Using Instagram Marketing To Build Recurring Income As A Music Producer – With Mark Eckert

This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 68

six figure home studio podcast, the number one resource to running a profitable home recording studio. Now your host, Brian Hood and Chris Graham. Welcome back

another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood. I'm here with my cohost, Chris Graham. Chris, how you doing? Hey Buddy. Oh Hey guys. It's good to be here and I'm here with our guest today. Mr Mark Eckert. What's up? How's it going? Well, it's going great now because we have it on the podcast. Mark is an accomplished producer out of Charlotte, North Carolina. He's a dear friend of mine. I've known him for, I don't even know how long I've known you now, mark, but it seems like my whole life. Yeah, it's felt like eternity for sure. Too. Damn Long. Too Long. Yeah. Yeah, and so he wanted to get you to on the podcast today to talk about a few things that I think will be extraordinarily interesting to our audience. It has to do with recurring income and it has to do with Instagram marketing.

Mark has managed to build himself a recurring revenue studio, making thousands of dollars a month consistently with over two dozen people paying him recurring income every single month. These are pop artists that are paying him every single month to produce their music and you find all of these clients on Instagram. So I think this is gonna be something very relevant to everyone listening today. But before we get into that today, I want to ask you sort of how you got your start in audio. I know that you started your musical career out basically you went to Berkeley, right? Yup. Your story with how you attended Berkeley is actually really interesting. Why don't you share with our audience how you attended Berkeley for? Was it very cheap or free or something like that? You did something really scrappy that I think our listeners might enjoy listening to. When I was applying to schools, I didn't really give a shit about graduating or anything like that.

My mom was in the music industry and her whole thing was just like building that work, building that work. So while everyone else was like, I'm going to go for four years, I was like, I'm going to get everybody's phone number while everyone was drinking and doing drugs, you know, first couple of weeks I was like, I'm going to go to every fucking room and meet every single person, get their phone number, become their best friend, become mommies. So after about a year, my dad actually lost his job and where most people would, you know, the time's up, I'm screwed, blah blah blah. I was like, fuck it, I'm going to scrap it. And kinda just figured out that all of these teachers were essentially contractors of the school. And I realized like I ran the numbers of what my tuition wise, my tuition for lessons, it turned out to be like $250 an hour, which is crazy. So I really just email to all of them when I was back home in Charlotte and I was like, Hey, what's your hourly rate for teaching? And they all message me back and it was like, you know, 50 to 70 or something like that. And you know, I would travel up like every other month or something. And it was funny because the way that Berkeley works a lot of like is that you

kind of work your way up to the more prominent teachers. So at Berkeley, you know, you had like incredible like household names of drummers or engineers or producers and you couldn't get in the door with them until you were, you know, in your eight semester, whatever. So when I was home and I messaged these guys and figure it out their hourly rate, I was like, Oh shit, I could actually get a better education by, you know, reaching out to these guys every other month I'd fly up there, book a bunch of lessons. I would be self aware enough to know exactly what my problems were and I would get lessons for those specific things. I'd go back to Charlotte Hustle for like the next two months, you know, I would be teaching drums or producing some random artists or play musicals, whatever. And then I would study everything that they were doing and then I'd go back up for more lessons. And so, you know, whereas tuition now is like 70 k or something. Mine, it was like $1,000 every two months. It was great. I can see Chris's mind being blown right now as you tell this story. I love this guy.

That is awesome. Yeah, it was great. And it was kind of funny because Brian, we've talked about this about self awareness. Chris, I'm sure you're an incredibly self aware of guy from what we've talked, understanding what your problems are. That is the first 90% like you can't just be doing random shit expecting to get better, you know? So every single day I would write down, all right, what am I fucking up in? You know, is it marketing? Is it networking? Is it advertising, is it sales, is it drumming, is it producing, mixing, et Cetera. And I would list these things and I would either go to like Barnes and noble or something and read all day, just like go to the business section of marketing section or how to figure out a specific topic that I sucked at, would reach out to these guys. I'd fly up, learn from them, come back home, go to jazz jams and Uptown Charlotte and that was my ensemble hour and that's how I really did my own education for whey the fuck cheaper and I'd argue a little bit more effective and I have no debt so that's pretty tight.

Amazing. Because a degree from Berkeley I'm sure is really valuable if you want to say teach music at a collegiate level or something like that, but if you want to produce records, nobody is going to be like, excuse me, may I see your credentials? Nobody.

I remember going to studios, you're meeting people and you know sang that I was somehow associated with Berkeley, that I went there that got me in the door and that's when my mom taught me like she went to Julliard, she worked at Columbia. Just saying that opens so many doors. That's intrinsic value. That's hype and then your practical value of you know, what you actually kick ass at and what you can really provide that's going to keep you in the room. I just love this story. Like I feel like so many people are having their minds blown right now. Just listening to the fact that you a Berkeley level

education, arguably a better education, at least for what you are going for. Definitely a better education for Mark Eckert specifically. Then just going through the standardized program that maybe someone on the path to get a degree at Berkeley would get and then you have the hustle and the understanding and self awareness to know that you needed to work on these specific things and then you translated that when you came home into your producing career. So can you kind of give us the story behind one of your first paid project or when he first realized that you could start actually earning money producing records? I'll tell you the exact first. Well I had some, you know, bands that would record at studios and stuff like that, but that was a completely different model for me. I don't really book out studios anymore.

Bands, the first where I would say the business model that I'm going off of right now through Instagram, there was this random dude in la and he saw one of my videos, this was like early days of Instagram. This guy reached out and he was like, Yo, how much do you charge for track? And I was like, Holy Shit, I could do that. Let's like I, I got the Internet. Fuck yeah. So I just threw out a random number, which looking back is embarrassingly low. I was like, oh, $400 and you know, nervous as hell on the phone. And he was like, yeah, sure, no problem. And I did the classic 50 upfront and 50 after like 50% and pay me 200 did the track. And I thought I kicked ass on it. Like it was exactly what he was asking for, but you know, he would just kind of put it off for months and he would say he had an idea and he would send it back and I was just treated like garbage. And that was my first lesson. Oh Shit. If I don't charge enough, I'm going to be treated like ass. You know, I'm saying a lot of bad words, but this is fine.

