people, especially. People stuck in small towns back in episode 59 how to build an audio career a hundred percent online from anywhere in the world. That was over a year ago with Austin Hall episode 59.

[00:04:59] Chris: [00:04:59] love that episode.

[00:05:00] Brian: [00:05:00] He does really well. He was from a small town. He was not able to sustain a living, just working with local clients.

[00:05:06] So he did something that no one else has done. He did something to stand out from everyone to go online, and I think that episode probably spurred even more people in our community to go to online mixing for the benefits that he outlined in that episode. But also. What you just talked about, you could theoretically be sitting on the beach with a laptop and some good headphones and mix a record and there  from what I can really see, there's not many other audio industry fields that you could be in that offers that sort of benefit.

[00:05:35] And I'm about to leave for Thailand for five weeks. And I'm going to do it with my laptop. I'm going to have some stuff I'm doing from my laptop, from the road, everything I'm doing work related from the road, and if I were still recording bands locally in my studio, I would either not be able to travel like that or I would be taking time off and making no money.

[00:05:54] Why I work instead, I'm going to be having essentially a workcation, which is. Traveling abroad for an extended amount of time while still making money and online mixing work does open up that opportunity. So there is a lot of people that understandably want to do this. There's a lot of people understandably trying to do this, but there's a lot of people that are doing a terrible job of breaking into this.

[00:06:14] And that is for reasons that we're going to dissect in this episode today. So we're going to talk about some ways to make this type of business model work and a lot of things to think about if this is what you're trying to do for a living.

[00:06:26] Chris: [00:06:26] Well, and here's what I would say before we dive into this. We're going to talk about online mixing here in a minute. I heard a story recently about Bob clear mountain, amazing mix engineer. And also apparently the first mix engineer and the story I heard with Bob cleaner mountain, I'm sure I'm gonna mess this up.

[00:06:43] Um, hopefully someday we'll, you know, be able to get our facts right. Maybe have him on the show or something. But the way I heard it was that Bob worked in a recording studio and he discovered that his favorite thing ever was to do the rough mixes right after a song had been finished tracking. And then eventually he started like pitching the other producers like, Hey, I love doing rough mixes.

[00:07:03] If you guys want like all work on the rough mix where you guys start in the next song. And then eventually people were like, Oh dude, your rough mix is dope. Can we release that? And then all of a sudden he was a mix engineer. No one had ever been, Oh, I just make songs before. So what's interesting about that is when Brian and I talk about pie in the sky, weird ideas, no one's doing this.

[00:07:24] You got to keep in mind that every business ever was bat shit crazy at one point in history.

[00:07:31] Brian: [00:07:31] It's true.

[00:07:32] Chris: [00:07:32] Every single one of them. The iPhone was so stupid right before the iPhone came out.

[00:07:38] Brian: [00:07:38] Yes. I remember thinking that's a dumb device. The iPad, the iPad. I was like, no one asked for this is what I said when it first came out, and now I have to.

[00:07:47] Chris: [00:07:47] Well, Apple is like the best probably ever at this, but like even AirPods when they let their little AirPod headphones came out. There we go. So satisfying when you close that case, when those came out, I was like, that's stupid. Why would I pay an extra like $140 for no wires? But now I'm like, Oh yeah, these are the best.

[00:08:07] Brian: [00:08:07] Another example is, uh, I've just like new stuff that people kind of shrug their shoulders out. Like, what the hell is that? Podcasts like podcasting 10 years ago was like no one knew what it was. If I said it was a podcaster, people would be like, what? And so an experiment I've been doing recently, cause I just have my hands in so many different businesses.

[00:08:24] Like when someone asks at a party or at a gathering or a family or whatever, just like, what do you, what do you do. I don't have a good answer for that to this day I'm no longer a recording engineer. Like that's, I just don't, that's not like a title that I give myself cause I'm doing so much more than that.

[00:08:40] I've just started telling people I'm a podcaster and it's so interesting. Like I could never have done that. Let's just say three, five years ago. Cause people are like, what the hell is that? Now people are like, Oh, that's really cool. Tell me what is your podcast like? Tell me what y'all talk about. Like blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:08:51] I was like, it's a thing now. People have fully embraced the podcasting and so all that being said. If something to today's sounds weird to you, listen to us. Take our advice, try something new. If it's something that is appealing to you and you may just create a new niche, or you may just be one of the pioneers in that slowly growing niche.

[00:09:14] Chris: [00:09:14] Well. One last piece here before we dive in. When I was growing up, as you guys could probably imagine, school did not go so well for me.

[00:09:24] Brian: [00:09:24] What you in all your nerdy dad jokes and your nerdy behavior did not go well with you in school.

[00:09:30] Chris: [00:09:30] Well, my absolute favorite part about school was disruption was like intentionally disrupting class.

[00:09:37] Brian: [00:09:37] I was diagnosed with ADHD in third grade. It did not go well for me.

[00:09:42] Chris: [00:09:42] Yeah. Yeah. My, a lot of my teachers despised me because I was just like, I was the anti teacher, like my, whatever their mission was. I would pick the opposite.

[00:09:52] Brian: [00:09:52] So why you're telling us this, Chris?

[00:09:53] Chris: [00:09:53] I'm telling you this because all the time my teachers would just be like, I'd have some crazy ass idea and the teachers a bit, well, Chris, that's just not how things are done.

