What To Do When Someone In Your Area Is Charging $5 Per Song

This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 92

[inaudible] to the six figure home studio podcast, the number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio. Now your host, Brian Hood and Chris Brand. Welcome back to another episode.

So to the six figure home studio podcast, I am your amazing, incredible host, Brian Hood, and I'm here with my plebe of a cohost, Chris Graham. I agree, I agree. I always talk you up so much on the podcast intro. I was like, you know what? I'm going to switch it up this week. I'm going to talk highly of myself and I'm just going to shoot you down. Chris, how are you doing this week? [inaudible]

I'm great. Awesome guy.

Awesome dude. You're doing so good so far.

I'm great. Honestly, so one of the things I love about our friendship is it sometimes we'll be like, yeah, let's go record a podcast episode, and then we just end up talking about each other's businesses and that's what we did on Tuesday. It was fantastic. You ripped my face off and then sewed it back on very gently and it was great. Like we were literally yelling at each other. It's true. If anyone had ever heard Chris and I talk when we get like passionate about business stuff, you'd be like, oh my God, guys, are you okay? Like do you need a hug? Like, and we're just like loving it. We're like a positive argument. I don't know how to explain it. Yeah. Well we're like raising our voices at each other. I love it. This is one of my favorite parts of any friendship I have is being able to do that with you and not wonder if we're okay.

Yeah. Well that's the, maybe we'll talk about enneagram one day, but that's because we're both eights on the integration. For those of you who know what the Enneagram is, you know exactly what we're talking about and why we'd argue with each other like that and to be a positive thing. But alas, not everyone is like that and not everyone knows what the Enneagram is and we will not talk about it any more on this episode. Hey, all right, let's turn right into the good. Yeah,

stuff. Brian, let's talk about our topic today and that was weird.

That was so bad. Try again. A little buddy. Hey Brian. Let's talk about the episode topic today. Let's talk about the things and the things and we're going to talk about business and recordings today. Today I'm just going to cut you off. You're doing please. You are done, sir. It's like I give you a bad intro and you become a bad color. Just die. Try if this, man, let me do. Today we're going to talk about why you should be charging $5 for your mix. Ah, all right, Chris, what does this topic stem from? Just give the backstory here. $5 for full mixes, drum re sampling, revamping the whole Shebang. $5 a song.

Yeah, so this is great. So there's this guy, Steve Simpson, who's a new member of the six figure home studio Facebook community and he posted a question seven hours ago from when we're recording this episode and we're just going to read through it because it generated a really interesting conversation and this is something that scratched an itch I think for a lot of people in the podcast community, but also inflamed some passions that probably shouldn't be. So inflammable. So here we go. I'm going to read the posts Steve Made, which side note Kudos to Steve. This Facebook post has like 92 comments on it and this is like his first post in the Facebook group. So that's a good start. That's pretty good. So Steve says, okay, I just read this craigslist ad. Am I the only one who thinks this is completely devaluing the craft and that by whoring like this it's making it even harder for us who are desperately trying to get paid fairly. I'm sorry, $5 for full makes and all the clean prepping, ramping, etc. Is Not fair pay in my book. Okay. And now I'm going to actually read the post. So this is the craigslist post that he screenshot it and put it in here. Can you read it in the voice that you would assume that this gentleman would use? Yeah, I will. It's going to be my southern voice. Okay.

Rock and metal music is all about the energy. Let's make your song the best it can be. As an engineer, I care about your music as much as you do because in the past when I was starting out, I got shot mixes from recording studios and I know what it's like to be disappointed. I can work with anything from a two track acoustic song to a 70 track metal prices, full mix plus guitar ramping plus sample reinforcement, $5. It's

important to point out that it's not dollar sign five. It's $5 sign. Wait, I didn't even notice that. That's great. Chris, is this an outrage? Is this a scandal? Should we be worried about engineers like this in the world? No, we shouldn't. They're good. It's healthy. It's like a vulture. It swoops down onto the road and eats the roadkill rather than the roadkill. Just like sitting there and rotting and smelling for everybody. They clean up the forest guys. Such a good, that's a good way of putting it. So no offense to this guy, we don't know his name. So we're like not calling you out or anything. We're going to call him Bart Rock Berry, but rock Barry, we're not here to make fun of but rock Billy, we're here to challenge you guys to challenge the community of audio peoples that this is not something you should feel threatened by.

