Two Idiotic Things We Need To Stop Doing If We Want A Better Business (And Life)

123.

Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode one 23

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 cohost. Without the purple shirt today cause he's being a douche.

Christopher Jay Graham, he had to change his shirt out because he had pit stains. How are you doing today, buddy?

Chris: [00:00:36] so much pits, Danes.

Brian: [00:00:38] Yeah.

Chris: [00:00:38] It's like hot in my office today. It's warm in Ohio. Thank God. And are the air conditioning system was not on yet. And I was like, we're getting ready for episode. And I was like, what am I so warm? Am I nervous?

Brian: [00:00:51] I know you get nervous when you talk to me, so it's okay, man.

Chris: [00:00:53] cause I like you so much.

Brian: [00:00:54] Oh buddy.

I'm in like an unreasonably good mood today. You want to know why?

Chris: [00:00:59] What's that?

Brian: [00:01:00] Because we hit our 14 day quarantine period for coronavirus after coming back from Southeast Asia.

Chris: [00:01:04] How many people were staying with you or working at your house right now?

Brian: [00:01:07] Nobody right now, I'm here alone right now. My wife's out with a friend working, but uh, so we hit the 14 day period.

So now I can actually go see my knee and we have a wedding. We're heading to this weekend. So.

Chris: [00:01:17] That's amazing.

Brian: [00:01:18] We are coronavirus free. However, we booked this trip months ago, me and Trevor and Travis from sound Stripe are all supposed to go to Japan at the end of this month. We leave March 31st

Chris: [00:01:28] Veto

veto.

Brian: [00:01:31] We booked our hotel last night. Cheapest shit right now. By the way, you can get some cheap hotels if the government will let us go, we are going to go. That's

Chris: [00:01:39] Oh, I don't like that.

Brian: [00:01:41] I'm going to go brave the Corona virus stuff again.

Chris: [00:01:44] Just make sure I have all the logins for our podcast stuff. Like anything I could need to keep this ship afloat if you die.

Brian: [00:01:51] Or if I'm just under the weather for a minute, I read some interesting stuff where people were just saying like, there's like, you cannot get away from it.

We're talking about on this damn podcast. That's how like over covered this topic is in relation to the news.

Chris: [00:02:03] Yeah. It's everywhere. It went viral.

Brian: [00:02:05] Damn, you took the opportunity and you grasp it. So I was reading it in a newsletter that's not typically about coronavirus and it was his take on it. And it was interesting how this person believed that it's not a matter of if you get it, it's a matter of when you get it.

And this actually goes along with today's topic, which we'll get into in a second. But if you look at the exponential growth that this has right now outside of China, by like summertime, we'll have. Millions of infections around the world, like millions. We're at a 100,000 something like that right now.

Chris: [00:02:33] Well, let me say this one. I don't like this conversation cause I'm a germaphobe.

Brian: [00:02:38] I know. I'm like, and I love it cause I'm not a germaphobe and I'm like, it's so easy to gross you out related to this stuff too.

Chris: [00:02:43] This is true, but  I love this conversation because I'm a germaphobe cause I'm like watching the news and it's like instructions and how to wash your hands.  telling people not to touch doorknobs and I'm like, I'm not alone anymore. I have no

Brian: [00:02:58] rest of the world is temporarily a germaphobe right now, including myself. Like I'm doing that sort of thing. I'm opening doors with like the Palm of my hand or the back of my hand.

Chris: [00:03:06] No, bro. You got to extend your sleeve, like pull it out when no one's looking.

Brian: [00:03:10] I don't have long sleeves on all the time. And then also like I'm hitting buttons with my knuckle or touch screens with my knuckle. Yeah.

Chris: [00:03:16] yes, yes, yes. We're going to save a couple of lives here and for coronavirus when you go to a restaurant.

Brian: [00:03:21] dude, if you are alive right now, you've already heard this stuff, Chris. No, none of this is new information for our listeners right now. We're not a news covering podcast, and if we were, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't be on this podcast.

Chris: [00:03:34] Well, I'll say this like before we kind of move on from this banter,

Brian: [00:03:37] Here's some musings from Chris Graham, the germaphobe.