We have the little e logo and Apple Itunes, so we're okay. My man, which does not stand for everyone. It stands for explicit.

But yeah, so that was the first big lesson for me is like I needed to charge more. I needed to have processes in place so I could really have a

standard way of doing production through the Internet. Specifically through Instagram too. So you had this early success in Instagram, you had that Aha moment of Oh damn, I can actually make money from leads that I'm getting off Instagram essentially. Exactly. And how did you start to ramp that up from just this random guy who saw you drumming on a video, who was like, hey, how much for a track, how did you actually get that to scale up to get a more leads, be higher quality leads and see enough to actually make a living from what you're doing? Yeah, so it was funny. So this was at a time, I mean this was like second or third year, you know, all of my friends back in Boston, herself, school. Do you remember the year? What year was this? Maybe 2014 or 15 something like that. I moved to New York for a small time and then I moved down to Charlotte. So this is when I was really hustling, like my own studio in my parents' basement. Classic love

you ma. I love you dad. They gave me the whole floor. Love them. Yeah. Yeah. So I had a big realization that a, I was doing these productions much better because there were specific style. I was only posting me making like synthpop, Nintendo, Zelda sounding shit, which ended up turning into nd pop, you know, now it's trending. You know, I had a realization that, okay, I was doing these better so I can now specialize in this one thing because it's going to be easier for me and it's going to be better for artists around the world. And then I realized, Oh shit. I think at this time I had like, I dunno, thousand 2000 followers, something like that. I have like, I don't know, 1313 and a half right now what I realized is a lot of people were talking about Instagram, you know, specific tactics for marketing on Instagram or people talking specific tactics for marketing on Facebook.

I got into a rabbit hole or whatever, just a deep pocket of understanding some basic marketing and advertising. And what I realized is it doesn't matter what platform you're on, it matters what the market needs and what people's pains are. Ooh, so good. Oh, thank you baby. Anyways, so I realized that, Oh shit, all of my followers are leads. That's how people need to look at this. If you're listening out there, your followers, your friends, anybody, you know, that's a lead. And I realized, okay, well number one, I do a very specific thing for a very specific person and a very specific situation. I don't work with 95% of artists, but the 5% I do work with, I kick ass on. So I say no way more than I say yes. So I realize because I'm specializing in this one thing, having the self awareness of like, okay, probably 1% of these people are ready to work with me.

1% are like, okay, I know exactly where I'm at, I know exactly what I need and I know that this is the guy to help me with my record. Right? And I realized probably like 80 or 90% they'd never would want to work with me. They do their own thing. I'm not the solution, but that 10 to like 19% right? The remaining, my job is to convert those over to production clients. That seems a little short sided, just like making them a client, but really how can I help them write? I do a very specific thing for a very specific person and a very specific situation. A lot of people will say, oh, that's too niche, right? Like there's not a big enough market or something like that. That's bullshit because if you can lock down a 100% of a small market, that's essentially how Sam Walton built Walmart.

Everyone is focused on Saint Louis. Everyone was focused on Chicago. Just like how everyone's focused on these big top 40 records or chart placement. Right? But nobody's looking at the biggest communal problem in the music industry for artists, independent artists who need help. They need development, they need production, they need things done properly so they know how to move. So having understood this, I realized, okay, well what are the type of artists that I want to work with? What are their biggest problems? You know? And I realized like, okay, a lot of people can't perform live. That was like a big problem. So I came out with an ebook. Brian, you're familiar with this. It was originally called the Indie pop cookbook

and I've actually mentioned it on this podcast in the past.

Oh, nice. My man, um, I've since rebranded it to performing live. So it's called performing live. And essentially what that does is artists that I were working with, they were having problems performing live. You know, it's making a indie pop or synth pop. Record live is a whole different thing. You have a bunch of electronics, a bunch of different shit going on. It's very confusing. It's not like playing guitar and drums, you know? And that's it. This isn't the white stripes. This is like Grimes and Lord, you know. So I was kind of helping, like I wrote this Ebook, it's like, I don't know, 20 something pages, something like that. And it basically is a checklist of everything that you need to do to transform the record that I produced for you or one that you produce on your own. We don't have to work together and this is how you do it live. And what that did, I didn't realize this, but that made me an authority because from my drumming days I still drawn, but like from me emptying and drumming for artists and running the live tracks and me writing this ebook for my clientele or potential indie pop artists that would want to work with me, that made me an expert and I didn't realize that. But I look back and that's what is called authoritative marketing.

So let me unpack all of this just to kind of make sure all our listeners are on the same page. Mark is doing something called content marketing. When we had Graham Cochran on the show back in episode number 46 his lead generation tactic is all on youtube. Mark is essentially doing the same thing except he's doing it on mostly Instagram. Is that your main driver of leads and income is through Instagram mark?

Yup. That's the bottom of the funnel.

Yep. So he's using this indie pop cookbook now rebranded as performing live to attract his ideal customer. When it was branded as the indie pop cookbook, you were saying this was for indie pop artists. If you're not indie pop, don't even bother talking to me. And this excludes, again, like he said, 95% of the market out there. And this has done strategically in on purpose because today, and we've talked about this many times in the podcast today, it's the era of specialists and if you are a generalist, you're going to get left behind. And people like mark who are specialists in one specific little niche of the market. People are going to them over any of the generalists that are out there because they know that people like mark can serve their needs so much better than someone who is just trying to do everything and they're doing it all poorly.

So mark has this ebook as his lead generation as is inbound marketing, Aka his content marketing. And now you're using that to qualify and add value. And because you have added value to these people, they see you as an authoritative figure. It's a social proof element. It's a way to legitimize you and separate you from all the other, excuse my language, but fuck boys out there. I have a deep fucker boy system, Brian. Yes, yes. Fuck a boy. 5,000 how you doing? Yes. So take it from there. So you're using this ebook to generate qualified leads, hopefully. And what are you doing from that point?