It's not something that devalues your craft. It's a good thing. At no point has any good client ever said, hey guys, you know glad we're having band practice tonight. Cause you know we had been talking about hiring a Steve Mc, awesome to a mix our songs at $500 a pop. But guess what guys? I found another guy who's only $5 a song. Let's go work with him cause we're a legit band. Who was going to be fun to work with but now we're going to go work with but rock Barry, you see my point here, there's not a competition issue and I think for many of us when we go to where unhealthy place mentally, again that's related to the enneagram but we said we wouldn't mention that when we go to our unhealthy place we start to see competitors and get self conscious and get nervous and feel like, oh my gosh sure.

Ah, let me just say this. You might actually have something to worry about. I'm going to go the opposite of what you just said Chris. I do like the analogy you made of like their the vultures that clean up all the roadkill and our streets clean road hill been bad customers that you shouldn't work with. The trash cost center is that you don't want to work with the red flag customers. They're going to clean all that up. Who was going to fill out your form on your website and then was going to talk to you for an hour on the phone until you figured out, oh crap. This is not someone I should work with. Yeah. That's the good part of someone like Bart Rock Berry. I do want to say this. You do have something to worry about if you're no better than, but rock berry. Mm.

And this is where we get to the topic of commoditization. Am I saying it right? Becoming a commodity? Yeah. How many times did we talked about differentiation on this podcast, Chris? How many episodes have we had? We've talked about it probably at least 15 times in different episodes throughout the history of this podcast. It's pretty much every single episode has in some way, shape or form been at least a little bit about differentiation. I think rog Barry is a really good example of what happens when you are a commodity. When you have nothing that differentiates yourself. So let's talk about what a commodity is though. Yeah. A commodity is something where it doesn't really matter who you buy it from. It's the same no matter where you buy gas is a commodity. Does it matter if you go to BP or Sunoco? No, it's the same.

Some people probably think that, but no, there's not a difference. It's exactly the same. Yeah. MAPCO and BP are the same fuel. Yeah. And so in a market like that, salt lumber, like there's all kinds of commodities markets that are exactly the same. It doesn't matter who you buy it from, it's the same thing. It's the lowest price. The lowest price is going to win. Exactly. And so what happens is the entire market shifts in value simultaneously. So you'll see that the price of gas essentially all go down at the same time, and then I'll go up at the same time. It doesn't matter because it's tied to a commodity price and that price is oil. So the thing that you do not want to do in our industry is become a commodities, but oh well, oh, mixing became cheaper, so now I'm cheaper. You don't want to do that.

Yeah. If the only thing that's differentiating you are setting you apart from the people in your area, your competitors, which by the way, you don't really have competitors or you shouldn't have competitors. We'll talk about that more in a minute. But if the only thing that sets you apart from the other people in your area is your price, then you have become a commodity. And the only way to win that race is to be bought Rock Barre and have $5 mixes on craigslist or $4 mixes now because he's got the $5 market on lock. Yeah, exactly. And so here's the thing, and somebody made a funny comment in here, but like what did he say? Like that's up to 70 tracks. What happens if you have 71 tracks for $5 that's a niche. That could be your niche right there. If you've got over 70 tracks, I will mix your song for $5 and 25 cents. So yeah, this commodity thing gets really, really interesting because if you're all offering the same services, whoever charges the least, it's going to set the price, right? If you ever want to get out of this scenario, which I mean obviously like this guy, if continues to make songs

at $5 a piece, unless he has some kind of crazy like I don't even know how you would do that unless he's a trust fund kid. Yeah. Unless he's a trust one kid and doesn't need money, we're all screwed. Right. And so it's not sustainable over the long run. And the big idea here is finding some way to differentiate where people want you, not the service that you provide that they could get anywhere else. Right. And this is the entire topic of episode 49 where we talk about how to answer the most important question, that question being why should someone hire you? But Rock Berry has decided the only reason someone's going to hire him as if he's cheaper than everyone else. That is not the goal. That's actually the anti goal. Or I guess the antithesis of the entire six figure home studio community. Our entire purpose as a community is to help you realize the true value you bring to what you're doing.

Yeah. And maybe somebody can send Barack Barry to the six figure home studio community and he can learn from all of us. But I would bet that that craigslist post had no link to a website, no portfolio attached to it. They had no photos of the studio, my name, and have really any sort of studio to speak of. And so there's just a lot of the major pieces missing in his brand that if he just put basic things into place, his work actually might be good. I don't know. But he doesn't seem to be doing the basic fundamental pieces of business correctly that a lot of you either are doing or maybe you're ignoring and this should be your wake up call that it's time to actually take this seriously because none of us want to become part rock Barry. Totally. Do you want to be about right Mary Chris?