Chris: [00:03:40] it really does make me feel good to see people's at like. As interested in this stuff as I've been for 30 years.

Brian: [00:03:51] As paranoid. It makes you feel good to, for everyone to be as paranoid as you right now.

Chris: [00:03:54] Well, I'm normal for a little while. I'm obsessing about it less now that everyone else is obsessing about it. And it's been weird. I'm much less concerned about germs lately. And, uh, there's that.

Brian: [00:04:04] Do you have any cases in Ohio yet?

Chris: [00:04:05] Yes, we do. We're supposed to go to see Pete Holmes, the comedian on Thursday, but I don't think we're going to, he's up in Cleveland.

Brian: [00:04:11] If you're in a band right now, I feel so bad for you. Like live music is getting decimated. The touring industry right now, Justin Bieber's tour just got downgraded to smaller venues because of all this. Like, that's devastating man. Like just, oof.

Chris: [00:04:24] That's intense, man.

Brian: [00:04:26] There's three cases in Ohio right now. Chris, you better watch out, man.

Chris: [00:04:28] I know, man. Well, it's weird. It's good for society to think about this stuff because we learned it all this stuff in like seventh grade, like health class. And then everybody forgot except the weirdos. And I think this is good for society to be like, this is not like child's play. This is serious stuff, and we need to take it seriously.

So wash your damn hands and everywhere you go and make sure that you have done a lot of research to figure out the best hand sanitizer that you can keep in your jeans pocket like I do. Hey.

Brian: [00:04:56] How much research did you do for that hand sanitizer?

Chris: [00:04:58] Quite a bit. I'm a big fan of the clear, well, take a little tiny natural, which is great. Alcohol-free it's got a little flip top.

It's like a little Zippo lighter with a little spray bottle.  it's nice cause like I'll pull it out when I'm at lunch with a friend, an offer to spray their hands and then I was like, Oh yeah, thank you. But before I could never offer.

Brian: [00:05:16] Let me stop you real quick with this  and audience. If you're like, guys, shut up, move on. There's a reason I'm mounting Chris about this. How much time would you say you're put into this specific hand sanitizer research phase here?

Chris: [00:05:28] Well, you know, a couple months ago I would have said too much, but now I would say I put just enough research into it,

Brian: [00:05:34] Could you quantify that number?

Chris: [00:05:36] at least 20 minutes.

Brian: [00:05:39] All right, so a couple of things here. First of all, when it comes to hand sanitizer, I treated just like I treat suntan lotion at the beach where I'm at the beach for like four or five days. I don't fuck around with that organic stuff. I do the hard stuff when it comes to like bug spray in Thailand.

I want deep gimme all the DEET. I don't care how toxic it is. I'm going to rub it all over my body. I don't play around with that stuff. So all I want is straight alcohol on my hands. I'm going to lather my hands in the highest percentage alcohol I can find cause I don't fuck around with this sort of stuff.

The reason I bring all this up though, there's a point of this, and it actually ties into our episode today. There is a point when you're researching anything or doing anything of diminishing returns, there's a point of diminishing returns. In today's episode, we're going to explore that topic, why it's relevant to us.

We'll probably tie it back to a few coronavirus stories of some sort because that's what's hot in the news right now. If we've mentioned that word in our podcast, all the search engine things will rank us to the top. I don't know how this works and we'll be rich and famous. Second of all, there's a benefit to you as the listener.

Two understanding this sort of thing because one of the biggest traps we fall into as audio engineers is falling down this over optimization or overdone or over-researched or over edited or over produced rabbit hole. And I think anyone listening can relate to this at some level where we overdid something.

We spent so much time doing something that it was no longer constructive time spent. And I think if we discussed this today, it'll at least be top of mind for you for the rest of the week or the month or the year so that the next time you hit that point where you realize, Oh God, I've been editing this one line on this course with pitch correction for the last six hours.

I should probably stop and move on and do something more productive in my life. If we can save you from one of those binge moments where you're overdoing something, then we will have done our job.

Chris: [00:07:22] Can we make up a new word? Binge editing.

Brian: [00:07:24] Yes. Did I just say that.

Chris: [00:07:26] No. Well  collaborated on this.

Brian: [00:07:29] I'm gonna go back to the recording and see if I said binge editing. If that's the case, I take full ownership over that.