So I have that and then I would come out with a bunch of blogs similar. I would post a bunch of videos, I would post a bunch of, you know, just anything that could provide value.

And these are strategically created based on what you feel like your audience needs or your ideal customer needs, what their pain points are.

1000% if you know what somebody is, problems are, you know how to fix them and you know how to help them and if you know how to help them, that's where money is transacted is you're solving a problem. You know, that's practical value. I know I talked about that earlier, but value is something that is not stated nearly enough in the music industry. You hear it in every other industry, but music industry, it's all about hype. You know, you can, you can get them in with the hype, but you keep them with practical value. Like I've just been all about that. Anyways, back to converting from like, you know, this ebooks working for you. Fuck yeah. Like so my whole thing is like, I'm going to give you something for free, no strings attached. Like I just want to help you my passion every single morning. Dude, I read what my mission is and my mission is to help independent artists get to where they need to be wherever they are in the world.

Specifically in Indie pop. I may have venture more out, but this is my thing right now. That's my mission. So here's this free stuff. Hope it helps you. No worries. Alright, well next step. I become homies. I talked to a lot of them. You know, I send some emails, I send some more free shit, you know, whatever I can do to help you. And then two things happen. Either they reach out to me just completely random or I pitch an offer. I got to say though, 99% of the time people reach out to me because they're already comfortable. They already trust me. I had made myself an authority in it and a very specific thing. I'm a very small corner of the industry. I don't know shit about metal dude. Like I played in a metal band like you know, when I was in high school basis, leg went through the floorboard, went to the hospital, I quit the band after that. That's my experience in that. Sounds accurate. I'm country record. That's laughable. You know, like I'm a progressive Jew from New York. I'm not very good at this. Now by the time they already reach out to me, I then have them go through a form. So I literally do not talk to somebody about a potential production or project at all until they'd go through my form.

So you have what's called a high friction for them. You're basically using the form as a wall to keep people out that aren't willing to even go through the work of filling a format,

bro. This is like a rug burn form. Okay. Like it's the true defunct boy, 5,000 Nice. So it takes on average about 15 to 20 minutes to get through this thing. Okay. Wow. And I made it so on purpose because I don't want to waste somebody's time and I don't want to waste my time because that takes away from my clients. So by the time they get through this whole thing, if they get through it, I then have my assistant, Justin, who is amazing. Justin, if you're listening to this, love you, man, you're the best. He goes through this, checks it out, make sure that the last barrier of the fuck boy thing, you know, he's like, okay, they're cool, and then if they meet the criteria and everything's checked, he sends them a link to book a call. By the time they're on a call with me, he's closed the deal basically. I mean yesterday, I'm not going to lie, dude. Yesterday I had four calls, all sales calls for doing productions. Three of them I landed the fourth one. I said, no too. There was entitlement that I didn't want to deal with. So I said no to that because opportunity costs

because you have enough leads coming in. Yep. You have them qualified before you ever talk to them. You are already starting out from a place of power. You don't have this neediness that a lot of producers have and I want to caution people before they put this high friction rug burn form up on their websites. Mark has enough leads for that to make sense. If you do not have leads, you cannot put people through these sorts of paces because you will lose potentially qualified leads along the way that you can't necessarily run the risk of giving up on when you're early in your career and you don't have enough leads in the front door. First of quote, top of funnel thousand percent so I love what you're doing mark. I just want to caution our listeners to completely emulate and what you're doing straight off the bat because it could do more harm than good if they're not, if they don't have all these other pieces in place first. Yeah, I'm super impressed with your marketing skill here. Oh thanks dog. What Brian is saying is right on is that mark has a really specific way that he is fine tune his system and that's unique to him and that's what good marketing is, is to figure out

how do I specifically fine tune this perfect thing that fits who I am as a person. And I basically am saying all of this just so I can make a joke and say what mark does is it's not content marketing is not digital marketing, not Instagram marketing. It's Mark Eckert Dean.

Thanks doc. Wow, what a guy.

That's a dad joke because Mark Eckert kinda sounds like market.

Yeah.

So we've got this funnel, you're putting these people through Instagram content marketing blogs, all of these things are generating leads for you. Can you give us an example real quick of maybe some of the blogs and videos you put out just to kind of give our audience an idea of what's kind of working for you as far as lead generation and our content marketing front.

So basically just content

that I'm putting out specifically for my target audience, if that makes any sense. What sort of content are you creating that attracts your ideal audience? Absolutely. So I probably did this, I started doing this about a year ago. I put it on hiatus, but I'll probably bring it back soon. But I did this thing called the practical shit series. So one of my really good friends in Charlotte, his name is will. I've seen those videos. Yes. He's like DIY king. I mean this guy, he's just like super local hustle, like kills it. He's in a math rock group. Anyways, there's just a lot of practical shit that people don't know how to do. Like how to book a show, how to talk to the sound guy, stuff like that. So I realize that a lot of the artists that I talk to, you know, I realized in 2019 a producer as an ANR and a developer at this point, if you're not willing to help an artist at kind of all stages, you really get to miss out on some real opportunity.

Yeah. We talked about that in detail on episode 65 with Chris Greenwood where we talked about really helping artists develop once you're done with them because if your clients win, then you win as a producer and I think mark, you understand it pretty much more than anyone out there right now. I got to say all of the artists that I'm working with currently, I don't want to say all of them because sometimes people have stuff go on, like you know, one can go through a divorce or something and he's broke or you know, and then he needs to take some months off. But like you know, all of them I'm working with every single month because I'm focused so heavily on helping them with their entire career as opposed to just the production. Let me ask you a question there. So this is kind of interesting and I think for many of people in our audience, this is going to be like a light bulb moment. So you work with them a little bit and then you give them homework and then they go work on that and improve and then come back and record more with you later. Is that what you're saying?

Yes. So it always depends on what the artist's needs. So I have different kind of packages essentially, if that makes any sense. Yeah, I think this is a good time for you to kind of go over how your business model works. On a general scale to give our audience an idea of how you monetize and how that all works and what services you really provide with those packages. Okay. To start out with, just to put in perspective before we start on that, we can bring back at in like two minutes. So remind me, because my memory is terrible. I live in Charlotte. I make 10% of my income off of Charlotte if that. So I want to premise this, you know, Charlotte's a great town. It's a fastest growing city in America right now, but you don't have to be anywhere specific, at least for me.

