The Recipe For Platinum Records, Number One Hits, And A Seven-Figure Income – With Seth Mosley

This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode one Oh four

Whoa. You're listening to the six figure home studio podcast, the number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio. Now your hosts, Brian Hood and Chris Graham.

Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood and I am here with my bald, beautiful, amazing purple shirt. Shirted glasses for pride. A swagger man. Chris J Graham, how are you doing today, Chris? I'm fabulous. Brian Hood, what's your middle initial? I forget, is it J too? It's no, it's D. David O. D. that's right. For a good biblical name. David. It's a good strong name. That's right. So as a weird accent for that one, I don't know why, Chris, you have all the people that I know. I don't think you have the capability of doing any other accent than your Ohio accent. There's no such thing as an Ohio accent. Yeah, there is. Back me up our guest today, Seth Mosley, there is no such thing as an Ohio accent. Yes, there is a, and before we get to our guest here, uh, I wanna I wanna I wanna hype them up a little bit for y'all if you don't know who Seth Mosley is.

Uh, Seth is the owner of full circle music and I actually I think set them that you through the real estate meetup, music and money, which is a real estate group. You do, you're a real estate investor on the side. We probably won't get to that. But uh, Seth, first of all, sass Guidon songwriter of the year, producer of the year Grammy award winning multiple devil wards. I think your team has had multiple Grammys as well. A, you have golden platinum records to your name, more than 20 number one radio singles. And the most important accolade of Seth Mosley is this may not be true. I don't know. You have to confirm you are on the cover of USA today. Is that correct?

You did your deep homework. Yes, yes, yes. I go, I got, it goes way back to when I was like one year old in the pumpkin show in Circleville, Ohio dressed up like a pumpkin dude. I've been to the Circleville Ohio pumpkin show. That's an esoteric connection for our audience right there. Yeah. So Seth is from Circleville, Ohio. That's kind of where you got your start a town of 13,000 people. I think a good place for us to start here is your first paid project. I like to kind of start that with our guests, especially for going through their story. A was your first paid project in Circleville, Ohio. And if it wasn't, just correct me and we can go from there. And your story, that's a great question. I don't think I've ever been asked that actually. Um, it was, it was in my parents' basement. Um, it was, it was the E P that got me hired at another studio in Dublin, Ohio in Columbus. Um, that's not circle music, was it? No, that was a it, it was called Pendle woods studios with jr. yeah, I know jr CR Pendleton, C R guy. I'm thinking of the, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I haven't talked to him in years, obviously, but yeah, so he was the guy that hired me, but, but it was this EAP

for, um, some guys I went to high school with, my parents were gracious enough to let me set up a studio in their basement, which meant a lot of noise making. Um, I gave guitar lessons to make money to buy recording gear and a lot of it was just for the purpose of, I wanted to record myself. I had all these songs I was writing. I thought I was going to be the next John Mayer playing in coffee shops and all these things. Um, but I was also leading worship in my church and so music was very much a big part. Um, but I recorded this friends band that they were called, they were called killing Santa Clara and it was like a Hoopa stank meets, um, the used like kind of an emo sort of post, a punk thing. And that was really the first full band recording where I was like, I was on a DAW.

Um, I think they paid me $100 a song. So I did five or six songs. So then the whole thing, I made like five or 600 bucks, but I learned so much doing it. And it was the EAP that got me hired by CR at that first CDO. If that band didn't do a Christmas song called killing Santa at some point it was a missed opportunity. I think they may have played five or 10 shows like, and then broke up. So it wasn't, it definitely was not critically acclaimed. What year was this all going down? I'm actually from Dublin. I went to Dublin site at a high school, so when I started recording that probably would have been when I was a junior or senior in high school. So 2004 ish. And then they would have put that out. Like right at the beginning of 2005 I get a random call from the CR guy who saw them play at, um, I'm trying to think what the venues called.

It was one of those grungy high street venues. Oh, well maybe a little brothers, little brothers. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So he saw him play there. They gave him an EAP and he was like, who produced this? It sounds awesome. And um, so I, he gave me a call and was, I was set to go to college down here in Nashville at Trevecca for a music business degree and I get a call from the CR guy out of the blue and he offers me a job like, Hey, you want to come work full time? I'm looking to step more into the business role, grow that, grow it as a business. Um, what you're doing as a producer, engineer, mixer, whatever you're doing is, is, is great. And um, would love to have you come work for me. And so I had to make the decision that my parents were not excited about to bail out of college and decided to just jump straight into doing it.

And that's what I did. So cool. That's the decision I can fully support myself. But you know, that's, that's just me. So just this is, this is very much in line with my story started in my parents' basement. I'd saved up a bunch of money to get started. The first band I recorded was actually 50 bucks a song. I spent an untold amount of hours on that first project, but it set me up for the rest of my career and ultimately got me out of my parents' basement. This you just, how did you, I mean it was just this for new years and you just said, Hey, I can record you and they offered to pay you or you asked for money. How did the money come up in the first place? Well, they knew I was kind of recording my myself, like cause I have this little acoustic E P I used to go by the name of Seth David when I was like a junior in high school.