If we can save you from one of those  moments where you're overdoing something.

Chris: [00:07:40] Do not do binge editing. Here's the thing. Here is I think what happens for most of us, and it is absolutely happened to me more times than I can count, is it all being a situation? I've been much better about this over the past like five, six, seven years, but as a younger guy, I would get into these situations where I would be like, Chris.

You're not a real audio engineer, Chris, you're not a real master engineer. I'd be like, Oh yeah, watch me edit the fade out on this song for 45 minutes. See, I'm totally a real mastering engineer because only a mastering engineer would do something that stupid for that long, and I think this is pretty common.

We get in a situation. Where self doubt creeps in.  overcompensate by trying to like show ourself doubt. Like she, you know, I edit these drums. Oh, day long and the notes sound better, but I did it. And that's the important thing. I love what you saying here. We fall into these black holes of work that are really just a form of compensation.

Brian: [00:08:37] Compensation or procrastination.

Chris: [00:08:39] Or procrastination, one of the two. And so, you know, there's the joke about like the short guy with us, expensive sports car, like, Oh, it must be compensating for something. Like, we do that exact same thing in our industry, but we compensate  research through over editing, over mixing, buying more gears. You know, is another thing of how many mikes do you need before it stops helping your studio.

There are plenty of guys listening to this show that are like, Oh, next podcast, let's skip this episode.

Brian: [00:09:09] Yeah. If you're not a regular listener, you're probably like, who the fuck do you think you are

to tell me about my, my collection that I spent $100,000 on? How dare you?

Chris: [00:09:20] Each one of these esoteric ribbon mikes has a slightly different sound.  they are necessary. So yeah, I mean, there's plenty of things where we just kind of go deep when it would make much more sense to have just been like, okay, I've got, you know, these, this is enough. I'm going to move on to the next thing.

Brian: [00:09:36] Yeah. Really quick. Let's just explain just to, we're all on the same page here.  diminishing returns concept  Chris said you read a book that had this phrase, the linear fallacy.

Chris: [00:09:47] Yup. The book is called seeking wisdom from Darwin to monger by Peter Bevin. I'm not recommending that you guys read it.

Brian: [00:09:53] It sounds incredibly dry.

Chris: [00:09:55] It's super dry, but man over researcher Chris Graham in like 2011 I had a pretty good time reading this book.

Brian: [00:10:03] Let me just really quickly overview what this is. Okay, so there's this thing called the linear fallacy, and that is the belief that if I keep doing something, I will get an equal result. As long as I keep doing that one thing. An example would be if I keep pitch cracking this vocal, it's going to get that much better every time.

A better example in the business aspect, if I keep putting more and more money into marketing, I'm going to get the same exact results, but if I go from $1,000 a month to $10,000 a month, I'm going to 10 X my results. That is linear thinking. That is a fallacy. What will inevitably happen is at a certain point, those returns will start to drop off or diminish to where it eventually plateaus.

Meaning you can spend as much money as you want and you're not going to increase your results at all. You can spend as much time doing something or researching something and it's not gonna improve the results at all. And that is the linear fallacy. And that is the stuff that every single one of us, Chris, has done it.

I have done it. You have done it. Jim down the road from you has done it. Bill up the road from you has done it. Denise down the block has done it. Everyone's done it. So it's a matter of acknowledging the fact that we have done this and talking about ways to maybe identify that were in these modes and stop these things from happening because they are ultimately wasting time, effort, money, energy, mental bandwidth.

What have you.

Chris: [00:11:20] So I've had a number of people that have mentioned to me, either through, you know, looking to work with me as a mastering engineer. We're looking to work with me as a business coach that have mentioned, Hey, my wife and I listened to your show all the time. You know, we'll be driving somewhere and I'll put six figure, I'm studio podcast on.

So if you are the kind of prototype normal person on this show, you're a dude, you're married to a girl and I'm sure your wife is like, Oh my God, I hope he's listening to this. I hope he's paying attention cause he does this constantly. Look at each other. Smile. All right, now hold hands for the rest of the show.

But this is something like my wife 16 years ago.  my wife and I have been listening to this podcast. My wife would just be like, she'd have butterflies in her stomach of like, I don't think it's picking up on that. Oh my gosh. Our relationship would be good if he would stop researching everything so much.