[00:10:01] And I look back at that now, like you'd think I would have grown out of that at 37 years old. But now it's like. Actually, Mrs. Newton, you didn't read enough history books because everything that we do now at one point was not done. Wheels at one point were bat shit crazy like bow and arrows at one point were like, man, Ugh, such a moron.

[00:10:24] He's trying to shoot a spear with a stick with a string on it. What a dummy. Every single thing we do as humans was first. Crazy, and then later maybe got popular and then became the standard. So every single one of these ideas we're going to be sharing. Yet it might not be the way that people do it, but that's how business works.

[00:10:45] Brian: [00:10:45] Chris, would you call this a red ocean? Actually, can you tell people what a red ocean is versus a blue ocean? Because online mixing is a red ocean. Now.

[00:10:53] Chris: [00:10:53] I should clarify before we even dive in. I am in the process of moving offices and they're painting the room next door, and I am a little high on paint fumes right now.

[00:11:02] Brian: [00:11:02] He's not even joking.

[00:11:03] Chris: [00:11:03] Um, it's, it's very strong.

[00:11:05] Brian: [00:11:05] And I'm so excited because when Chris gets loopy, it's fun.

[00:11:08] Chris: [00:11:08] I'm very loopy and weird. But you asked the question, what is red ocean versus blue ocean? Basically, there's a great book that came out years ago called blue ocean strategy, and it's by the guy that invented, Oh shoot, Cirque de Solei.

[00:11:23] Brian: [00:11:23] Oh, I didn't know that. I've still never read this book. I need to read this book. I know the gist of it, so that's why I kind of avoided it.

[00:11:28] Chris: [00:11:28] Well, he wrote a book called blue ocean strategy based on him looking at circuses and being like, Hmm, this

[00:11:35] Brian: [00:11:35] the same. They were all the same.

[00:11:36] Chris: [00:11:36] they're all the same. I'm going to do something totally different. And where there's no competition, and Cirque de Solei is a. Humongously successful business because they did something no one else was doing, and as a result, there was no competition.

[00:11:50] So the way he explains this as a blue ocean is when you pick a business model where you can be first. Brian and I inadvertently did this with this podcast. We're still to this day. The only like pure business resource in the audio industry that I'm aware of. Hopefully there are more. At this point, I haven't heard of any.

[00:12:08] Um, if, if you guys know of some, please let us know. We want there to be more red ocean would be doing something that everybody else is already doing. So right now, like online mixing is an interesting thing because a lot of people, one of the mistakes they make is like, why would it be an online mixed engineer's?

[00:12:22] So I'm going to do everything everyone else is doing.

[00:12:25] Brian: [00:12:25] That's like starting a YouTube channel, doing gear reviews right now.

[00:12:28] Chris: [00:12:28] It's not going to work.

[00:12:29] Brian: [00:12:29] You better be a damn good personality if that's what you're going to do because everyone's doing it.

[00:12:32] Chris: [00:12:32] Yeah. You have to, here's the $10 word differentiate. You have to be different. And when someone says, well, uh, why should I, uh, go to you instead of the other guy? You have to say, well, I do this and they don't do that. That's it. You've got to have a unique differentiator. All business is predicated on differentiation.

[00:12:53] If you're not differentiating, that's a huge part of why your business might be struggling. So let's talk about online mixing.

[00:13:01] Brian: [00:13:01] Before we get into that, you talk about circus Olay. I looked up their revenue right now it's like $1 billion a year.

[00:13:06] Chris: [00:13:06] Yeah. For a circus.

[00:13:09]

[00:13:09] Most circuses are out of business at this point.

[00:13:12]

[00:13:12] You know, like they've, uh, over the past couple of years, a couple of closed, I think, was it Barnum and Bailey.

[00:13:19]

[00:13:19] Yeah, crazy. So they did something absolutely nuts, which is like, basically it's like a circus, but kind of trippy and there's like,

[00:13:29]

[00:13:29] it's all humans. It's strange and looks like a scifi movie.

[00:13:34] Brian: [00:13:34] Google it if you don't know what it is. It's crazy. But they did something different. And so that's what I blue ocean is, is taking something that's known and done a lot in a red ocean and moving it over to the blue ocean by differentiating yourself, by doing something weird and honestly start to slice.

[00:13:48] It's really

[00:13:48] Chris: [00:13:48] Very weird. Well, and back to the Bob clear mountain story is that I would imagine that there were an awful lot of recording engineers near Bob cleaner mountain, and that when he decided to become the world's first mix engineer, it was blue ocean strategy. There was no competition. And so yeah, you have to explain what you do to people to be able to win their business, but at the same time, you don't have to say, well, I'm better because of X, Y, and Z.

[00:14:13] You can just simply say, well, I just do this. I specialize.

[00:14:16] Brian: [00:14:16] So let's move into, again, we've tried to move into this forever, but this is definitely a topic worth sticking on. The blue ocean versus red ocean is something that everyone needs to know and understand because when we get into online mixing, it is. A bloodbath. There are so many people trying to do this right now.

[00:14:33] Very rarely do I see people doing this well. So Chris, how, if you were starting an online mixing business today, what would you do to differentiate yourself from people to stand out to make it a blue ocean?

[00:14:43] Chris: [00:14:43] Well, the first thing I would want to do is to figure out what people who are looking for online mix engineers hate about online mixings engineers.

[00:14:53] Brian: [00:14:53] do a little research.

[00:14:54] Chris: [00:14:54] I do a little bit of research. I would guess that one of the things they hate the most is that it's terrifying to hand someone your musical baby. That's what a song is, and to say make it better.