And so they knew that sounded cool and they had been working with another guy in Sheila coffee who, uh, was a guy by the name of Rick may. I know Rick and yes. Great. So he's kind of Ohio Southern Ohio legend. Amazing drummer, used to play for a band called DC talk. And his is a great producer in his own right. And so he had started working with him. He was having I think a bunch of like health issues or something at the time. And so they needed another producer and um, yeah, they just called me and were like, can we hire you to record us? And I, I I think I just said sure. How's this a hundred bucks a song? Cause there was like no negotiation or anything. It was just, sure, let's do it. So that was a good enough thing. You, you went out on a limb, you said, I want to be paid for this one.

Why didn't you do it for free? First of all, cause I know a lot of our listeners, they, if they're like trying to get their first paid project, it's the money things, this awkward thing. They don't want to really even bring up there. They'd rather just do it for free and just avoid the whole money topic. Well I think they use the word hire. So I guess I just assumed that they were talking about paying me in the beginning. That's a good observation. Yeah. So I the, it definitely was, there was no strategy. If they would've said, Hey would you do it for free? I would have done it too. Cause I was just trying to learn and like figure out is this something I can be good at? So money or not, it doesn't matter the money anyways. What happened was it helped you kind of like, uh, cut your teeth a little bit.

You got noticed pretty early on. Almost a lucky me caught a lucky break. But honestly if you, if you don't put in the work, you're never going to have the luck. And then you get called up by this guy to come work at his studio site unseen. Like he, he just offers you a job without an interview or anything. Is this, we didn't even meet, like we, he, he, he, we, we had a meeting at the McDonald's that was like, hell, any good Ohio transaction goes down or, yeah, he called me first and I think he, I think he invited me to meet him at McDonald's and I think at McDonald's he probably made the formal offer, which, you know, it wasn't like a lot of money, but for me just jumping into getting paid anything to doing it full time and it was, you know, I pretty much eat, sleep's lived there many times.

Didn't ever leave the studio. It was, it was just awesome. I've worked with so many bands and if my research is correct, you were getting paid $1,000 a month. Is that, that's, that's totally accurate. And um, yeah, it's not to say, I mean it w you know, with music it's, it's hard to put a market rate on what something's worth. And I was younger, I did just graduated from high school. So in hindsight, I'm like, man, that wasn't, he was like, he was probably getting a pretty good deal out of that. But, but um, I was also getting a great deal too, cause I was getting to learn and see how he interacted with clients, how he ran the business running rooms. You can say it was a paid apprenticeship or master's degree almost. Yeah. It's really, you know, we can jump into this later if you want to or not, but it's really the precursor to what we do here at full circle now, which is our apprenticeship program.

Hmm. And there wasn't any formal curriculum or training or anything like that. It was all just hands on, get thrown into the gauntlet and, and learn trial by fire. Yeah. So how long did you work for CRS? His name? Is that his name? CR? Yeah, it was about a year and a half. Um, it was what I would lovingly call most of the time, most of the time. And there were a few, there were a few acceptances, but it was a lot of turd polishing. Yeah. Hmm. So that was just kind of the business model was you get abandoned, you charge. I think he, I think he, I think we charged $500 a song. Um, they came in the morning, played us their song. Um, I would help rewrite it or rearrange it. He would obviously be a part of that too. And then we'd go to work just recording it and pretty much by the end of that night they would leave with their record.

Um, and so it was a fast like that's almost like a a an assembly line. Yeah, it was very much I think, I think he wanted to make and um, you know, he can, if he's listening to this, he can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he had the vision of, of really just turning it into almost like a franchise. Like kind of like the McDonald's of recordings to use. Cause eventually it grew to where there was two in Dublin, there was one in Chattanooga, there was one in Atlanta. I think we need to get this guy in. Yeah. I don't think he's still in Columbus. I don't think he does it anymore, but it would be a great, I would highly recommend chatting with them and just cause I'm sure he has a lot that he learned in the process of doing that.

Even if he doesn't do it anymore, we'll take us through, um, your transition from working with him until, uh, what you would consider your big break or your breakaway from him, whichever kinda came first. Was it maybe you work with some old label projects with him. How did you get in your F? Let's just assess, actually go from this. Let's go from this to getting your foot in the door with, uh, your first label project. Yeah, it's at some point, um, and this, this is kind of the case no matter where you are working or what you're doing, but you kind of have to decide, do I want to be working for somebody else or do I want to enter the entrepreneurial role and do my own thing? And so for me, that was starting a band. It actually was a little bit of a kind of path over the river and through the woods.

It wasn't just me leaving and continuing down in production role, it was me leaving and starting my own band. And we toured pretty heavily for like three or four years doing, you know, a hundred, 120 dates a year, 150 dates that are at our highest year. And so the first label thing was actually me. Like it was, I signed a record deal and with the was that was with Warner at the time. And um, so yeah, a lot of the stuff I was, I did work with a producer. I sent my, um, EPK, I don't know if people still make EPKs anymore. I remember those back in the day. I don't have a clue what they do now. Yeah. So I had basically on like nights or weekends at the studio with CR, I would come in with my band and record my stuff and we had, we made an EAP, which, uh, I still listened back to and I'm like, yeah, there's some decent stuff there.