So this is really, really valuable stuff. And I know for a lot of you out there, one of the biggest reasons your business isn't doing well is because you don't have enough time because you spend all of it doing stupid stuff.

Brian: [00:12:26] Yeah. So that. Reminds me of the story that I've told on the podcast before, which is the first time I went to Thailand in 2017 right before I went, I spent about 40 hours researching handheld digital cameras. So that I could have great video for my trip, something that was shooting fourK  and had all these aspects that I wanted.

And this is when the uncertainty sets in. And when I'm uncertain about something, my personality is I'm going two research. Not only that, when I spend a lot of money, the more I spend, the more research you better believe I'm going to be spending  figuring out what's the best. So 40 hours in, and I believe if he did the math on how much.

Money I would have made if I'd just put that money into my business. It was like held in comparison to how much that camera cost me. Huge waste of time. I don't even use the camera anymore. Long story short, I took a bunch of video footage on that trip that I never did anything with.

That in a nutshell sums up this black hole we fall into that time will never be regained for me.

I learned nothing. I now have an iPhone 11 pro gear, the gear sled alert. Go for it. It's fine in which I can take video and shoot photos from and they're fine. Matter of fact, the new lady Gaga video that came out this week, and I love culinary. I love Conor that cause it's stupid. The new lady gala video that came out this past week or so was shot completely with an iPhone 11 pro and my wife actually caught it as I was watching it.

She somehow knew just from seeing the video that it was iPhone.

Chris: [00:13:50] I'm gonna watch it today.

Brian: [00:13:52] Yeah. Go for it. It's fine. It's a really weird video.

Chris: [00:13:55] So what you're saying, Brian, is that you should have spent like maybe 20 minutes researching cameras and then you should have stopped.

Brian: [00:14:01] I will acknowledge the first part of that while ignoring the second part of that.

Chris: [00:14:05] And if stuff is a, it's like a feature and a camera about like, you know how big the app aperture is.

Brian: [00:14:09] I get you. Thank you. Honestly, by the end of it, I spent most of my time debating between two or three different cameras. Any of which would have been fine. I could've spent about an hour researching and then just picked one at random and I'd have been fine because ultimately I didn't do a damn thing with the footage anyways, so who cares?

Chris: [00:14:26] Yeah. 40 hours is a lot of time to research that and I love you, man, that that makes me shutter. , eh,

Brian: [00:14:35] Let me just say I make a lot more than $50 an hour, but even if $50 an hour, that's two grand worth of time, which was twice the cost of the camera in and of itself. So I could have skipped it and just bought all the cameras and I'd still be ahead right now.

Chris: [00:14:48] Crazy. Yeah. There's plenty of stuff that I've done like this. I remember. Man. When my wife and I first got married, this is our first year of marriage and long story short, we, we're living in a house. We had to move out in June. Her aunt and uncle were going to be moving, I think it was Thailand though.

It's Bangladesh, and they were going to let us rent their house while they were gone. It was like great house with a huge walkout basement that I was going to, you know, run my production company out of . It turned out that they, her aunt and uncle moved out a lot later than we had thought they would  they're kids.

He came and stayed with them the whole time that we were sort of like crossing over. So there's like nine people living in this house and my wife and I had been married for like six months and we're still figuring out what it looks like to be married. And I just got really stressed and I was working on like people's projects.

And the way that that stress manifested is I would just sit for like 10 hours a day editing  singer songwriter projects that I had been producing. Not making them better, but definitely feeling better about myself cause I'm a hard worker. Pat myself on the back.

Brian: [00:15:52] Yeah. The validation that some of these binge editing or binge research things that we do with the amount of validation you get from that as great. It feels good at the time, sort of. Not really. You actually know that you hate yourself in the moment, but somehow it's justified because now I know more, or now the song is more edited.

Chris: [00:16:10] This is a complicated, deep conversation that could even be its own episode. I think what happens in a lot of times with something like that is you'd feel insecure because you don't feel like you have a real job and people in your life.  at you, like you're trying to produce record. Oh my gosh, what a loser.