[00:15:08] Right? Like that's terrifying,

[00:15:10] Brian: [00:15:10] It's usually make it incredible.

[00:15:11] Chris: [00:15:11] right? Yeah. Yeah. I had a $100 microphone and a hundred dollar interface. Can you make it sound like I spent $100,000 that's one piece of it, but I think another piece of it is just this idea that. It's mysterious and, and you don't know, am I going to get scammed by some flaky, you know, kid in a dorm room with cheap monitors and cracked plugins.

[00:15:36] Brian: [00:15:36] Again, the everyone's fears are going to be different. You're saying you'd go out and talk to musicians that have paid for online mixing before. Find out what was it about the experience, did they hate, what did they like about it, what worked, what didn't work? And you would try to discern from that. What would your positioning beyond the internet.

[00:15:54] Chris: [00:15:54] Exactly.

[00:15:54] Brian: [00:15:54] Because if you are the online mixer who on their website clearly explains exactly how the process works from a to B, there's no second guessing. You've put tons and tons of testimonials because that's what you figured out are the things that people want to see. And just from that, they feel much more comfortable.

[00:16:12] And on top of that, your portfolio. Clearly shows obviously that you're good at what you do. That's the most important thing, honestly. What else would you do? I mean, let's just talk about, let's just pretend. Okay. You have interviewed people. You found out what people like, what they don't like. You would then, I would imagine, update your website too.

[00:16:29] Reflect what you've learned in those discovery calls, let's call them, or discovery conversations.

[00:16:35] Chris: [00:16:35] Well, one of the things that I've just kind of over the years observed from a mastering engineer. Is that one of the things that artists hate the most about online mixing is delivering files. And for us that are professional audio engineers, it's like, Oh, it's no big deal. You know, you're just, you know, frigging, you know, sending a bunch of stems that all start at zero.

[00:16:56] Yeah. But everyone that has a home recording setup or every band that's worked with a producer, they all have some level of mixability. They all have some ability to try to get their vision across using, you know, some rudimentary doll or plugins or whatever doll. I said that kind of funny

[00:17:14] Brian: [00:17:14] You did.

[00:17:17] Chris: [00:17:17] and uh, let me back up. I heard a story recently about, I'm going to try to avoid using names here, but I heard it from a friend of mine that's an audio engineer and he's a really, really, really good mix engineer. And he had worked with a really, really popular band. On their first record, probably a band you guys have heard of and they decided to get like a top flight mix engineered and mixed.

[00:17:41] The single and the top flight makes engineer. If you are a mix engineer, you have heard of this guy's name, so I want to say his name just in case I got everything wrong about this story, but they hired this guy and he said, okay, I'm $10,000 to mix your single and what I want you to do is to send me the pro tools, session plugins and all.

[00:18:01] I want to hear the current mix, and apparently sounded like the guy just moved some faders a little bit and then he sent back the final mix and got released on the radio. And you probably heard it. And what's interesting to me about that is it addresses this issue of deliverability. Of how the mix engineer gets the session itself because this guy's charging an arm and a leg.

[00:18:26] He has every plugin known to man or can get it for free. And he just said, just send me the whole session. Just send me what you got. Don't export stems. Don't like, cause when you're exporting stems like there's this whole like, well am I writing the PO? The affects, am I not that stressful for an artist?

[00:18:42] Artists hate that. So if I had to be an online mix engineer, I would probably differentiate by saying. Again, this is just off the top of my head. We're improvising all this. I would probably say, Hey, I am a mix engineer for people who use logic pro X, and you can just send me your logic pro ed session.

[00:19:01] File

[00:19:01] Brian: [00:19:01] Or you just have every dollar and every plugin.

[00:19:03] Chris: [00:19:03] that too. Yeah,

[00:19:05] Brian: [00:19:05] Here's the deal. I, I heard this in a talk from Sean Moffitt. I don't know if you know who that is, is a mixer here in Nashville and he mixes a lot of stuff that Seth Mosley produces, who's another guy here in Nashville, and Sean was talking about, he goes out of his way to make it as simple as possible for Seth.

[00:19:21] When he finishes a session, he doesn't have to change a thing, doesn't have to turn anything off or bounce anything down. He simply opens the session up as it is. And he does all of the work for them to transfer it over to, I think Cubase or logic or whatever he makes is an, and I'm probably misstating some stuff here.

[00:19:37] He may actually mix it in the door that is recorded in, but I, I remember him saying he converts it all to the doll. He likes to mix in, in his mindset. It's to make it as simple as possible so that he will continually use him for every mixing project. It is definitely a customer service type thing. And when you, and that's from a PR one professional to another, when you take somebody who is maybe not.

[00:19:58] Great or what they do, or maybe if they recorded somewhere locally that now they're going to get charged an arm and leg just to prepare the files from mixing. If you start making things, you're lowering the bar to entry basically by saying, I will just open up whatever you have done and I will start from there and we will make you happy.

[00:20:15] That is, again, you're overcoming objections at that point.

[00:20:18] Chris: [00:20:18] And bingo, you've kind of got . Dichotomy. Dichotomy is when you have two issues that are sort of head to head. On the one side, you've got your efficiency, and on the other side you've got the ability to make it convenient for your customers, which means it's easier to raise your price, right? These two things are juxtapositioned and they are fighting each other and you have to figure out, do I want to be super efficient and super picky or do I want to be able to accept.