So you can provide a lot of value, whether they're local or remote, at least in my corner of the industry. Yeah. If you listen to our interview with us and hold back on episode number 48 we're Austin whole got 99% of his work. You know, he's in Pensacola, Florida. All his work was just nationwide. So it could definitely be done if you have a good marketing mind. Yeah. So every artist comes to me at a different stage. You know, some people, I've had artists on major labels, I've also had artists that are just getting started. They just need like an instrumental track at that point. You know, having said that, everybody who comes to me needs indie pop. So for the most part it's pretty, you know, I have a system of how to produce these sort of things. So I started out with, there's two different product types that you go through.

My d fuckboy 5,000 is that trademarked? And you want to know, I might as well, since it's going on his podcast, I got to get started. So you can either do something from scratch or he can do finishing. So from scratches, literally I'm writing the whole thing for you finishing is you come to me with a demo or stems and I get it to that, you know, that final 10 to 40% extra that you need for it to sound like the real deal. So that's kind of where we start. And that is a big differentiator of how labor intensive it's going to be in the production process. Sure. That's understandable. So, typically I do a three month cycle to four months cycle for every artist that I'm working with. And you know, I heard something recently of like money goes where it's most welcome. And basically I realized that having the self discipline to save every single month to give me one big fat check so we can get started, that's very difficult to do.

That's a opt in situation. And you know, that's why nobody votes in America. It's an opt in situation. Belgium, everyone votes, it's an opt out. You get in trouble if you know. So I realized like, okay, how can we make this as easy as possible? So I did lower payments but more often. So I will talk to them on the phone. My, My d fuckboy 5,000 says kind of what they're working with budget wise and uh, what they need. And I split up payments through a three to four month process. So the first month we'll do pre production. I will kind of get them onboarded. I'll give them all of my artists resources and things that can help them. You know, some of these are for free for everyone. Some of these are proprietary, which you know I have a thing called the indie PR bundle, which is over 6,000 industry contacts for them.

So the first month and we start pre production. They send me a bunch of reference files. Second month is production, third month is finishing up whatever production stuff is needed, whether they give me the vocals, send it back, whatever, and then the fourth month they start pushing that song and releasing it and that fourth month that would actually be the first month of the next song. So that way we have momentum because in the indie pop synth pop situation, market, whatever you want to call it, it's momentum, it's numbers, it's you know, often in good as opposed to dropping one big record.

Yeah. We talk about this most of episode 63 of this podcast, how to profit from a rising trend in the music industry. We talk about this sort of business model and this is why we actually wanted to reach out to you for this episode because I was like, who's better to talk to about this specific subject then Mark Eckert because this is exactly what you're doing.

I love how you mentioned my name too. It's

like wow, I'm a somebody now bri. I totally agree. I think that what's interesting about everything you're saying like my mind's blown like I'm just like, oh my gosh, best guest ever. This is awesome. I appreciate it. But I think what's so interesting is the pop genre is more forward leaning because of the nature pop is forward-leaning. That's what pop is. It's cutting edge. And I think what's interesting about that is this idea of you see people doing this and pop, you know, I think what you're doing is super slick, but I know there's a lot of rock guys listening. There's a lot of rap guys listening that are just like what? Like never have heard of this idea before. And someone, someone listening to this podcast is going to figure out how to take this idea and put it in a different genre and it's going to work.

That's cool. And reach out to me. I'll let you know I'm nice. I want to also mention something that mark has definitely found but may not has put a strategy to it and that is something called market confusion or product confusion. And that is when you are just like every other product in the market when you're offering is exact same as everyone else in the market. People are going to naturally compare your prices to those of your competitors. But when you could do something like mark, where you're bundling together services and you're putting it in a unique way that no one else does, there is no price out there to compare to. So when you throw a price at them, they're not out there to compare it to anything because there's nothing else out there to compare it to. So that gives you authority to charge basically whatever you want, you know, obviously in accordance to what they can afford.

But that takes all of those people that are just looking for the cheapest deal out of the equation because there's no other deal out there that is doing what mark is doing in the indie pop world. So I just want to point that out. If you're going to do this and another industry, this gives you an advantage because there is a product market confusion. There is no other products or services that they can directly compare you to in, so you're not going to get the backlash on price that the average studio owners going to get. Totally. There's a great book that confessional, I haven't finished yet called blue ocean strategy. Oh my man. That is my shit. Love that book. The book is amazing. It's the guy who does Cirque de Solei and Cirque du Solei is like this really weird circus acrobat show that crushes it like hundreds of millions of dollars when the circus industry, I can't believe we're referencing the freaking circus industry on this podcast.

Dude, it's so good. But the circus industry is all jacked up. It's like circus is our folding left and right. Cirque du Soleil killing it and this author, I forget the guy's name, it's something super hard to pronounce. He's looking at the book. No, it's actually a, it's in my bedroom, which is really only 20 feet away, but I don't want to miss this conversation there. It's fine. It's fine. So the idea and this book is there's two oceans and there's the red ocean and the Blue Ocean. The Red Ocean is red because all the fish are in the same spot fighting over the same food and everybody's bleeding. Blue Ocean is about going out where there are no other fish and it's just a lot easier to find stuff to eat. Absolutely. Mark is killing it here with this blue ocean strategy. And I would say that's probably one of the number one issues in the audio industry is we're not super rock and roll in the recording studio industry. It's like, oh I want to be like that guy so I'm going to copy everything he does. And then as a result, a red ocean forms around that. You've got all these wannabes and everyone's getting bled to death. Whereas Blue Ocean is like, I'm going to do something totally different. It's going to be super wacky, it's going to be unique, and then as a result, there's no competitors.