And then so you go in and they're like, I'm going to do a bunch of meaningless work for really long time so that I can be like, Ooh, man. Hey, uh, uncle Steve. Ah, man, I've just been so busy lately.

Brian: [00:16:35] I hate that. I hate that. Oh man. I'm just been working. Just been so

Chris: [00:16:40] do grinding, you know, working like 70 hours a week. Uh.

Brian: [00:16:43] one of the best things I found about Tim Ferris, like in the early days is he was very anti hustle, hustle, hustle, grind, grind, grind. He talked about how we were . We're so busy as a badge of honor, I believe it was Tim Ferriss to talked about this.

I was like, this is this weird badge of honor we were, and the reality is like, no,

Chris: [00:17:01] It's not a badge of honor.

Brian: [00:17:02] the guy who talks about a four hour work week. Is way more successful than I'll will likely be in any near future. And the man preaches the four hour work week. Now we all know if you follow the Tim Ferriss, he doesn't actually work four hours a week.

He puts 40 hours a week into four hours of work and then uses the other 36 hours a week to do other things. But the sentiment is there.

Chris: [00:17:23] Yeah, so I think one of the take homes I would love for everyone to have from this episode is just recognizing that bragging about how busy you've been is not. Cool. It's not impressive.

Brian: [00:17:33] I would challenge you to look at what you've been doing during this past week where you're just so damn busy and think through like, is this actual productive work or is this just black hole binge work that is going absolutely nowhere.

Chris: [00:17:47] So I can quote Tim Ferriss statement on this. I think verbatim, what he says about this is that busy-ness is actually laziness. It's indiscriminate action. I think I didn't get that totally perfect, but I think that the spirit of it is there indiscriminate action, meaning that like you weren't intentional about how you spent your time and therefore you have none left.

That makes sense.

Brian: [00:18:09] Oh yeah. I've seen this in my own mixing work. It's like if I fill in certain about a mix or I have some sort of confidence issue of the . Those turn out the worst. Not because I'm a bad mixer, it's because I over mixed. You'll look at those sessions and there will be 10 plugins on every single track. I mix in the box, by the way, but if you were an outboard mixer, you would have run that through every single piece of Rakhi or you own before that vocal went back in into the door.

I overmix I do so much in an effort to make it sound right. All of my best mixes, if you went through any of my sessions and all my best mixes. There's no more than three or four plugins on any given track.

Chris: [00:18:47] Yeah. Same. I did a master for a major label a couple weeks ago with three plugins. I was like, this sounds great. This is exactly what

Brian: [00:18:56] I did a challenge mixed once just for the old internet, so I don't know if you can find it somewhere in my, only beyond YouTube or Facebook. I actually don't know. Anyways, well, where I mixed the entire metal song using only two plugins, and I tried to put it up against the actual mix I did with them with many more plugins than that, and it's still up against it really, really well with just two plugins and it was the stock ProTools.

in the stock pro tools, compression and nothing else on any track.

Chris: [00:19:21] That's impressive. I'd have a hard time doing that in pro tools logic. I think it's better stock compressors, but I digress. Maybe James should edit that out so that everyone still likes me at the end of this podcast. I dunno. We'll see.

Brian: [00:19:35] I like leaving your awkward requests for James added shutout in there

Chris: [00:19:39] I know you do.

Brian: [00:19:40] that people can hear it. I don't ever leave mine and MITRE just cut out

Chris: [00:19:44] Oh,

Brian: [00:19:45] I have the final say, so in the edit.

Chris: [00:19:47] What are you going to do? Well, let's kind of bring this home. So the idea of diminishing returns  Hey, I put an hour of work in it made whatever I was doing, 10% debtor. I put another hour of work in and it made it 1% better. That's a diminishing return. You have to be able to notice.

When you hit a spot of diminishing returns because your time could probably be invested better elsewhere.

Brian: [00:20:10] Let me push back on that really quick though. There are certain things we're, it is well worth putting the extra time in to get that extra one to two or 3% in the right areas, and it takes a very experienced, very mentally mature human being to know what is. The right thing to spend that extra time on, on those diminishing return type things, but most people get that wrong.

I would venture to say that the vast majority of people spend the time doing things, thinking it's going to help the end product when it does absolutely nothing for the end product.