But, but we sent a, um, a, a copy of it down to a producer in Nashville who was really the only guy that I kind of knew, like he had produced another band from Columbus and had a good reputation in the Christian music industry, which I wanted to get into. And he had me down like literally the very next week and I was like, Hey, come over and meet me at Providence. I knew he was doing some kind of like loose A&R for them. Um, but anyway, yeah. So Ian was the producer. He brought me down, um, introduced me to the, all the labels in town, introduced me to this whole business side, which I didn't under, I didn't really know co-writing was the thing. Um, he basically brought in all of these co-writers, we co-wrote the whole record, he produced the whole record and then helped shop it and get a record deal for me.

So that was really the first label experience. But simultaneously while we were touring, um, I got, I was still like recording indie stuff on the side just to kind of like pay the bills cause I never made any money doing the artist thing. And so one of those things was a girl named Grace Campbell who was this 14 year old kind of pop singer who had never really even recorded before, let alone had a music career, but her dad was gotten by the name of West Campbell and I knew that he owned and managed this band Newsboys that I grew up listening to was actually my first CD when I was a kid was, was the Newsboys in 1995 and so that turned into Peter, who was the former front man of the Newsboys hearing what I was doing with grace and he's like, Hey, let me play drums on that.

And so I went over to his house. Um, it was also crazy at the time because these were the guys I was like grew up sort of idolizing. Hmm. And so I wonder in his house, he was, I, I was tracking drums. He was playing, we were hanging and I got to play up some music and um, was playing him some of the songs that I had from my band. And he was like, why don't you try this out for the, the next potential like guy who's auditioning for Newsboys, which was Michael Tate from DC talk. And so I had to sort of make a decision at that time, do I want to keep these songs, uh, you know, effectively for myself or, um, and I was working with a co-producer and co-writer, uh, water taro at the time too. So definitely gotta get his name out there.

Um, but had to make the decision, do we want to let these effectively go to Newsboys? And eventually we made that decision with the kind of little stipulation, can we get a shot at co producing it? And if you don't like it, you don't have to pay us. Um, but needless to say, that turned into really what was kind of like my first gold record, first number ones for the label thing. Um, and so yeah, that was the whole full circle moment that then inspired us to start full circle music. It was just all these artists like Newsboys that I had grown up listening to and then got to work with, you know, first CD I got when I was a kid, first label record I produced in Nashville, same band. Um, it was just a crazy season.

So just to kind of recap this, you, you got started your parents' basement. You, you just connected with the, a band in your high school got paid 100 bucks a song, you got heard, you got noticed and then you got hired by a CR at that studio. You worked with them for a number of years and ultimately broke away to start your band. And then from there you use those connections, not, not used, but you made the most of those connections that you made as an artist, uh, to start your production career and mostly through songwriting. I guess because you are, I guess from what I've seen, you're a songwriter first and we'll talk about that more in a minute, but you took that opportunity to pitch yourself essentially for this label project that ultimately turned into a gold record. Was this the first time you had tried to land any label project as a producer or a songwriter for that news voice record? Yeah, it was that the Newsboys record, the first one you really had attempted to get your foot in the door with the label.

Um, as far as like getting paid by a label and having stuff put out on a label, the Newsboys thing was the first thing. So like you said, it's, it's, I mean both of my, like I kind of look at these like catalyst moments in my career cause there was a lot of stuff that we didn't even talk about that happens in between there, which is what most people get lost in is, is the weeds. But really I kind of look at it as those like two or three catalyst moments. Um, for me it was getting that like recording that first band like you mentioned, um, in my parents basement, getting hired full time by doing that, starting the band, signing the record deal and then getting to do the Newsboys record. Like those were like just massive catalysts, uh, experiences that sort of propelled it into the career that I have now.

And since then you've worked with many, many labels, many, many big projects. You've sold a lot of records with your name on it as credit's a songwriter or a producer is full circles at Mosley. For someone listening right now who is probably at that mid point in their career, they're trying to find that catalyst moment to get their foot in the door with the labels. And this is something that I don't have a lot of experience with myself, so I'd love to get your input on. What are some things that people in that position can do to try to create their own catalyst moment with the record label?

I think everything comes back down to relationships. Like it almost doesn't matter to a point. Like every year there's, there's sort of a talent quotion that quotient that you have to have that's like if you're up to here, you know, 50%, 60%, whatever it is. If you're, than most people, that's good enough. And from there it's just being the person that they want to have in that room. Like it's just being a good hang. It's establishing relationships. Every one of those catalyst moments that I mentioned like wasn't something that I went out and did. It was just relationships. It was like, um, I got pulled into those things. It wasn't me. I didn't even know what the word marketing meant until like starting our Academy, like, you know, three, four years ago. Um, but all of that stuff was marketing. It's literally just one-to-one hanging out marketing as opposed to going out and buying Facebook ads and doing that kind of stuff.

So I think that's the most effective thing. Um, if you're really good at social media, then you can kind of brand yourself that way. But I don't think labels are actively out scouring Instagram or YouTube to find and the next producer for their project. That's just not what they do. Yeah. Since you're saying that the relationships are such an important part, do you think you could have gotten to where you are? Had you not been in Nashville? Definitely not. No. Yeah, definitely not. And that's one thing. We talk about that a lot. I, I don't ever encourage people to move too early. There's a lot of great examples. There's a guy I've been working with now in the country world named Rodney Clawson and who's approaching I think 30 country number ones now as a songwriter. And um, he didn't move to Nashville until after he had his like 10th number one.