Yeah, I want to add to that. So something that I've really, really, I mentioned this a little bit earlier as well, like twice or something, kind of just what value means. I've just been really obsessed with like what value really means and when you look at value, the entire spectrum of it, there's two things. Okay? There's intrinsic value and then there's practical value. If you're listening to this, write this down because this changed my life a few weeks ago. Okay? So intrinsic value is hype. I got the grammy, I got the chart topper, I got this, I'm fucking cool. I got Adidas, you know, like I'm wearing joggers, I'm great. All right, I put the park. Okay, and that's great. You can reel people in and that's typically what people do and they stop there. What practical value is on the other side is, I'm not sexy, I'm not the coolest person, but I'm going to do this record.

Great. And you're going to love it. Okay, well here's the thing. They both have problems. If you rely solely on either of those, okay, if you're 100% intrinsic value, if you are spieling about, you know, the grammy, the, you know, all these things that you have, which is incredible. Like I've friends who just got nominated like a couple days ago and incredibly hardworking, amazing individuals. Now having said that, if you're only relying on that, well if you don't help an artists get there, all the sudden you fucked them over quote unquote, you know, and that can ruin a reputation. If you charge like five g's for a track up front and then all you provide is the song, well that's not what you were kind of marketing. Now on the other side, practical value. If you have no intrinsic value or hype with it and you're just the guy who does the work, you're going to be treated like shit.

You're not gonna be able to charge much. You're not going to be able to make a good living. And I'm not saying that for selfish reasons. I'm saying that you will not be able to provide value for your clients. How for your artists and help them if you don't have time to think. If you're stressed out financially and you're going through a bunch of stuff, you charging less, you are doing a disservice to people. So you need both. You need 50% both what my plans are doing and what I've begun doing is I have the intrinsic value. I have some credits, some cool stuff that I'm proud of that and the specialty that reels them in. And then I keep them with practical value. I helped them actually move forward. And that's, if you look at history, Berry Gordy of Motown, you know, he was able to actually help artists built, he completely changed Detroit. He was able to actually start something incredible because he both provided intrinsic and practical value. Does you read his book to be loved? I'm buying it right after this podcast.

It's amazing. Yeah. Chris got me on that. Biography is an autobiography. I think it's biography yet. Honestly, when I was watching the grammys, uh, we're recording this a couple of days after the Grammy's aired. Berry Gordy was there and there was so much Motown stuff and Berry Gordy's like my ultimate hero, my man right on. We've mentioned him on the

gas before. He was, honestly, as far as I could tell, he was the first six figure home studio and beyond, like Motown was out of a home and they were making six, seven, eight, nine figures back in the sixties and seventies. Yeah,

definitely. I was watching the Grammy's and Berry Gordy was there. They've put him on camera a couple times. Yeah. And they've got a Motown special coming out in a few months. I haven't announced the date, but they're filming it here pretty soon and I was definitely like, Berry Gordy has something to promote. Yes, he shall come on this podcast. Absolutely. Oh damn good. Thought it'd be cool to get them on. So a lot of that

invite me back. I'll shut the fuck up. I won't say a word. I'll just listen and cry by myself. Just amazed. Sorry.

Just to kind of shift gears here, mark, you've been running this strategy for a while now, since 2014 ish and you've kind of built up a pretty good and one to say collection, but a client list of recurring clients. Right. Can you kind of share with us like where you're at as far as like the amount of clients you have on a recurring basis and how that's grown over the years?

Yeah, so it depends on the month obviously because some people, like I said earlier in and out, just depending on their country's economy or whatever is going on. But right now I'm just about like mid twenties I think like 26 now because I took on a few clients yesterday. These completely range, anywhere from like two 67 a month to 600 a month. And that's kind of paying off, you know, whatever we've quoted them at whatever they need, however much they need. That's what's quoted at. Um, so it just depends, honestly, it gives me a deadline too, because if I have a three month process, I got to get it done for them. So nine times out of 10 days keep going because it's doable for them. So yeah. Does that for the most part answer it.

Yeah. That's awesome. I think anyone listening right now to have 20 to 30 clients a month paying you on a recurring basis is like a dream that most people, I mean most people to have 20 clients at any given month is a dream much less on a recurring basis where you can more or less count on that money every single month. Like that is something that a lot of our listeners are interested in and wanting to work towards. And I think kind of seeing your model explained from kind of top to bottom is awesome to hear your perspective and how you've kind of built that up. Maybe some wheels are turning in our listeners on how they can kind of emulate that in their own niche and their own world. Hopefully our listeners have the self awareness to know, Kinda like how we talked about it again in the to know what

their weak points are so they can start working on those weak points and working towards this sort of business model. Well, let me pretend I'm one of our listeners. I'm, you know, I want to be a producer. I'm just starting out. I've got projects here and there, but they dry up occasionally and I've got like months or there's no work and then months or there's seemingly too much work. It seems to me that some of the take home for our listeners that you bring to the table that's incredible is one, you've created a package and that package is not just like, Ooh, Yokum recording me for four weeks and when we're done, we're done. It's not this like you're going to come in, we're going to do 15 hour days, it's going to be incredible and we're going to work, work, work, work, work, work, work, and then we're going to stop working.

Most people I think gravitate towards that of like I want to work a bunch of days in a row. And the problem with that is if any client falls through, you're so screwed. Absolutely. You've got like two, three, four, five, six weeks. I remember I had a client fall through when my wife and I were engaged. He just Kinda like ghosted me and it was this weird thing of like, oh crap. Like I have to be available for him. And I was trying to travel. I was down in South America with my wife and I came home early on the off chance that he would call me. And it was just so dumb. And so you look at this traditional model of like, I'm going to work with only one client at a time and then when I'm done I'm going to start working with another client. What you've done is so different. You've taken like each of the clients and you spread them out over a long period of time. Yep. And as a result, you have multiple layers of clients and if you lose one client and you've got, you know, 26 clients, I'm not good enough at math to do this quickly, but you only lose a small percentage of your income at that point.

Yeah. And because there's no pressure when I talked to them, cause it's not going to affect me, it makes me a better human being when I'm talking to them.

Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. So I love talking about this. We haven't talked about this much on the podcast, but this idea of like, because you saying yes isn't gonna make a huge immediate impact. What you're saying is that you're able to be more authentic and not get this,

Oh God, I better close this sale or else it's going to break.