Well, no, I kinda want to send this guy a song to mix like I do metal and hardcore, like that's my niche or metal and rock. If you want to be the same words as he's using. I've got terabytes upon terabytes of old sessions that I would just love to send him one of my unmixed sessions that I've mixed myself and see what five bucks gets may compare to one of my $600 mixes. Fascinating. Well I think the scary thing is like what if you got back a really good mix, I would coach him for free or hire him. Right. Yeah, that's true. I really would be an insane case study of like someone who went from $5 mixes on craigslist to someone who actually took their business here Asley and made changes. Like I'm on, I need to go find this guy now cause I really want to see if it would be like a viral video on buzzfeed or something.

That would be amazing how I went from $5 a song to platinum records by names boot rock, Barry. Gosh, ah, oh my gosh. I think this is probably a good time. Chris, we would go through some of the comments and just point out any good good points here. So let's just look through like absolutely. I haven't looked through these yet so I don't have anything pulled up. Well, one of the comments that I saw on here that was just so, so, so, so good. We got a shout out to Chris Bowman here. He got really creative and he used the slap Emoji. You know the Emoji of like you what you would smack

wait. No, it's a clap Emoji. It'd be better for this Mac Emoji if that was such a thing, but he says, I'm going to clap for you here. He says, stop worrying about them and focus on your, that's a lot of clapping your business. This idea of like

what's, tell me how to do that. It made no sense. I know that sounded like a cheerleader chant. Stop caring about them and focus on your business when you guys are feeling the burn and union encouragement. Just rewind the podcast back to this section, book market. If that's even a thing in podcasting and just listen to this chant. Oh my gosh. Okay, stop. No, let's actually read this. For people that were distracted during your cheerleader channel. Chris says this, stop worrying about them and focus on your business. Great Advice.

There you go. I mean that's essentially we're gonna like riff on that for the rest of the episode. I think

it is one of those like run your own race. Like I don't want to call out Steve for pulling this up, but at the same time like there is an element of truth to stop worrying about the $5 mixers on craigslist. You will never lose a paid product to them.

Yeah. Well and even if you did, it's a good thing you didn't want that customer. So when I was in high school and well I guess high school, yeah I ran cross country. It's a fall sport and essentially in the United States it's a five k race and the way that cross country works is you have seven guys that's a cross country team and the top five guys, their placement is the number of points that they got essentially. And so the better each person does, you get a cumulative score and that's how you figure out which cross country team won, but the beauty of cross country is that for most people they don't really care about the score. They don't really care if their team wins or not. What they care about each individual runner is did IPR. Did I get a personal record? Did I run a race faster than any race I've ever done before?

That's awesome. It's really, really healthy for kids who were in cross country because they're racing themselves, they're all about their own self improvement and that's what makes it so fun. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, it doesn't matter who you're running against. It matters. Did you improve? I would credit a lot of any success I've had to my coach, my cross country coach, coach Foley, and the same thing for track. It was this idea of like just try to do better than you did the last time. That mentality, that's the healthy way to approach this. Not like, oh, there's another guy

running really fast and you might pay me and then I won't be worthless than girls [inaudible]

date me. That's the wrong way to look at it.

People are going to have the same worry when they see like this guy on craigslist charging five bucks a song or they see their like a baby band, the one they work with, the one that has the most promise, they see them go talk to some big shot producer charging 1500 or $2,000 a song. You're going to feel the same way. You're going to be so worried that you're business to other people when that shouldn't be your focus. Your focus should be on the things you personally control. Yeah. What can you control? You can't control, bought rock bury. You can't control if Jacare king quote steals a band from you because your career king has put so much time, effort, and energy and hustle into what he does to get to where he's at. So if he quote steals a band from you, he's earned that band and he put a lot of work in to get there. No matter whether it's educare king type person or if it's bought rock Barry charging five bucks a song, at the end of the day, you can only run your own race. You can only compete with yourself if all you do is stare at those around you constantly comparing yourself. You're only gonna feel inadequate. You're going to feel like you have no control over your life. Honestly, that's a great way to get into depression when you start comparing yourself to others.

Totally. It's poisonous, you know, not to like get on you Steve here, welcome to the community. We're so glad you made this post. But this idea of feeling like, oh they're devaluing the craft and oh the, it's making me nervous cause they're gonna steal my clients. That's toxic. It's a poison pill that will kill you and your business. And a lot of this I think comes down to putting your identity. So more track and cross country stories. When I was in high school, I eventually, my entire world revolved around like my junior senior year revolved around my success as a track guy.