He just came like basically for a week, a month for like years. He lived in Texas, a girl that we've been working with recently on in the country world, Emily Anne, who was on, on the show, that voice, she lived with her aunt and Murphysboro, which was like an hour and a half or something like that. So every day for her writing sessions and she signed to like Blake Shelton's management company and like super well connected, has stuff going on. Um, a lot of people make that move maybe before they're ready to, and then they ended up having to get a job at, you know, whatever Starbucks or what not, which is not a bad thing, but they just don't have time to invest or to commit to doing music. So I think figuring out your life situation is as important as making that move. Um, for me, I, I, it was just a kind of, uh, you know, for lack of a better term, just a God thing that I had an opportunity to live with a guy down here for free and, um, was able to work on that news was record.

Again, I wasn't making tons of money doing that either. It wasn't like, you know, at the beginning, like the royalties on the back end definitely are very real. But at the time it wasn't a lot. So I think you have to be present to win no matter what market you're trying to get into. If it's hip hop, you, you need to be in Atlanta. Um, if you're wanting to get into country Christian music, you need to be in Nashville. Do you want to be in pop or film and TV, you know, Nashville's becoming a viable option. LA is really probably the front runner would not advise moving to New York. A lot of people kind of have that misconception, but it's, there's not a lot going on there right now in music, music side of things. Toronto, Toronto also has a pretty good scene to you. Yeah.

One thing that can be a detriment to our, that we do as a podcast is since we focus so much on business, naturally we focus a lot on money and getting paid what you're worth as a producer, engineer and mixing person or a recording studio or whatever it is that you do. And I think one of the things that strikes me as interesting in your story is all along the way, money was the last thing on your mind when it came to your career. And I think ultimately that's paid off in many, many multiples of all the projects you are underpaid for or not paid for at all. You have more than made up for that in your career. Um, for people that probably put too much emphasis on money, what can you say to those types of people that maybe they need to take a step back and have an attitude like you about projects?

I think you can start to become picky and choosy after you achieve a level of mastery in a field, but until the, until you're at that point you really just need to be a great person to work with. Like, and being easy money-wise sometimes. Is part of that just not being overly stingy about, you know, am I getting the best deal points? Is my attorneyX , Y, and Z. I mean, believe me, we have, we have, you know, great attorneys that work for us and when you get into working with big worldwide corporations, you have to have that. But in the beginning, I just think it's so much about building your portfolio. We, we kind of talk about it a little bit in terms of baby steps and like, you know, like Dave, Dave Ramsey has the debt snowball. Yep. We're, we're looking at it in terms of baby steps in your music career and when you're at, you know, let's say there's seven baby steps, if you're anywhere from one to six money is, should not even be on your mind, like make enough to live. But really what you're building is your brand, your reputation, what's your brand is your, is your reputation and your relationships. And so like up until your, a lot of people want to get to chapter 30 really quick and, and not realize that there may be a chapter five or chapter 10 that you can't compare your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 30 and try to do business like the person who is at chapter 30.

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's good advice for anyone listening right now. And I'd love to move into kind of a different topic of liberal right now. Uh, but this is relevant to all of our listeners right now who are already full time. You're already at the higher levels. Something that has impressed me about you more than anything else I think is your team, the people you've surrounded yourself with in all aspects and and going back, I met you originally at the music and money meet up here in Nashville, which is like a monthly meetup the first Wednesday of the month. It's like a real estate and real estate investment group. Uh, and if you're in Nashville by the way, you should be going to that. It's where a bunch of musicians and people in the music industry, producers, engineers, all get together and just talk about money, which is a topic that people, people in our industry do not talk about enough and a but I met you, I met you with that.

And through those interactions over the years that I've been going to that group, I haven't been in awhile, but over the years I've been going to that your team is that every one of those and they're the ones basically running the show and I imagine your studio is run the same way where you are, they're doing the big picture stuff. Doing the CEO work and your team is there making sure their specific job is getting done. And I would love for you to get into a little bit of team building cause this is something that I personally struggle with. I am, I should have a much larger team than I have right now and it's because I'm not great at building. I'm not, I think, I think my biggest weakness is understanding, spotting the talent in people. And I think you understand that better than probably anyone that I know right now.

Man. Well I appreciate you saying that and definitely learning it's, it's a part of team building. Building is developing an entirely separate skillset, which is people management. Um, a lot of people who are probably listening to this would, are just not like the idea of having people report to you and P and you being responsible for somebody's payroll and you having to have hard conversations which go with people management. I mean that's a big part of it is just Hey, when there were performance issues sitting down and like talking about it, but also making sure it's a friendly, fun environment. I mean all that stuff is a completely different skillset than producing music or then, you know, recording bands or writing songs. So it's very much been something that I've had to learn, um, that I just had no idea about. I mean, I, you experience parts of it with a band and I had, you know, kind of a crash course in it then, but I, I was really bad with, with the people side of it back then.