That's amazing. So it's making you better as a business owner better as a producer, betters musician better as a human being. I love this vision that you've created for yourself, this reality that you've created yourself. That's a vision for other people of let's have multiple layers of clients by spreading those projects out, giving the client homework. So it's not like, Hey, show up and you better be ready to sing because if you can't, you're screwed. Bring new heads and strings. Fuck you. And if you don't, you're fired. I hate that. Yeah. So it's just a lot less pressure on the client. A lot more opportunity for artists development. It sounds like with that by itself, if there's just more artist development builtin, hey, these are called scales, I want you to sing them every day. That sort of stuff to be like, come back in a week or let's hook back up in a week and rerecord after you've spent some time working or hey, here's a vocal coach. I want you to go work with them

on this, you know, that sort of stuff. All the sudden the quality of your work goes through the roof, which means that the value that you provide goes to the roof, which means what you charge goes through the roof.

Yeah. When I'm not focused on money, I can focus on helping them as opposed to helping myself. You know? The thing is is I'll tell you a really quick story. Last night, baby girl took me out to and is really expensive French restaurant and I wasn't expecting it, but it was like for Valentine's and share. Right. So anyways, we were there and I mean this is like, I mean, we're not fancy schmooze people, you know, for New York, like $50 a plate or whatever isn't, you know, that's kind of normal or whatever in Charlotte, $50 a plate, that's expensive. And we were there and I was like, oh, you don't got to treat me well, blah, blah, blah. Right. Anyways, we were there and people are chewing their food, they're using their utensils properly. There's no crying kids, there's no burping, et cetera. Right. And you're paying more, you're paying more and you're actually more respectful.

Whereas you go to a burger king, people are like shitting in the lobby because it's $4 for a burger, you know, like they don't care, you know. So I realized actually last night, this is a very recent lesson that I learned is the professionality I guess that you exude is what you're going to get in return. Absolutely. 100% yup. I mean, I learned a lot of that from you, Brian. If there's nothing to talk about, you don't have time and that's because you want to get stuff done and you do get stuff done and that's why I've admired our friendship and I've learned a lot from you too because you exude being a professional in the audio industry and not the other way around and audio guy who happens to be a professional.

You said something that I think is a good point for our listeners. It is really hard to focus on adding value when you need the money so bad,

bro. When I moved back to Charlotte, I was broke. I told you earlier, my dad lost his job and that's why I moved back here. I'm middle class. I was not very privileged growing up at all and my dad got a new job. They moved down to Florida and it was kind of like, Yo dude, this is my mom saying, Yo Dude, she doesn't say that, but she was like, hi, Hey Maki. You got to get y'all in a pot. And so I got buy the cheapest apartment I could find in uptown, got shared studio space with one of my friends. I was broke dude. Like I had no money at that time. And at that time I couldn't focus on the value. But you also have to give yourself time. A lot

of people are so focused on how can I get, here we go. People completely underestimate their potential in 10 years and they completely overestimate their potential in one month. Oh my God. Yes, seriously. Uh, like people pause and go back and listen to that. Most people listening today, probably myself included, are completely underestimating what we can accomplish in the next 10 years and we're completely overestimating what we can do in the next month.

My, my long term goals is not just producing like whatsoever. I mean this is part of a mega thing that I've concocted in my head of how I can really help a lot of independent artists in the industry. And also dude, like I want to be on tour drumming again, but I don't want to have to tour, which is why I'm trying to build all of my own infrastructure. You know like 2019 I'm devoting to truly understanding marketing, sales and processes. That sounds so not sexy, but you know what, like 10 years from now when you know, hopefully I have my own infrastructure and I can really just do whatever the fuck I want. That's sexy to me so I'm cool with that. You mentioned sales, but I want to actually bring something up that I think is probably on our listeners' mind, especially when they're trying to make that transition from that big record thing.

We're trying to do four or five, 10 songs in one go. They're trying to split that over the three to six to 12 month period. What's sort of pushback or what sort of objections you regularly hear from the artists you talked to who think that they need to do all the songs at once versus spreading them out like you have in your business model? I'll tell you right now, I had a call yesterday just like I think the second call I had yesterday and the artist is in Canada. Awesome dude. He's an actor and he's left the acting industry to really pursue music and he understands what expertise means in any industry because he is that at this point, you know, he was like, alright, so I have a question when I'm on a call and I'm like, what do you have planned for the next three months?

Let's talk like small milestones next couple of months, what do you got to do? And he was like, I want three songs out within the next three months. Okay. And I was just completely silent and I just let him think about that and what I told him, I was like, cool, well if you want that, I don't know if I'm the guy for you. And he was like, oh Whoa, what? What do you mean? And I was like, listen dude, like I want to help you build yourself. If you have, you know my release strategy book, if you have all the contacts I give you, if you have all the resources that can get you further ahead, it's going to make a lot more sense for you to be able to milk the shit out of every single song you have in every single song you put out.

You'll get better at it. If we do everything at the same time, that's fine, but it's not for me and you should get a different producer because the way I like to do stuff, and it's not like everybody, but I like to do one thing really well at a time as opposed to a shit ton of things kind of. Okay. Because building a career is doing a lot of things well over a long time. I like how you shift the focus from like this is what I want and this is what I need. Everything you're talking about is how it betters your potential client and that is to me the key to sales. What's the only way to run a business? That's the only way to provide values. If you give a shit about the people, this isn't like fluff. Like I truly have a lot of weight on my shoulders to make sure that I can help the people who've hired me.

That's fraud. If you don't, yeah. Not just fraud, but reputation. And if that reputation gets out, you're done. I mean, if you go to a doctor's office and you just go in and you're like, Yo, I'm sick. And they're like, Oh, it's five k, that's malpractice. They need to know what's wrong with you. You know? Why should that be different? I honestly tried to not study stuff in the music industry as much as possible. Why is that? Because I think it's shortsighted. I like learning how other industries adapt because the music industry is notorious for not adopting. Amen to that. And the reason being is because until very recently, the music industry was kind of, I guess monopolous, if that makes any sense. A lot of gatekeepers. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think that's any industry, there's gatekeepers and nothing against that.