[00:20:47] Projects from a wider variety of people and make it easier to win more projects. And you kind of hit the nail on the head there, Brian, when you've got somebody working with you that can prep for you from, you know, Oh, we got, you know, project one is in Cubase from this client, the next client, send it in Ableton and the next night sit in pro tools to just make it easy on them and say, Hey, just send me what you've got.

[00:21:08] You don't, don't prep anything. I want you to send me something that you think is awesome and I'll take it from there. I think the, I'll take it from their mentality goes a long way in getting a lot more customers.

[00:21:22] Brian: [00:21:22] If this is what you're doing for a living. If you're doing online mixing for a living, it's not that expensive. To get all of the dots or at least all of the common doors. If you want to make this a business, and that's one of the sticking points you get in your conversations with people. The handoff is the very difficult part is a train wreck.

[00:21:39] Then that might be something worth doing. Before we get into creating awareness for this online mixing service that you're creating, Chris, is there anything else you think might be worth noting as far as trying to differentiate yourself so you're not part of the red ocean and more of the blue ocean.

[00:21:55] Chris: [00:21:55] Totally. And again, I'm high on paint fumes right now, so

[00:21:58] Brian: [00:21:58] Which makes it so much

[00:22:00] Chris: [00:22:00] 85% but what I can feel like a monster headache coming on here. But what I would say is I would use that as part of the sales process as I would say, Hey, you're thinking about working with me. I only mix in logic pro X to start with. I would pick one DAW and focus on it, and I would say, send me a link to one of your sessions however you want.

[00:22:21] I will download it and then we'll do a video chat and I will open up your session. As it is, and I'll walk you through what I think it needs. I'm going to give your session a physical. Basically, I'm going to walk you through and we're going to have a conversation. I'm going to ask questions, a lot of questions while I'm video chatting with this potential client and say, Oh, cool.

[00:22:42] Breakdown. The bridge feels a little thin compared to the chorus. Before it did you kind of, were you kind of imagining it thicker and warmer? What's the thing you dislike the most about your mix now as it is.

[00:22:54] Brian: [00:22:54] You really need to think up a list of questions to kind of create a process around this.

[00:22:58] Chris: [00:22:58] Yeah. But I think for me being like, Hey, I'll do a free consultation. I'll open up. You have to figure out a better way than I can right now to pitch this. But like, send me a session and we'll do a video chat and I'll walk you through the session and I'll tell you what I would work on if I were mixing it.

[00:23:14] Brian: [00:23:14] Again, you're making this more of a handholding experience versus what a lot of online mixing is and the Lama mixing I've done is the same. I don't really talk to people that much. It's very much online email interaction, very limited conversation with me and. It wouldn't take that much work for someone to take a client from me if they went above and beyond and like handheld the whole time.

[00:23:34] And so that's a really good way to stand out, which is adding a higher touch to it.

[00:23:38] Chris: [00:23:38] Yeah. At a higher touch. Cause the big thing is like these are musical babies. When someone sends you a song and brings you in. Yeah. I've, I've mentioned this before, but like you think about Instagram models, I would imagine that Instagram models get pretty stressed out about posting a picture of themselves in like a bikini or a Speedo or whatever it happens to be.

[00:24:00] Music is so much more intense than like, Oh, I hope people don't judge me. I hope people don't think I put on weight over the holidays. With music, it's, I hope people don't think my soul is ugly after they hear my music. So it's intense. So you have to hold their hand and make them feel comfortable and make them, it's like hiring a babysitter.

[00:24:18] Does that make sense? You're hiring a babysitter when you hire a mix engineer and you got to make sure that they're comfortable.

[00:24:24] Brian: [00:24:24] more like a drill Sergeant.

[00:24:26] Chris: [00:24:26] A drill Sergeant. Tell me more about

[00:24:28] Brian: [00:24:28] You're taking those fatten out of shape tracks and whipping them into shape is what you're

[00:24:33] Chris: [00:24:33] Yeah. It's like hiring a personal trainer of, of

[00:24:36] Brian: [00:24:36] trainer, that's probably a little better way of saying it.

[00:24:38] Chris: [00:24:38] You want to trust this person and I think there are a lot of opportunities for people that are trying to break in to just, you put it really well, Brian, be higher touch.

[00:24:46] Brian: [00:24:46] Yup. So let's talk about what would you charge in these scenarios for this, for mixing work? Again, this is kind of like as a business model, online mixing is very attractive because it does open up a wide market and we'll talk about how would you actually get people to become aware. Of your studio. We'll talk about top of funnel a second, but let's talk about what you would charge before we get into the marketing side of things.

[00:25:06] Because what you charge is going to kind of dictate how much time you can, but towards the client. You can't charge a hundred bucks a song and then have a super high touch experience

[00:25:16] Chris: [00:25:16] Is this true?

[00:25:16] Brian: [00:25:16] client, but the more you charge, the more limited your market as in the harder it is to compete. I think. What, what's your gut telling you?

[00:25:24] If you're doing high touch, you have really done your diligence to talk to people about what it is that is a bad experience. So you've really, really handcrafted what the experiences you've built systems around onboarding your customers, which we've talked about on past episodes where you have a checklist of things you addressed.

[00:25:40] You've systemize everything. You've made it as simple as possible for the customer so that they're not the ones stuck doing all of the work for you, or they're not the ones stuck. Paying some engineer to do all of the work, you're making it as seamless as possible. And so that is going to. Help you stand out, but also allow you to charge more because you're not competing with the red ocean of all of the just hungry, thirsty mix engineers who want to do none of the work involved.