Like there's so many things that I would've done differently, but nowadays a lot of that is, yeah, it's like you said, it's, it's, it's looking for talent really more than talent. Even just looking for passion. I guess I'm looking for people who go out of their way to raise their hand and say, I, I wanna work with you, want to be on your team. Um, I think the worst place to find team members and potential whatever recruiting if you're higher looking to hire somebody is, is unlike job boards. Like anybody that's on indeed or whatever. Basically all the talented people are, are working somewhere. Like that's just the reality. Um, so you just kind of have to realize, that's not to say you can't find talent on a job board. You can, but that's the last place I want to look.

Walk us through your first couple of hires in the studio. What were some of the first people on your team that you hired and what do they do for you?

Yeah, so the first full time hire is my co-producer who's sitting right on the other side of the glass here, X O'Connor, um, Mike X. O'Connor. And uh, he is also a Grammy award winning producer, engineer, multiple doves, multiple number ones. Um, but start as an engineer and had engineered all these projects that I really liked and was working with another, a couple of great producers that I, I really loved and looked up to. And, um, I had produced the first Newsboys record I was going in to do the second one. And I just felt, man, like even going back and listening to some of those like my engineering skills are so subpar.

Um, I, I just don't know. Like it's, you know, when we did that first, first Newsboys record that funny enough, the gold record, I mean we were using a PreSonus fire pod and I book and a bunch of Beringer mikes, I w I the gear sled alert would have gone off right there. But that is such lackluster gear that it won't even, it won't even go off. That didn't set up a better song alert. That's like a forum where they, the gear that you make fun of on. Um, but that's, that's what I started on and like was just, I didn't know anything about phase. I didn't know. Like I knew, I knew I had seen like by being in studios and recording my record with my producer, I learned a lot from that process. Um, and of course from working in the studio in Columbus, but there was a lot of stuff even there that I'm like, wow, we were doing this stuff like really ghetto compared to how it's compared to how it should be done.

Uh, but like getting drum sounds, the thing that I think I did do a good job and still sort of rely on is just a, an intuition of like trying to find, like you said, the right talent, the right players. And I knew when when a performance wasn't right, there was just, there was elements of like when I would get one drummer in on the same set of gear, the same mix, and then a different drummer the next day and it sounded entirely different. I realized then that the gear really is so secondary to who's playing [inaudible]. I'm having a great drummer, having a great vocalists, having great guitar tones and that stuff that like, you know, gear gear can kind of help put the last like 1% on it, but it's, it, it was so much, um, so much bigger than that. And so anyways, going off on a tangent to, to circle back around, to answer your question about team building was hired X O'Connor.

Um, I realized I needed help in that area of engineering. Um, he had a studio, he re he tracked drums. Um, I went over to his place and recorded this song called God's not dead on drums and I had pneumonia at the time. I literally was driving, he, his studio was in West Nashville off of like Charlotte I think. And I had to pull over to throw up like two times driving from East Nashville to West Nashville to record this thing. And I was laying on the back of the couch like in the back of the control room, just like saying, yeah, that sounds good. Do another one. But X kept the room running so good. And like, I just knew from that that moment it's like there are just like you, there are so few people in music who understand the business side. There are so few people in music and especially engineers who understand that people side and like the relational side and running a room, being a great hang, keeping a safe place and not making people feel less than in inferior.

Um, and I just knew the X was such a good part of that. And so, um, I was like, this is the guy that I want to work with. I'm very competent in his craft, obviously has great ears, understands how to use gear, has used everything from, you know, cutting tape to, you know, nowadays working on Apollos and everything, everything in between. So he was the first hire, um, started as an engineer. I eventually sort of moved him up to co-producer with me because a lot of the stuff he was doing was effectively that is production, you know. Um, so that was my first hire. Second hire was actually a personal assistant. Um, I went on a real estate investors cruise with, uh, with, with another group called the real estate guys and they did this other, another, it's a real estate podcast. It is, yeah.

One of the biggest, yeah, one of the biggest, yeah, they're great. Robert Helms and Russell Gray. But I went on this cruise and they did this whole exercise at the end of it, um, called the one thing, and it's this book by Gary Keller. Highly recommend people read it. Love that book. That's a great book. But that was the question was the focusing question is what's the one thing that you can do such that by doing it everything else will become easier or unnecessary. And for me, I realized at the time there was so much stuff that I was spending time doing that I didn't need to be spending time doing and how you value your time is really key. So I realized I needed a personal assistant. Um, if I needed to be on the phone with Comcast for three hours to argue about my internet bill, that was probably not my best use of time.

And it also was negatively affecting every other area. Cause after you talked to Comcast for three hours, the last thing you want to go to do is write a song. Or maybe you do, maybe you want to write a really angry something. I know it's good if you're producing and writing metal songs, great for metal music, great inspiration for that. Um, so he was my second hire, a full time hire. Um, yeah, it was that the question was the first two. Yeah, the first couple. And then I love to talk about what is it you do now in the studio? Like what is your main day to day? Are you doing any of the actual technical work of turning knobs and, and uh, pressing buttons and hitting record and editing or are you just kind of sitting in the back directing things now? No, the way that I enjoy doing production, uh, it depends.