You gotta know the game in order to play it, you know? But you know, there were a couple big labels and independent music was very rare to do well. Now it's becoming pretty common. And I think that's the future. So yeah, I mean it all comes back to how can you be of help? And if you can do that well, I mean you'll be taking care of your whole life. But it's not just the going back to, it's not just the intrinsic value, it's not just the hype. It's the practical value to are you actually giving a shit? Are you trying to get a check? You know, I gotta say I change this mentality before I had money. I heard a talk, I forgot through who, but it was about changing your mentality from starvation mentality to abundance mentality. And as soon as I was like, Yo, I'm going to give all my shit out, I'm going to help as much as I can within reason, you know, while taking care of myself essentially. And as soon as I just change of like, Yo, how can I help you? What are your problems? How can I help solve that? That's when things really changed.

I think that's something people need to really pause and think about. Yeah, because in our industry it is notoriously scarcity mindset. It is a zero sum game for so many people in our industry because they just think if that studio succeeds, I can't succeed or especially in the artist world if that bands famous, I can't be famous if that band successful, I can't be successful and it's just horribly rampant in the music industry and even in the producer and studio world. That scarcity mindset and what Mark's talking about is absolutely true. When you start thinking about an abundance mindset where you're thinking about if I help you, that is going to come back to me tenfold and I'm not doing this because it will come back to me tenfold. That's just how the universe tends to work without getting all hippy dippy or whatever on you. Like if you can add value into the world is going to come back to you and kind of going back on what you said because you're not focused on money. The result of that is more money, which is completely counter intuitive, but that's how it all works and it's not a cut throat, a success at all costs type of industry. It is a add value. Do what you can to help others as much as possible, and that will return to you tenfold.

Also, like money is a tool to somebody to help you. So if you help a lot of people, people will offer you that tool. It's as simple as that.

I love this because what we're getting into is essentially what is money? What is a free market? What is capitalism? What are we doing here? And I think to kind of speak to some are, I think the resistance in some people's hearts that are listening is probably, and I hear this a lot, it's bull, but, but how much am I worth? There's this obsession with how much you're worth and I think you're really nailing it with like that misses the point. And if you obsessed with that, there is no success.

I want to add to that, and I think a deeper rooted issue is imposter syndrome within the industry. Amen. And you guys have heard it all before. But I remember when I left Berkeley, you know, it sounds sexy. Now's the dropout, you know, like it's cool now because I'm doing some shit. But like when I first dropped out, I know I was the kid who was not in school anymore, you know, and I remember I was going to like Barnes and noble reading, I was taking courses. Brian, I met you probably sometime around then and you know, I had bought a course on, you know, essentially writing properly online and stuff like that. And when I was doing all this 90% of the time I was like, Oh hell yeah, this could work here. And 10% I was like, well the big guys at the top don't do this, blah blah blah.

And that 10% thought would fuck up all of my gains because I'd feel insecure. And you know what, couple of years down the road, all my friends who are just focused on being the cool guy are now calling me. And they're like, dude, how the fuck am I going to pay rent? You know? And I like anybody who's listening. If you feel weird about yourself because you are studying and you're doing the not sexy shit in order to pursue your music career, you're not a poser. You're the real deal. It's true because you're willing to put in the actual work so you can let your dreams come true. That's not a poser. That's somebody who really fucking wants it.

Yeah. The reality of being a success is in no way sexy, but most people that you see that you are looking up to as a success in most cases, there's a lot of behind the scenes work that you never saw that was so unsexy. You'll never hear about it and don't let someone's Instagram life dictate how you live behind the scenes

and going back when I, you know, finagled my way into a Berkeley education for cheap. That wasn't my parents paying for me to go up there. No, I would stuff mailboxes with my ma. She went, this is great. She would drive I'd stuff. We switched turns stuffing and I had a flyer and it was drum and piano lessons and literally whatever the fuck else somebody would pay me to do, I would get better than them by the time of the lesson so I could teach it. And you know, I was making a dropped out. I was making anywhere between like, you know, 1200 to two grand a month teaching a couple days out of the, like, I would play musicals like, oh my God, I would do session drums for like CCM artists and I'm a Jew. I played church gigs, I played church cakes.

Like I'm like Seinfeld, like, um, I have family in Israel. Like I wasn't playing church gigs. When you get excited, you can tell. You can tell. Yeah, it's just my mother coming through and that she's always with me. But yeah, it's like when I came out with that Ebook, I was so fucking insecure. I was like, oh my God, am I an educator now? And that's not ragging educators. But I have a very, very close friend of mine. He's played with prince and you know, now he plays with Sila Green. He's awesome. In one of my best friends, he's in Charlotte, Adrian Crutchfield, and he was saying like, you know, a lot of education stuff, if you're a musician, do it, you know, in Asia. So it doesn't mess with your brand as the backing musician in America, it's less that now, especially like the last three years. But back then I was so nervous. I'm like, I'm coming out with a fucking book. Can barely write my name.

Yeah. I think, I think the imposter syndrome is something that holds a lot of people back from trying things that they know will probably be success, but they just won't let themselves do it because of that 10% of their brain. Oh my God. Yeah. Ruining everything up and their entire thought process being this downward spiral of self destruction.

I think there's a component there in our culture of like we only are interested in doing things we're good at and I don't know what's the deal there, but like people are like, well, just a fear of failure. Yeah. Just a crazy fear of failure of like they won't do anything that they don't think will make them look cool when inevitably like anyone who's successful in any industry is super comfortable with looking like an amateur. And there's a great scene in a, what's the James Lipton TV show like behind the actor's studio or he gets what I'm talking about. We know we were talking about it, I just don't know the name of it. There's like this talk show, this Guy James Lipton does and like interviews actors and they talk about their craft and there's an episode where Sean Penn is being interviewed in this a long time. It was like 15 years ago, and they zoom in on this kid. He was like asking this question, trying to learn from Sean Penn and it's Bradley Cooper. I seen this love at Bradley Cooper before. He's famous, like completely comfortable with the fact that he's not an expert and trying to get answers from Sean Penn and it's like, dude, Bros a superstar. He want a freaking grammy this past week. Like he's a monster. Yeah.