[00:26:08] They just want to get paid. They want to do as many projects as possible. They'll do whatever it takes. To me like that is not a market I want to play in. This is a market I want to play in a high touch market and that's kind of the theme and everything we're going to be talking about today is kind of the higher touch world that can charge more.

[00:26:22] What do you need to charge for that to work? Because.

[00:26:24] Chris: [00:26:24] Well, here's what I would say about that. You've got a couple issues at play here. One, you don't know how much it costs you to get a customer customer acquisition cost. CAC. CAC is really, really important to figuring this out. If your customer acquisition cost is $200 you probably can't charge $250.

[00:26:42] Brian: [00:26:42] Yeah. It comes down to average project value. It's not just per song, it's what is the, the average project value compared to your average cost to acquire a customer.  spoiler alert. The reason it costs to acquire a customer is because, especially early on, paid marketing is going to be the only real way outside of like really high touch, high time types of marketing to get customers to turn a faucet on and off.

[00:27:08] So we'll get more into that in a second. But even with that, if you start spending time, you still need associated with how much time it's taking you to acquire a customer.

[00:27:15] Chris: [00:27:15] Well, I would say a couple of things. One, I am high on pay fumes

[00:27:20] Brian: [00:27:20] Thank you for clarifying that again. He's so high. He's forgotten that he's talked about that already.

[00:27:24] Chris: [00:27:24] too. We're talking about what we would do if we had to start from scratch. We are not saying everyone should do this no matter where you're at. So there's that. Number three is that you have a cost per acquisition. Even if you refuse to do paid marketing cause you think paid marketing doesn't work.

[00:27:42] Brian: [00:27:42] That's actually a really good point, is if it takes you 10 hours to acquire a customer and you charge $100 for that customer, you're already at $10 hour. And you haven't even started mixing yet. So there is a cost of acquiring a customer that you have to put into what you're charging.

[00:27:59] Chris: [00:27:59] So with that, I would say that as you're starting out, you need to religiously track how much time it takes you to do each one of these projects. Religiously track how much time it takes you to do each of these projects so that you can figure out like, how do I scale this? How do I earn not just a living wage, but enough to assure myself that I can do what I want to do for the rest of my life?

[00:28:22] Brian: [00:28:22] I feel more on that kind of thought process and topic. Go to our show notes page. There will be a link to a video on YouTube where I talk about, uh, how I make like 300 bucks an hour, over 300 bucks an hour mixing work. I talk about all of the checklists and stuff that I do to help. Systemize that side of things.

[00:28:37] But I also talk about the religious time-tracking aspect and how the numbers behind all that stuff work. So that being aside, like put all that aside, you've, you've, you're considering in your pricing the cost to acquire customer time money, same thing. At the end of the day, it's higher touch. What are you going to charge?

[00:28:56] And before you actually free, you give a number. I'm going to say this, don't worry about pricing at the very beginning. Get your first handful of customers, but before long. Pricing will matter. You will have to figure out a price and land on a price. What would that price be, Chris, per song?

[00:29:11] Chris: [00:29:11] Well, let me keep going down my list of things here. Starting out, I would be really slow to communicate price. If somebody would ask me, well, what? What would you would charge for this? And I'm like, well, we need to keep talking about it. We need to figure out more about what the scope of this project is so that I can continue to ask questions and do needs discovery here.

[00:29:29] Now that would be a big part of this process for me is just delaying that as much as I could so that I'm learning more and more and more about the customer.

[00:29:39] Brian: [00:29:39] Just a button here on episode 84 is the pricing masterclass, how to charge more, add more value, and win more projects. Episode 84 is phenomenal. It's a two part series, and that's where we really go into depth about this. Conversational approach to selling where you are. Finding out as much as you can about the project and finding out the full scope so that you can offer a higher touch service because you have discovered truly all of the needs involved.

[00:30:04] Not just, I need five songs mixed. It's, I need five songs mixed and they're in an obscure DAW and we can't get it to work because our engineer flaked on us. We only have a thumb drive with some session files thrown about. Can you salvage this for us? That's a completely different conversation when it's just, we need five songs for mixing, and that really ups the ante for how much you're going to have to charge.

[00:30:25] Chris: [00:30:25] Yeah, so you've got the high touch thing, but you just hit on something else as well. What's the turnaround time? That's another way. If I had to absolutely had to make it work and make money fast, I would compete on turnaround time to be like, I'm high touch and I'm really fast. Like, I will stay up all night and finish this for you.

[00:30:44] I don't want that life. I don't do that. I won't do that. But here's the other thing, I then kind of my last thought on this for a lot of people, you guys have experimented with paid marketing and you've, if you've done it a little bit, you found out it's really hard.

[00:30:59] Brian: [00:30:59] It is. It's not hard to get a lot of clicks, Chris.

[00:31:02] Chris: [00:31:02] No, it's

[00:31:02] Brian: [00:31:02] hard to get a lot of those clicks to turn into customers. That's the hard part.

[00:31:05] Chris: [00:31:05] Yeah, that's the hard part.

[00:31:06] That's why you take a bunch of classes and hire a business coach. That stuff is complicated and if you don't know what you're doing, it's a black hole that will suck money out of your bank account. That being said, for those of you that have found that paid marketing is tricky if you are not differentiating in a significant way, paid marketing barely works at all.

[00:31:28] If you are pitching something that is completely unique and eye catching, like let's video chat about your project. Let me Google online mixing right now and let's see who pops up.