Chris: [00:20:41] So one of the issues with diminishing returns is when you're in that spot where the work you're putting in is not necessarily making it better. It's just kind of, you're compensating for something emotionally here is that a lot of times at that point, the cure is worse than the disease. What that could mean is if you're working in a vocal and you're frustrated because the vocals not perfectly in tune.

And then you get the vocal perfectly in tune. But now the vocal kind of sound, I don't own this like this. All of a sudden, yes, the pitches correct, but now the song sucks. So you fixed it, but you've also broken it at the same time. There are other issues at play and so I think about this idea a lot of like at what point  fixing this, going to make it worse than just leaving it as is and moving on to other things.

Brian: [00:21:27] I think I get your point here where it's like, say we hit a point of diminishing returns. We acknowledge that we realize that and we say we're gonna move on to something else. That just puts us down to another black hole of binge editing or binge adjusting something. For way too long in wasting time. I don't know if it's something you can easily get out of sometimes.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is to roll back a backup save to a session you did earlier that morning. Like sometimes I have to do that. That's the reality of the situation sometimes. So I don't know if there's any one size fits all fix too. Hearing this, but the definite cure is not to just go onto something else and continue that sort of trend.

And I wish I had someone that could sit there and watch me cause I'm very similar to you. Whereas when I get to this mode where I'm like a terrible troglodyte human that's just binge editing something with no solar emotion attached to it, my eyebrows furrow just like yours. Sure. I look like I want to murder my computer when that's the situation.

My wife always asks me if I'm okay and that's what I know. I've hit this point where I shouldn't be doing something.

Chris: [00:22:27] thank God for her.

Brian: [00:22:29] Yeah, and sometimes I still keep doing it. It's just the worst thing in the world. It's sometimes us just getting more emotionally mature and being able to just let something go, and it almost ties to the point of sunk cost bias where you've spent so much time, effort, or money on something that you're unwilling to just let it fully go.

An example would be like if I hit a point in the mix where I'm like, this sucks ass. This is. Awful. I need a roll back to a backup save from yesterday because this is trash that is not sunk. Cost bias. That's me saying this entire day has been wasted. It was better off yesterday. I should roll it back.

Sunk cost is, man, I've been mixing this for the entire day. I don't know if this is any better, but I spent an entire day of my time on it. I'm going to keep going with it. That's sunk cost bias, or I spent $2,000 on this compressor, but this $200 plugin sounds better and it's easier for me to do recall on

I'm going to keep using this $2,000 compressor because I spent $2,000 on it. That's sunk cost bias. And it can definitely play into our emotions and our decisions we make when we're in these binge edit modes are this black hole of research that ultimately leads nowhere where we're unwilling to say, Hey, maybe we shouldn't buy any of these cameras because we don't know what the hell we're doing with any of these cameras because we're not videographers.

Maybe we should just use our damn I-phones because we aren't going to use the footage anyways. That might be the better move. Instead of saying, Hey, I spent 40 hours researching this damn camera. I'm going to Thailand next week, I need to buy one. The more emotionally mature response was acknowledging I should not have bought the damn camera and just use my iPhone.

That's a hard decision to make.

Chris: [00:23:56] Well, it is a hard decision to make. You have to admit a mistake. And I think the tricky thing for me is when I get in that mode of

Brian: [00:24:02] Oh, that ego takes over.

Chris: [00:24:04] the ego takes over, and it's like, well, I have to keep researching because I've already spent three hours on this and if I don't get this perfect, and those three hours were wasted, and you have to be able to walk away and reset and come back.

They're in a place of health.

Brian: [00:24:18] Yeah. If you look at this from an investment standpoint, just some of the best investors you'll ever meet in the world, they still fell at this a lot of times, but more times than not, they will successfully walk away from a bad investment. Instead of doubling down their investment into that bad investment.

Just as an example, cause I'm in the software world, if a venture capitalists invest a bunch of money into a startup that ultimately goes nowhere. Instead of just saying, this startup's not for me, I'm going to move on. They put more money in, in an effort to save that failing startup because they're going to implode and you're going to lose all that money.