Like today I'll be working with an artist that flew in to work with us and I'll be on the other side of the glass with X who will be running the session. So yeah, I'll be more kinda sitting back in, in that regard. And he drives, you know, so to speak. Um, I may pull her in like after he gets a lead vocal from her and work with her as he's like comping on like for instance, like she's a pop artist, so I may like create some like Melodyne harmonies or some vocoder stuff with her. Like I'm, I'm pretty hands on in terms being able to do all that stuff. It's just like if, if you were to ask me the polar patterns and like gain staging and phase relationships, I, I that that goes way over my head. I just more used my ears for that stuff.

Um, but it really depends. Like when I'm writing songs, a lot of that I would consider pre-production because I'm either have already prebuilt a track or am building a track as we're going and recording the vocal, recording the harmonies, throwing some instruments on it. Um, so that part I'm very hands on, but it's in kind of the last 50 or 40% that I kind of defer to, uh, X to really land the plane. How important would you say the songwriting process is in the studio that you take part in? How, how important has that been to your, your success with full circle music? Well, for me it's huge. Um, and this, this is maybe a good little business nugget for people out there. Um, if you're S if you're, if you're a songwriter out there who's listening and you have some semblance of production chops developing, that can be one of the greatest investments of time that you can make is learning how to produce.

It doesn't have to mean like mastering gear and going to full sailing and a degree and all that, but as long as you can run a DAW, get fast at programming, get good at editing, get decent at mixing. Then those two things for me have fed each other. Like being a songwriter turns often into me getting production work and into us getting production work because they liked the demos that were turned in and then they just hire us to finish it out. The other way around is true too. So I'm producing a full record for this. This artist named Lincoln Brewster right now, who's this like guitar phenom? He used to play for Steve Perry from journey on, dude, they got whales, he's got his own fender signature Strat. So working with him, we're often hired to produce just songs that I had no nothing to do with the writing it, which is totally fine too.

But those always turn into me being able to write with the artists too because you're building trust with the artist and you know what the record needs and it kind of, they kind of feed each other. So for me that's like the magic combination as being able to have both. And I think there's probably a lot of people listening out there who could be doing the same thing too. It's not, you know, songwriting is not something that you just, if you're a producer and you're focused on becoming a producer, you can't just like overnight become a great songwriter. It's like it's a craft like anything else, but they're both really, really closely knit skills that I think business wise can sort of feed each other. And you know, there's been seasons when my songwriting royalties are really high and my production royalties are low. And then there's seasons when the production pays really well and the production royalties are high in the songwriting is lower.

So for me it's been kind of a, I guess a diversification thing, if you can call it that. I love that. I think that the thing is such a powerful concept because no matter what you do, there's going to be seasonality to it. There's going to be ups and downs and you can start to do level it out by hat, by mastering one thing, you know, niching down to one thing and then adding another piece on top of that. Yeah, absolutely. You got to master something, like at some point you got to focus, but for me, they've always just been so hand in hand and I think there's a lot of people listening out there who are maybe writers who could develop their production shops and that would really help their entire business. One of the things we've talked about in the podcast in the past I think was, I've always kinda had this thought of like, man, if I could trade in 50% of my engineering skills for 50% better songwriting skills, like deal every single time. Cause songwriting is, it's the magical thing. Like it is the great equalizer. Yeah. It's just a different path. I mean engineering in some ways it can be a little more, you know, maybe you may maybe have more stability cause you just make money per hour. Like, like anything else, songwriting is very much a risk. You never know going in, you know, I mean most publishers in Nashville, we'll say if four to 6% of their songs are genuine generating the, the vast revenue for the entire company.

Yes. The previous principle. But like even even more extreme, it's not 80 20 it's 95 five 95% of your work is producing no income for you and 5% of your work springing in all the income.

Yeah, exactly. And that's where publishing deals coming in. And we can kind of get down a whole nother tangent on that. But so yeah, I think that's, that's a valid thing, Chris, that you said that, you know, I mean songwriting, if you're talking about in engineering, like even just what, what that even meant, like what does that word mean? Like engineering when it started, people were literally building their own gear because it didn't exist. Um, yeah. And nowadays engineering means in some cases a whole lot less than it used to, but basically the engine, the, the, the, the extent of the engineering skills that you need nowadays to have a baseline career in it are pretty minimal. I mean, if you can run logic, if you can run pro tools, if you understand how to even work plugins on universal audio, I mean, that's effectively a, if you're a good editor, I mean that, that those are kind of the main quote-unquote engineering skills nowadays. You don't have to be able to solder anymore. Yeah. You don't have to solder, you don't have to run a console. You don't have to repair LA to a compressors that are going out. You don't have to do any of that stuff anymore.

I want to go back to something you said, a quote you said earlier, which is if you're, if you're better than most people, that's good enough and it's surprisingly easy to be better than most people because the majority of people don't put in the work to be even mediocre at something, and I want to say that if all you're focusing on though is being better engineer and learning all the technical specifications of things and the polar patterns and all of that, the tech specs, the stuff that you've just said that you ignorant of things that you don't really even know much about. If that's all you focus on, there's not a lot of pay out there for that sort of thing. The whole technical side is, I want to say one of the less important things now it's more about the creative side of being a good producer, being a good songwriter.