[00:31:41] Brian: [00:31:41] Yeah. You do that while you're talking. I'm going to give some price ranges real quick just to ballpark this. If you were doing the online mixing work that I've seen the majority of our community doing. Yeah. Which is like, I make songs for money and I will do any one song. You're not going to get more than a hundred bucks a song.

[00:31:57] In some circumstances you might get 200 bucks as long if you're good at whatever niches you found yourself a part of.  300 bucks a song is probably the minimum, in my opinion, that you could start doing high touch type work in depending on how long it actually takes to mix a song and. Once you start getting experience, and if you really do find a niche that you match really well with , it's not that hard to get three, five, 600 plus per song for mixing work and in some Gianna's I've seen thousand plus.

[00:32:24] Like when you become a true expert, there's some people listening to us right now that are rolling their eyes because I'm saying some of these numbers and they're so low to them, and some people in our community are like, I could never get 600 bucks a song that is so far out of my realm of possibility.

[00:32:37] Well, if you're not doing what we're talking about. Getting out of this red ocean that everyone's fighting each other and clawing each other and biting each other in and moving into this blue ocean where there you're the only one swimming in this bullshit. If you're not doing these things to differentiate yourself, to set yourself apart from everyone else, you will be getting a hundred bucks a song for the rest of your life and you will not even have your calendar full with that.

[00:32:58] Chris: [00:32:58] Yeah. I completely agree. I'm on Google right now. I have Googled online mixing and I don't want to like call anybody out here cause they probably listened to the show here. But the first ad that shows up is from . Freelance audio mastering and mixing engineer's services, which is just terrible copy cause they put that in the wrong order.

[00:33:17] Freelance audio mixing and mastering engineer's cat. That's a terrible ad. But you're competing with fiber for this. Then you've got an ad from  dot com which is hilarious to me because their targeting's off and some of their like short links are in Russian. And spelled wrong. Oh boy. That's a wreck. Oh guys.

[00:33:40] Okay. And then kind of, when we start to get into, I'm not going to say whose ad this is, but there's an an ad from a guy here online mixing service. I can mix your hit records, let his name, uh, mix your music, uh, into the next big hit request quote today. I do. One thing I did extremely well, I mixed it records, guaranteed flawless chart topping hits.

[00:33:59] Cool. But the way he's differentiating, at least by his ad and the ad, the way you differentiate. The first time someone sees you as the most important part, guaranteed. Flawless is tricky. I would never put that in an ad because flawless means a lot of different things, a lot of different people. So I think you have to differentiate more than just, I do good work.

[00:34:21] You have to dig deeper. I love that he's saying, I do one thing and I do it extremely well. That plays to me.

[00:34:28] Brian: [00:34:28] That terminology makes me think that he's part of our community.

[00:34:31] Chris: [00:34:31] I know. Yeah.

[00:34:32] Brian: [00:34:32] That's a phrase I've used a million times. I use it like in the profitable producer course. I use it and the website creation course like, Oh man, there's one more add here that I want to highlight here. The headline is, high end online mixing service instantly sounded like a pro

[00:34:50] I'm not going to give the URL, but that copy is one to impress people with your music. Get your free test sample in your inbox tomorrow. That's actually a good ad. On the landing page, it says, your dream is to impress people with your music, but your mixes just don't sound professional. What if you have a radio ready version of your song in your inbox tomorrow for free upload now.

[00:35:11] Chris: [00:35:11] Wow. I'm impressed.

[00:35:12] Brian: [00:35:12] And now we're moving onto kind of the marketing side of things. If you're trying to get people to create awareness for your new mixing service, create a website, put a damn good landing page up. Don't just rip this guy's sales copy offer as marketing copy copy, by the way, is just a marketing speak four words on a page.

[00:35:28] Don't just rip. This guy's copy off, but he's really digging into the psychology behind someone that's looking for online mixing services radio ready. Is a buzz word that people are looking for the dream of impressing people with your music. And then he's also saying in your inbox tomorrow, that is the most genius part of this ad for free, and that's the risk reversal thing that's taking all risk away.

[00:35:50] It doesn't cost you anything. Why wouldn't I do this?

[00:35:53] Chris: [00:35:53] Yeah. And there's plenty of stuff on this website that he's, you know, breaking some kind of.

[00:35:57] Brian: [00:35:57] Best practices yet he could spend five minutes on learning best practices for landing pages and crush it even more.

[00:36:03] Chris: [00:36:03] Absolutely. But yeah, the fact that he's making a clear like risk reversal offer, like what do you got to lose? Like to me, he's doing a pretty good job.

[00:36:14] Brian: [00:36:14] Here's one more thing he does well, which is how this works. He's got a section for how this works. Step one, he talks about all you need is an internet connection. Upload the file. Now step two, we will respond with the free attract check. He basically gives step one through four on how everything works.

[00:36:28] So there's no.  unanswered, and so all you need to do is upload a file like you are making it so easy for someone to send you files to work. I think this is a good thing to do. Here's the deal, Chris, you'll love Google ads for this sort of thing because it's intent based. It's somebody who was looking for online mixing, and this person's making it incredibly easy.

[00:36:49] You can also make this sort of stuff work on Facebook ads because you can get so specific with targeting on Facebook that it's actually terrifying. Facebook knows more about you. Then you probably know about you, Chris.