Now you just lost twice as much money. Now you're worse off than you would have been if you just walked away from it. It just takes an emotionally mature person to say, I'm willing to acknowledge that I lost all that time, effort, or money. I just put it into this thing. I'm going to be better off for it if I just walk away from it.

Now,

Chris: [00:25:03] So this is really applicable in poker. If you guys have ever played poker before, I'm not a big poker player, but I do.

Brian: [00:25:09] I love poker and I'm very good at it and I don't really play it very much.

Chris: [00:25:13] We should play poker sometime.

Brian: [00:25:14] I'd love to, we'll do it at the six figure home studio retreat whenever coronavirus passes over.

Chris: [00:25:18] There we go. Anyone who survives a Corona virus, you're invited to arbitrary.

Brian: [00:25:21] Yes.

Chris: [00:25:22] It's going to be in the white house

and the rubble of a of society. It's going

Brian: [00:25:26] I love the picture you're painting right now.

Chris: [00:25:28] dibs on the Lincoln bedroom.

Brian: [00:25:30] Yeah. We'll be playing with stacks of hundred dollar bills

Chris: [00:25:36] Okay.

Brian: [00:25:36] or just bullets. That bullets will be currency at that point.

Chris: [00:25:39] There we go. That's true. So a good example of this, in poker, if you've ever played poker, you know, if you are in a mess, the words up here, but if you're the blind, you have to put money in when it's your turn to put money in to start the pot.

Brian: [00:25:51] Yeah. There's things called the big blind and the small blind. It just means you have to put a certain amount of money into play.

Chris: [00:25:56] Yeah. You have to put a certain amount of money. And then what a lot of people will do is they can't make themself fold. Even if they have crap cards when they're big blind, cause like Wabu already put the money, you woo. Well it go, it'd be a waste for me to fold even though there's no possibility of winning.

Like I have to win that money back. That's what Brian's talking about. Sunk costs.  no, no dude. Like you have a two and a three.

Brian: [00:26:20] Two or three is not the worst hand to be dealt. Just say anyways, continue on.

Chris: [00:26:25] You're right, but let's just say it's an absolute trash hand. It's harder and we feel this emotionally when you're playing poker, and that's why when I play poker, I just fold up virtually every time.

Brian: [00:26:37] There's a couple of things with that. We're not going to get too far into this. Two and seven is the worst hand you can get because there's no chance of a straight.

Chris: [00:26:42] This is true. I did win money on a two and a seven the last time I played poker last week.

Brian: [00:26:45] That's great. The problem with folding every time is the fact that eventually the big blind is supposed to get to a large amount, enough, a large enough money. Sure. You can't fall every time. Yeah.

Chris: [00:26:55] I think we're in a black hole of a,

Brian: [00:26:56] We should just acknowledge that this was not the best example to make and move on without ever acknowledging this conversation again.

Chris: [00:27:02] that sounds great. Let's talk about another example. One of the things that we see  awful lot in our industry, especially for people that are starting out . Over YouTubing as far as watching tutorials. And I think what a lot of people will do is they'll sit down and they'll watch like, you know, 20 YouTube tutorials and how to mix a song.

And there's genre. Some people, well, watch those 20 tutorials and they'll start using them to make pretty great mixes. Other people, we'll watch 1000 more tutorials and they don't get any better, and often they get worse. Often it's like, Whoa, Buddha so-and-so said I should do this, and so and so said, I should never do that.

And so and so said, Oh, you have to have that plugin. Boom.

Brian: [00:27:44] You see this in the business world all the time cause I was into a lot of business. Podcasts, and I read business blogs and it's called a wantrepreneur. People that just constantly research, they never take a single action. That is the definition of somebody who is past the point of diminishing returns.

They're just not getting any returns cause not doing anything. But you want to know something. As you were telling this story that popped in my head, this episode in and of itself is hitting a point of diminishing returns.

Chris: [00:28:10] Oh snap.

Brian: [00:28:11] We have gotten our point across to our audience. We're only like 30 minutes into this episode.

If we stop now, this would be one of our shortest episodes. However, I don't see what else we could really cover that's going to get the point home any more than this at this point where it is beating a dead horse. Chris, is there anything else you have that's worth adding to this episode?

Chris: [00:28:30] No.