You mean you put your identity into something you weren't good at in Hawaii?

Yeah, totally. We all do that by the way. We all do that, but it's very, very dangerous. So if I ran a good race, I was in a good mood. If I didn't run a good race, I was in a terrible mood and I was pissed at myself and I was depressed and I was whiny. And you know, I acted like a 17 year old. And so I think a lot of times, a lot of people's biggest business problem is that they judge themselves on this sort of, what have you done for me lately? Self? Are you a loser today or are you a winner always? And this sort of thing. It's really, really toxic. And it is. I would say probably the most dangerous mental health activity that you can do as far as your business goes, is to only judge yourself by how you are currently doing.

When you get kind of content with who you are, with what you bring to the table with what you're trying to do and not fixate on, oh, the band didn't hire me this time. I guess I suck. When you get over that, it's only then that you start to be rational enough to make the decisions you need to grow a business. There's a guy in here, Luke Chard, maple, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong, Luke, but he says, I'm just going to send all the mixes I was going to do to this guy. Serious profit and just chilling on the beach. It's the key to running a six figure home studio guys. Yes.

Oh Man. He's learned the art of delegation. This is how you do it. Y'All

so funny, man. Did you notice that I made a post earlier on this, Brian and you responded to it? I said, I think this is kind of great because anyone who would even consider hiring this guy is not somebody you want to your time with. It's not like he's going to steal a client from anyone. He's only going to steal bad leads that we're going to turn into like nightmare projects. Let him have all the $5 clients he wants. And then you said exactly this and then I put a cat emoji on it just to piss you off.

Thankfully I didn't see that and I still hadn't seen it. Nor will I see it because cats are trash.

It's going to trigger you cause it's the cat kissing the camera something. Anyways, Cameron Bashaw said something kind of interesting. This is something worth considering. This is an angle I might confuse the issue a little bit, but I think is interesting. In Cameron Bashaw says, I wonder what his upsell game is in negotiation. I'd give this guy props. If he's able to turn those leads. He just qualified and promised $5 for full mix into more. So maybe he charges like it's $5 for full mix, but $1,000 a revision or something like that. Good Lord, that's awful.

I can't see that being a sustainable business model in a service based industry. Cause I think someone brought up spirit airlines, anyone that's ever flown spirit or Ryanair where it's like the cheapest flights you've ever seen. I've seen airlines that will charge you to use the bathroom. Like that's how, that's how nick they get. And they always have the worst reviews online. They're going to charge you for bags, they're going to charge you for carry on. They're going to charge you to use the space under your seat. They're going to charge you for food and for drinks. They're gonna charge you to the bathroom. They're gonna charge you to pick your seat. Delta airlines where the air is free. You might get to a point where like you're making as much money as the average person, but you're probably doing it with a $5 service. So it's like, you know, you might be paying 150 bucks a song at the end of the day, but this person, if you're the type of person that does this sort of business model, it's probably a $5 service.

Well and the big thing there is if that's your business tactic, you are not getting five star reviews, Bro. The big thing we preach is do right to other people. Build a good reputation, build that sort of Karma, if you will, for lack of a better word and good things are going to happen to you. Even if it was like, Hey, I'll just mix your first song for $5 it's gonna be a hard sell when you're like, yeah, one the next songs, 500 does. Anyone that said yes to the $5 song? It's, we've talked about this before, it's this idea of like, Hey Brian, I've got a hamburger and it's my new hamburger business and my hamburgers cost 5 cents a piece. Would you like to try one new food poisoning? Man, not good. You don't want to skimp on that. So this idea of man, like he's never going to get out of $5 land. Even if he does start to raise his rates. People all the time. Like last time you charged me $5 you charged my friend Steve, $5 I was hoping to get that. You know, it's just, it's a nightmare. Don't freaking play that game.

Kind of summing up everyone's feelings of what we've talked about and what the comments were in there. I think Gregory Villa Frank says a really good post here. I wouldn't hit the panic button quite yet. He's not offering any type of revolutionary service that's any different than what we are. Basically, he's just saying he's not differentiating himself. There will always be bottom feeders, the serious clientele notice steer clear of with pricing like that. So I wouldn't worry about it like someone already posted. Maybe he's just building a portfolio and trying to grow. Maybe he's just a troll. Who knows? But get back to work. All of you, you know the value we bring to our clients as well as the lofty investment we've all put into place to build our studios and run them as profitable businesses. Don't get sidetracked. That's kind of a drop the mic moment right there. Like, yeah. What's his name? [inaudible]. Who wrote that? Gregory Villafranca Villa Frank Gregory,

my man trapping the heat.