[00:37:00] Chris: [00:37:00] Totally. So let's kind of move on and talk about some other people that are doing this before we kind of move on. There is, I'm really tempted to say their name. They're a very big studio with a lot of engineers, and I have a love hate relationship with them, so I'm not gonna . Say their name, but they're doing, they're running an ad and they're doing an example of, I think, a really bad job in spite of the fact that they're pretty successful.

[00:37:21] Again, not going to say their name, but they rank really high. If you Google online mixing, you're going to see them. They're like the second result on my version of Google over here, which by the way, whether you're the first result or the second result, really changes based on your browsing history.

[00:37:35] Google changes that around to try to match that to you. But like I go on their website and it says the first thing they pitch, and they have a very strong name brand here, but the very first, most,

[00:37:47] Brian: [00:37:47] with scabby toad.

[00:37:49] Chris: [00:37:49] no, it does not.

[00:37:50] Brian: [00:37:50] Oh, okay.

[00:37:51] Chris: [00:37:51] Oh wait. Yeah, it does. It took me a minute to, uh, again, high on paint fumes. It does rhyme with scabby toad,

[00:38:00]

[00:38:00]

[00:38:00] Brian: [00:38:00] Okay.

[00:38:00] Chris: [00:38:00] but you go on their website and. Yeah, I love records that were done at scabby toad studios. But, um, the big thing on the front there, page audio mixing, starting at 250 pounds, parentheses, X, E X period, capital V, a T excluding VAT value added tax. So to me, it's like, why on earth.

[00:38:22] Brian: [00:38:22] That's what you lead with your the first thing. There's no nothing about the dream. Nothing about in your inbox tomorrow. Nothing about you want radio ready mixes. You want your stuff to sound incredible. No, it's starting at 250 pounds. Excluding that like.

[00:38:37] Chris: [00:38:37] Granted, most people on earth don't use pounds to pay for things. So they're immediately exclusive about like most people would see that and be like, I'm out. No, no, no, no, no. Like for me, as an American consumer, if there's not a dollar sign in front of it. Yeah. I'm out. Like, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to buy it.

[00:38:55] Brian: [00:38:55] Cause now you need to go figure out what that actually is in your local currency, wherever you are.

[00:38:59] Chris: [00:38:59] Yeah. So Brian, I think that we should give a shout out to the previous website, mixed or.com M I X. X. X. S. T. E. R.

[00:39:11] Brian: [00:39:11] I don't know about the three axes.

[00:39:12] Chris: [00:39:12] I don't know about the three Xs either. I would definitely rethink that and there's a plenty of stuff on his website. He could be doing better, but as far as understanding his customer, he is doing such a better job than Abby road.

[00:39:24] It's ridiculous.

[00:39:25] Brian: [00:39:25] Just real quick. That's why he's able to pay for advertising. On here and compete with someone like scabby toad. Here's the deal with this person though. Just go to our show notes page and go to the site. Don't Google it and click the ad. Cause every time you click the ad, he gets charged. I do not want to wreck this dude's finances because a bunch of our listeners came

[00:39:42] Chris: [00:39:42] He'll be looking at is Google's AdWords campaigns. Pretty soon be like, what the heck happened here? And none of them converted cause they're all other mix engineers. But yeah, I mean like six figure home studio X salute to mixer.com he's killing it and he's competing with some of the big kids out there.

[00:39:59] Because he understands his customer and he understands what's at the center of the onion, what they really, truly want. He speaking to their heart, and I, I salute him there. A lot of times you get guys that build websites or they're not speaking to the hopes and dreams of their customers. They're just trying to, like, I have a pissing contest with other mix engineers.

[00:40:21] That doesn't play well, that doesn't work well, and your ads don't work unless you differentiate. If you're just, if it's just like, Hey, I'm basically as good as the other guy, your ads are going to get crushed and you're going to spend so much money and get nothing for it.

[00:40:35] Brian: [00:40:35] Yeah. It's like people think that ads are this magical thing that's this black box. It's actually not that hard to do ads. That's the easy part. Turning in some ads on getting traffic to your website, that's actually not that hard. Getting the targeting right. That's a little harder, but not that hard.

[00:40:50] Chris: [00:40:50] Targeting is who's going to see those ads.

[00:40:52] Brian: [00:40:52] Yeah.

[00:40:52] Who's going to see those ads? What's really difficult is writing compelling ad copy. It's called copywriting. That is convincing people that you're the right person for them. It's overcoming their objections. It's stating what it is that you do. Differently than everyone else and basically paving the road to go from a stranger to a customer with as little friction as possible.

[00:41:15] These are things we've talked about time and time and time and time again on this podcast, but if you are in the red ocean of online mixing, which is so competitive now, and I think it is truly the future of the way online mixing is going to work if you are going to compete at a high level in that world, in the future, these are things you need to be thinking about and other skills you need to be mastering in order to make that work.

[00:41:37] Chris: [00:41:37] Yeah. So it's, it's interesting that you hit the nail on the head, Brian, the copy and coming up with something that's emotionally compelling to your potential customer that sets you apart from everybody else. That's the trick. If you can figure out how to do that, things are going to go pretty well. And mixer, he's really doing a good job of, he's clearly running ads.

[00:41:58] I'm not sure how long he's been running the ads, but if I were in the mood for a mix engineer, why the hell wouldn't I send him a session just to see how he does? And here's the thing. Here's the interesting thing. I don't have any idea how much that do charges.

[00:42:11] Brian: [00:42:11] That's right. He doesn't publish it on his site, and because of that, he can experiment with pricing, which is great. He can talk to the client to understand what the pricing needs to be. He can quote on a need by need basis. If someone has a tiny budget. But he really wants to work with them. He can make it a combination for that.