Brian: [00:28:30] I mean, honestly, that's when we can Mike drop here because this is a good example of saying, Hey, we got the point across.

Anything past this is just wasting your audience's time. Go make money. No,

Chris: [00:28:42] That's awesome. I think this is great, man, and I think let's stop the episode. All right, Brian, good hanging out with you, man.

Brian: [00:28:49] You too, man.

Chris: [00:28:50] Well, see you guys later.

Brian: [00:28:52] See ya. Okay,

so that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Hopefully you got something out of that episode. Hopefully you're going to stop bingeing things and. Endlessly researching things and listening to episodes of podcasts that are no longer relevant to you because you're way past that point.

You just wanted to hear our beautiful voices. However, I do have something important to bring up today, and that is one thing. Chris Graham  is on the call with me still on the outro here. Chris say, Hey to everybody.

Chris: [00:29:24] Hey guys,

Brian: [00:29:26] This might be the first outro we've done together on the podcast 123 episodes, and maybe.

Chris: [00:29:30] it feels great. It's nice over here,

Brian: [00:29:32] Yeah. It's nice. Second of all, we've literally been refreshing this all day, but we just had a wonderful milestone on the podcast and we didn't get to talk about on the episode cause we cut it short because there was no reason not to because it made sense for the episode. Chris, what milestone did we hit on the podcast?

Chris: [00:29:47] bruh. We have half a million downloads on this show.

Brian: [00:29:51] That's true. We actually, I'm refreshing. We have 500,010 right now.

Chris: [00:29:56] Wow. That happened. As we finished that episode, like real time in celebration of that fact, I am going to be doing some free coaching calls.

Brian: [00:30:07] What.

Chris: [00:30:07] If you're interested in doing business coaching with me, go to Chris grand, mastering.com/coaching and you can apply. Free, free mini coaching call and we'll hang out.

We'll talk about your business. I'll ask you a million questions, we'll become friends and we'll talk about what the things that you need to do to work on your business, not for your business. We'll come up with actionables and we'll figure that out. And if it's fun, we can keep doing business coaching and we can talk about that.

So Chris, grandmaster.com/coaching I want to do a lot more coaching this year. I had so much fun and it made me a better man. So check it out.

Brian: [00:30:41] I'll vouch for Chris. Chris genuinely loves doing this.

Chris: [00:30:44] Love it.

Brian: [00:30:45] And one of the reasons I haven't done business coaching is because I'm not sure if I would really enjoy  calls every single like day with people. I've just not, I don't know if I had that personality, I might don't get me wrong. Maybe in the future I'll do it  I just don't think I have the same love for humans that you have Chris.

He does love people. I don't know.

I love my small community of people that I surround myself with, but everyone outside of that, I don't have the same love and care for that I do for people like you, Chris. But I will genuinely say every single coaching call, you're like amped afterwards. Every single like time you talk about it, you have like this childish wonder in your eyes.

So.

Chris: [00:31:19] It's so fun. It's weird. It's not work for me. It's so fun to hang out with somebody and hear their story and talk about, you know, what are the things that are holding them back? What are their superpowers that they're not fully utilizing time. I get off a call, I feel like I just had a pot of coffee. I'm super jazzed about it.

It's so fun. So let's be friends. Chris, grand master, Nick John's slash coaching, do a mini coaching session with me. And, uh, you have to apply. There's like a little video that you'll have to make. Take a one minute application video and a couple of questions we'll hang out.

Brian: [00:31:51] So next week's episode. Chris and I have not recorded yet. We are still kind of planning that, but the idea is to get an interview on the podcast. We'll let you know if that, you'll obviously know if that comes out cause that'll paint. It'll come out. But the goal is, this is an interview of someone who heard an episode.

It took that episode, applied it, and had incredible results with his business. With the topic of that episode.

Chris: [00:32:14] They've made a lot of

Brian: [00:32:16] A lot of money. Yeah. So hopefully we can get that person on the podcast and the schedules work out and stuff. If not, we'll figure something out. Chris and I always do. We can literally sit and talk for hours and not even record it.

Thus the shall Chris and I are so next week, brighten early 6:00 AM until next time. Thank you so much for listening and happy hustling

and one of the reasons I haven't done budget business coach pitching coach,

cut that out, James.