If you, if you're working with clients in the studio and being a turd polisher, your whole life can only get you so far. Yes, you can make a living off of it, but I don't think you could ever get to the point that Seth Mosley is at with full circle music. If all you do is Polish turds all day, every day, and I think that that is probably because of your songwriting abilities first and foremost as an NGO or as a producer, your ability to spot weaknesses in songs, fix those with the artists without stepping on toes, without offending people, without insulting people. Doing it in a way that is people focused is probably, I would say without knowing everything that goes on in your studio, I would say there has to be one of your biggest things of success there. Yeah,

I mean I, I've, I've, I'm definitely can't take credit for the quote, but it's my favorite one to go back to all the time when we're talking about gear and gear slots. I mean the best piece of gear is a great song. Oh, and that's it. If you have a crap song, it doesn't matter what you do in production, it's still not going to be a hit. That is an amazing quote. I think a lot of that for, you know, for you guys that are listening comes down to as an engineer, being able to like get your preempt to sound good and get your mic placement. Like these are valuable skills, but they're far less rare than a great song. Yes, great. Songs are rare hit songs are rare for sure. Yeah. And rarity and value of these things are tied together. Gold's worth a lot cause it's kinda hard to get.

Yup. Right. Exactly. Gold was just laying on the street. It would no longer have any value. Funny kind of story with that to go full nerd on you guys here, I think I've mentioned this before, but when aluminum was first discovered, this is like hundreds of years ago, it was worth far more than gold because there was no like purified aluminum. One guy figured it out and so the story goes, this guy figured out a purify aluminum. He showed like the King, I forget which country it was and the King immediately had him killed. And I was like, okay, we're going to, we've locked down, we own aluminum and now aluminum is literally trash. You know, it's, yeah, it's a cheap as all get out. It's a, it's something that used to be valuable but then became less rare and got less valuable than the more common it got. And songwriting is just one of those things where AI and you know, computers and whatever, it's never going to connect with a human being and create goosebumps in the way that other human beings can connect with other human beings through songwriting. So it's fascinating stuff.

Yeah, exactly. That's, that's man, you've hit the nail on the head there. So Seth has been nice enough to work with me. I, I came up with a date that would work for all of us and uh, Seth is putting on a song writing training live on November 13th. And I'd love for you to tell people about what they can expect from this. And just, just to clarify, Seth written 25 number one songs and he's going to help teach our audience how to use some of the things that he has learned to hopefully up your game as a producer or a songwriter in the studio. Seth, can you tell him what to expect in this training?

Yeah, well, once again, I'll, I'll go back to it again. The best piece of gear that you can have in a studio is a great song,

which by the way, you're the first to have that quote on this podcast. So we're going to give you credit for that quote. Okay. Well, I'll take it.

Um, but yeah, the best piece of gear is a hit song. And so if you're trying to establish a business, having a recording studio, really the gold standard of what's going to get you more work and more work and more work is not what gear you have. It's how many hit songs to be produced or written, co-written. And it doesn't even mean that you have to yourself write them, but you being able to identify them, spot them, um, help make tweaks on artists that come in and take them from good to great. That is the skillset that's going to give you that six figure home studio and uh, and can take it to seven figures. You know, that's, that's the big thing. Cause you know, when you're getting those upfront fees, I mean that's part of it, but really where the money is, is in a hit song and it's on the back end.

Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think, I don't think you can go to seven figures as just a normal home studio. I think having songwriting royalties on hit songs is the only way to go to seven figures in the recording business.

Well, songwriting and production royalties. I mean there's, there's been single songs that I've personally made in the six figures on just production royalties alone. And, um, it's, it, it can be done, but you really have to know the language of what makes a hit song a hit song. So after having written 800, 850, so songs that are published in my career, um, you start to recognize patterns. You start to figure out what are the things that separate a hit song from a crap song. And the other thing you start to realize is that it doesn't matter what genre you're talking about. These principles literally are the same whether you're in the hip hop world, whether you're in the metal world, whether you're in the film and TV world, whether you're in Christian polka, whether you're in whatever a hit song is still a hit song because it's, it's, it's got really three key things and that's what we're going to be talking about in the webinar is the hit song formula. What are the three things that make up a hit song? So that's what we're going to be diving into. Um, on that webinar. I'm really excited about it. Um, we always give away free stuff on our webinar. Um, we give away free samples, which are a huge part of gear nowadays is your sample collection. So

I'll be on the webinar as well and I'll try to pick, uh, obviously, will I be answering questions at the end, I imagine, right?

Yes, absolutely. And, and throughout too.

And I might have some questions for you during the webinar as well. So I'll be there trying to try and to, uh, take out what I can from the producer, engineer home studios standpoint, point of view. I'm going to show up to this. I'm going to watch now going to need, I need to learn some more songwriting tips in how I can make my kids fall asleep faster. Playing songs for them tonight.