[00:42:28] If someone is going to be a massive pain in the ass and once there's files tomorrow, he can charge accordingly for that. If he takes the project on at all, probably shouldn't take that project on, so it leaves a whole world open for him that you don't have when you are scabby towed. Studios starting at, I guess you can, you can say starting at, and then people get sticker shock when they get their 500 pound per song price and they thought it was going to be 200 if anything gets sets, unrealistic expectations.

[00:42:54] When you say starting at 250 pounds, so don't anchor any pricing. If anything, overdo the pricing on the website and then pleasantly surprised them, but then you're going to lose people before you even to take pricing off your page. That's how I've always done it, and I really swear by that.

[00:43:07] Chris: [00:43:07] Well, and here's the interesting thing here that mixture's doing well is that if I'm a musician and I'm going to hire a mix engineer, what I'm willing to pay, I probably don't have an idea in mind. But if someone does a test mix for me and you know, I'm not sure how mixture is pulling this off, he probably turns the ads on and off.

[00:43:27] Based on how many people have requested a free, a free mix. That's something I used to do back in the day with mastering is like I would get 20 guys would reach out and they don't want a free master in sampling. They'd be like, Whoa, okay, that's, that's enough. And then I'd pause my ads ketchup, and then I'd unpause them again to generate more demand.

[00:43:43] Brian: [00:43:43] You can also lower the ad budget. There's a lot of things you can do to make it a more manageable trickle, so you're not getting these huge peaks and valleys, but I think you're right with him. He seems to be doing well. I don't know actually behind the scenes how his ads are doing and they see where he's located.

[00:43:56] He's in Nashville. I'll take them out to lunch and buying lunch for clicking on his ad.

[00:43:58] Chris: [00:43:58] There's definitely a couple of changes he could make to his website. They would make his ads convert a lot better. But most importantly, he's got the hard part done. So here's the big thing, just kind of closing thoughts on mixer. My thought. I'm looking at this other big name mix engineer or mixing company, and I'm immediately compelled to want to send mixed or a sample because if mixed her sends me back a good mix and it emotionally grabs me and it makes me feel something, price goes out the window.

[00:44:29] Brian: [00:44:29] Oh, it's so true. Like when it comes to, I get the file back from mixture and I love it. It's exactly what I wanted. Okay. And he tells me it's going to be 350 pounds per song. Or whatever you want to charge. Scabby toad. I'm not going to use their name cause I don't know. I don't know. What could their legal team looks like?

[00:44:50] Scabby toad

[00:44:52]

[00:44:52] records are recording studio now. It looks like the inferior option because even though they're cheaper, you have no idea what it's going to turn out like and you have to pay the money up front to figure that out. Meanwhile, mixer has you hooked. It sounds exactly how you want it to sound.

[00:45:06] Chris: [00:45:06] He made you feel something.

[00:45:08] Brian: [00:45:08] Yup. He made you feel something and for that price, for all intents and purposes, goes out the window within reason. Obviously there's a limit for anybody. No one's made of money, but that really takes the conversation away from . How much is it going to cost me to, how much do you want for this? What is a big difference?

[00:45:23] Chris: [00:45:23] Yeah, so I would say kind of wrapping this up with online mixing, honestly, it's the exact same thing with mastering for me is make them feel something first and then figure everything else out.

[00:45:34] Brian: [00:45:34] Ooh.

[00:45:35] Chris: [00:45:35] Emotion first before everything, because let's be honest here folks, the only reason we're having this conversation, the only reason you guys are listening to this, the only reason there's a such thing as recorded music is because it makes people feel something doesn't really make any sense why?

[00:45:50] But it gets us emotional, and that's why people are willing to pay money for it. So lead with emotion. That's what I would be working on.

[00:46:02] Brian: [00:46:02] So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Hopefully you enjoyed that one. This actually changed mid episode. Funny enough. Uh, we had five different business models we were going to talk about, not just a mixing studio, uh, but it just, it just got so good on that one thing. Being in a blue ocean versus a red ocean that we just had to make this it standalone episode.

[00:46:20] And so if you heard us refer to like other businesses that we were going to talk about in the episode, it was because we basically cut those out. So next week we're actually going to pick up on those other four business models and how to make those work. So you're in for a treat. It's not just mixing studios.

[00:46:34] We've got four other business models that will help you get to profitability ASAP. And these are all blue oceans and it's kind of like a retake on an episode. We did way back on. Episode 33. Good Lord. That was 2018 so June, 2018, uh, we put an episode out called five studio niches ripe for the taking.

[00:46:52] This is kind of a retake on that, although it's a little bit more up to date for 2020, and, uh, many, a little bit more off the wall, but again, when you're trying to be in a blue ocean versus a red ocean, it takes some. Thinking outside of the box in order to stand out. So you heard me mention rates for mixing services.

[00:47:08] Um, I gave you some rate ranges for that. If you're still not sure what rates you should be setting for whatever services you offer, this is a resource I haven't talked about in a while, but if you go to home studio rates.com again, that's home studio rates.com I have a rate sheet that gives you rate ranges for five different services.

[00:47:23] And what you should be charging, uh, whether you're a beginner and intermediate or a pro. And if you want that rate sheet, you can just go to home studio rates.com and that'll help you out with that. So as always, next episode, we'll be out Tuesday morning, bright and early at 6:00 AM until next time. Thank you so much for listening and happy hustling.