So he's an actor who won a musical grammy.

Yeah. For singing.

Yeah. I mean what helps me, I'm sure both of you have a chip on your shoulder. That's why you both are killing it. To tell you the truth. Like anytime I'm scared to do something, I Kinda just, you know, I was the Jewish kid picked on in high school. I'm thinking of my bullies and then I just post it. That's awesome. Like it's just, just literally like figure out what, you know, if you have a chip on your shoulder, totally embrace that and use it and that'll be your biggest strength. Like it'll make you able to do crazy shit and you'll look back and you'd be like, I did that. Like I booked my own tour going to Australia, Fiji in La to work with an artist out in Melbourne and I was like 22 at the time or something. And I remember I looked at how much it was going to be for the flight and I literally just thought of something bad and I just clicked it. I was like, we're buying it. It's awesome. Yeah. But that added intrinsic value, so here we are now I'm on the podcast. We'll look Ma.

Dude, this has been incredible man. You are like the perfect guest for a lot of reasons. One, you're killing it.

Two, you're in an apartment in uptown Charlotte. I've been there. It's just an average one bedroom apartment basically like yeah, and you do amazing work out of there. So just just for the excuse that someone in the podcast is listening right now, thinking like always got some crazy nice studio and he's some big unfair advantage. No, mark didn't have any massive advantage. He's not working on an EEG crazy studio. He's just making whatever he has work and that's how he's lived his entire life.

Awesome. There's a book that Brian and I talk a lot about on this podcast called the go giver lava and Oh man. You embody it that clearly your entire business model is built around that. If you guys haven't read the go giver yet, it's probably top three if not the most important book we talk about on the podcast every time that we're thinking about like a new guest to have on the show. One of the requirements is like, well we need someone with a go giver mentality. It's amazing. And, and uh, I first heard about it, I don't know if you saw this mark, but a couple years ago, Graham Cochran of recording revolution had an article in ink magazine or business insider or something like that. It was business insider and he talked about this book and also revealed like his $70,000 a month.

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. He's awesome. I love that guy. I'd never met him, but he seems like the coolest dude ever. Yeah, he's amazing. Hey Graeme, if you're listening to this next time I'm down in Florida visiting mom and Dad, I'm taking out for coffee. There we go. Do it. He'll say, yeah, official day. Here we go. You guys are vouching for me. It works.

So mark, if people want to know more about your producer side of things and kind of some other stuff you've got going on, where they can they go to find out more about you? My friend

mark-eckert.com m a R K Dash e c k e r t.com. You can also check out my Instagram. It's just mark Eckert, something I recently launched that could potentially help some people. I've been helping a lot of the artists that I work with get sync placement or pitch first. That stuff. I was getting so many opportunities and honestly I didn't have the material to pitch and I started asking a bunch of homies if they had any material to pitch and they did and I realized a lot of people need help pitching to advertisements and film. So I launched a few months ago, this thing called that pitch.com basically we just help music supervisors and advertisers connect with music makers. So if you make any popper R and B or hip hop or whatever, you can pitch stuff to real ads and film and if you land it, you take all of it. We don't take any percentage, it's just 15 bucks a month now. It keeps us afloat. Yeah, just as affordable as we can make it and provide value for people to potentially help some people.

So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Hopefully you got something from this episode. I think it's a very good look into a different business model and probably a different mindset than a lot of us have ever thought to be in before. In my business, I've never even considered the recurring revenue model. I don't know if I could make it fit in the metal genre, but I probably could if I tried. So if I'm going to sit and think about this episode, I'm a let it stew a little bit and see if there's any ways that I can create some sort of recurring revenue model in my studio and I would really encourage you to do the same because the power of having 25 clients or so paying you anywhere from 250 to $600 a month, having that sort of recurring revenue that you can depend on month after month after month, and then if one client drops out on you, it's not that big of a deal.

That is the kind of stability that very, very few studios have at in this day and age. Little Fun fact for you. I am getting married this Saturday after this episode airs, so wish me luck inside. Side note for all those who have not been married before, I have learned how much work goes into planning a wedding. I have a whole different outlook on weddings that I'm invited to that I participate in. Uh, this is a lot of work to put together, so Kudos to all of you who have successfully gone through a wedding without having a panic attack. And I do want to say that a week from today I will be flying across the pond. Actually I'll be across the pond already. I'll be in Paris with my wife. So this podcast is probably going to change an audio a little bit starting maybe next week or the week after.

I'm not going to be the one finalizing these episodes is going to be up to my assistant, James and Chris to do all of the finalization of the episodes. So if things sound slightly different, just be okay with that. The goal is for me to not miss any episodes long gone. I will be off for two weeks completely off the grid doing nothing except honeymoon with my wife and I cannot wait for that. But I, after the two weeks I will be back on the podcast. I'm gonna bring a little remote recording rig would need so I can actually record episodes long traveling and that will be come back strong with you after that. The good news is we have some episodes in the bank, so I w I shouldn't be missing any episodes and we shouldn't have to pause for any reason, but you never know.

So keep an eye out on the next episodes. I know next week we will be airing the episode that we did an interview with Joe Gilder from home studio corner. He gives us a really good inside look behind youtube and how he's leveraging that and how he's multiplying his time. Because right now hundreds or thousands of people are watching his videos on youtube right now. Similar to how I am next week going to be in Paris and during my honeymoon. And you will be still listening to me. It's multiplying your time, multiplying yourself so that you are working thousands of hours per week instead of simply just putting your 40 to 50 hours in a week. So next week's episode is a lot of fun. Uh, whether or not you ever consider doing a youtube channel. It's still a good episode to make you think about the potentials of multiplying yourself in some way. So stay tuned. Brighton early next Tuesday, 6:00 AM that episode will be live unless something goes wrong. Who knows? Wished me luck on my wedding and I'll be back. Before you know it, thanks for listening and happy hustling.