Yeah. So, so that's what we're going to be talking about. Really excited about that November 13th, 10:00 AM central time. Where can people go to sign up for that stuff? Yeah, that's just at the very easy to remember you RL if you type it in your internet browsing machine songwriting, training.com, it's just that songwriting training.com

and if for some reason you can't get that to work, maybe you don't know how to spell that, right? Uh, it's w, R I that's not R. I. G. H. T. if you struggle with that, it'll be on our show notesPage@thesixfigurehomestudio.com slash one zero four all the links from this episode as well as the song writing, training.com URL will be there. So go there, sign up for it. It will be a one week and a day from now. I believe this comes out Tuesday. I don't have my calendar up, but it should be a week and a day from now. Otherwise I've failed miserably as a podcast host and that gives you plenty of time to get signed up and make sure you show up for this. It'll be a lot of fun. So that's given some stuff away. I'll be asking the hard questions and hopefully we'll learn a lot of T to up our song writing game. Anything else? We're actually working. People go to find out more about you. That's an important part of this.

Yeah, I think, I think the best place they can go is literally just, you know, being a fellow fellow podcaster, they can check out our podcast. Ooh, I think that's a great introduction to our world a little bit. It's made it in music.com. Um, our company website is full circle music.com if people want to go a step deeper, but I think the podcast is a really great place to start. Um, obviously people that are listening to this are interested in podcasts. A lot of what we dive into is, um, you know, it's a lot of the business side, but we interview every, everybody from producers to songwriters to music industry attorneys. We have a lot of, uh, major label A&R executives who are on this season. Um, we had, uh, the first episode of this past season was with Lizzy Hale from the band hail storm. Um, we had John Cooper from skill it on last season. So just so much stuff people can learn as well as learn about what's going on in our world too. And that's just, that made it in music.com. Great. Yeah. And people can also, not, not to throw too many things at you. Um, feel free to edit any of these out. Okay.

We're not editing anything out Seth. Everything's there.

So yeah, full circle music.com. Um, we, we offer a lot of free resources including free music production training, uh, on our website too. So those are kinda the three things they can obviously show up on the webinar. November 13th, Saarinen training.com. Check out the podcast. That's it. Made it music.com or just head straight over our website full circle music.com and we have some free production training there. People are interested. That's great man. Thank you so

much for coming on the podcast, Seth. Well thanks for having me, man. You guys are, you guys are doing awesome work. I love it.

[inaudible]

so that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I think one of my favorite things about Seth is that there was nothing special about his connection to the industry. He started in a, in a basement, his parents' basement in Circleville, Ohio with a town of 13,000 people smaller than my town in Athens, which is where I got my start in my parents' basement. Our town at least had 20,000 people in it and he was just willing to put in the work and along the way he had some breaks and I think you can't look at any, any successful career out there and not see some breaks, but I think some, you could call them lucky breaks, but as I mentioned in the episode, there is a certain amount of luck that comes down to work, meaning the more you put in the work, the more lucky breaks you get.

If Seth wasn't willing to get started despite being in his parent's basement, despite not having the best gear, despite his inexperience with what he's doing, if he wouldn't have been willing to do that in the first place, he would've have had the lucky break that got him hired Jay, our studio. I think another takeaway is what Seth said were just just be good enough. Just be past a certain threshold. You don't have to be the best at something, you just have to be good enough and if you're good enough, it comes down to just being the person who they want to hang out with the most. It's the social skill aspect and Seth is from all reputation. I've never worked with them in the studio, but from all reputation I've heard from everyone. He is a pleasure to work with. He is professional, he is a good hang and he doesn't step on any toes and I think that's one of the things that people don't think about is how important the social skill aspects are.

If you go to Nashville, which is where I am, it's where Seth is. If you go to Nashville, you will notice a pattern everywhere and that is that. It's not always the most talented person that succeeds. You see it in live music with the hired hands, playing guitar, bass, drums, whatever. For some of the country acts around or any of the bands, it's not the most talented ones that make it. It's the ones that you can tolerate. Being on a tour bus together for five weeks at a time. It's in this session, musicians and studios, those are the most talented period. It's those who are good enough and a great hang. It's the ones that the studio, the people hiring the session musician to want to hang out with again and again and again. And you also see it with producers and recording studios. It's not the most talented always.

It's the ones who have the social skills to have a magnetic personality. And I think Seth is a good example of someone who isn't the best at everything. He knows what his strengths are and that songwriting, first and foremost, it's building a team second of all. And his social skills play a huge part in all of this because he wouldn't be able to manage his team if he didn't have solid social skills and he wouldn't be able to maintain the relationships he has with these platinum selling artists and these major labels if he didn't have his social skills in order. So all of that being said, Seth and I are running a workshop for songwriters. I, I'm not, I'm not teaching anything cause I don't know. The first thing about writing songs at the level of that set is I'll just be there for let's just say support and to answer questions and to try to translate anything to the average home studio owner.

I here and there. I don't know how much talking I'll do but Seth will be leading the whole thing. I'll be there just hanging out. I guess Chris Graham will be there as well. He said and you can get to that workshop by going to song writing, training.com and that is again on November 13th at 10:00 AM central standard time which is 11:00 AM Eastern time and also 8:00 AM on the West coast. Not ideal or 4:00 PM November 13th if you're in a Western Europe. So I hope to see all of our podcasts listeners there. If you do any sort of songwriting whatsoever or you are a producer that does not do much of the writing aspect, this is a must attend training for all of you and hope to see you there. Again, songwriting training.com thank you so much for making it to this part of the episode, the very, very end. Only our loyal fans make it to this part. If you listen to every week, you have my utmost gratitude. I'm so thankful for you. Until next time, thanks so much for listening and happy hustling.