He's a smart dude. I've chat with him a few times through Instagram on coaching calls and he's got some cool stuff going on in his business. So I would listen to what he says.

He hit the nail on the head. I guess that's sort of like why you wanted to do this episode, this idea of like when you get sidetracked by something like this, I'm like what the solution is like stop whining and get back to business. Yeah. Side note, this is sort of unrelated. Did you know Brian Hood that the first currency in the United States was a penny and do you know that that penny did not say in God, we trust on it. Do you know what phrase was on that penny? Get back to work. Mind Your Business. Really. That was the first currency in the United States and it was this idea of like put your head down, do your thing and cut it out bro. So yeah, I mean like this is healthy and I think to take this on another level, you know we've got like the $5 guy, right. That's frustrating, but it shouldn't be frustrating. We should make whatever. That's fine. Do your thing, bro. You're not going to survive in this business because you are already ruining your reputation. Any person that you meet as a contact that you nurture is elite at $5 you're never going to get past that.

Yeah. Even if you're trying to just build your portfolio, like just say this for a second. Now we were trying to give this guy the benefit of the doubt and to say he was building his portfolio. He's new in the business. He's trying to get started. No, just do free test mixes. You can get stuff for your portfolio without the insulting price of $5 I will always work for free before I worked for $5 a song. One of the biggest reasons is because you alienate yourself from all the other people in your community. If people see that from you and they know your name or you advertise your studio's name there, you're basically blacklisted from any serious producer in the area. As far as a mentor or collaboration in the future, I can do more damage than good. So if you're just getting started and you're just trying to build your portfolio up, there are plenty of ways to do it.

Yeah, I mean the guy, my advice to this $5 guy, we'd be like rebrand immediately. You have made a misstep, but let's take this to a more realistic place. There's always going to be some guy on craigslist offering to do it for five bucks, but I think one of the things that a lot of people get caught up on is, let's say there's two really high quality guys. Let's say we're in Denver, Colorado and there's two guys that both charge, let's say $400 per song for the same service. They're both about the same and they both are just like freaking out about each other. I used to have a relationship like this with mastering engineer that used to be here in town and he used to really freak me out cause he was way more successful than I was. But I learned pretty fast that like that was silly.

He was servicing a different type of customer than I was and we weren't competitors. And I think that's one of the most important things to look at is to say, you're not my competitor. I'm doing another niche. If on the other hand you don't have a niche and you're the all singing guy all singing, all dancing, and you're like, oh, I can do editing and I can do drum replacement, all of the, and there's other all singing, all dancing and yeah, you guys are competitors and it's going to be miserable and you guys are gonna fight it out. I'm trying to be like,

well, I'll do it for $100 a song. Oh, well I'll do it for 90 well, I do the first 75

you know what the irony is there, if you would just each pick one service and be the best at it, you would both be better off for it.

Totally. So if you've got like two guys in a town that both offer the exact same service, and I would say that they're probably going to both be all singing, all dancing meat and then divide the market in half and say, I will offer, you know, whatever, like collude collude. And if you guys do that and say, Hey, I'm only gonna work over here and you're only going to work over there, you have the opportunity to corner a market and both raise your prices dramatically. That's actually not collusion. It's essentially you're moving into two different directions. If I just broke the law, please don't quote me on that. I've heard collusion's not a crime, but I don't really know if that's reputable or not. I had no idea

it's, it is what it is.

Anyways, so I think this is a great example of why you niche. This is a great example of why you figure out what you were made to do by doing a lot of stuff, trying a lot of things and figuring out what resonates with you, what resonates with the marketplace. The illustration I like to use when I first got into business was like, hey, I don't really know what it is I'll be doing in the long run. So I have gone to the pond with a bunch of fishing poles and I've got a bunch of lines in the water. I'm going to see which one gets the most nibbles, which one catches the most fish, and then I'm going to slowly throw away fishing poles and focus on one fishing pole someday.

Yeah. If you go way back to episode number 17 that we posted way back March, 2018 the five stages of a successful recording career when we talked about stage one and that episode is when you're in what we call yes mode.

That's

kind of wear but rock barriers right now. The issue with him though is he doesn't have the roadmap ahead of him for how to get to stage two through five. In that scenario, he doesn't know how to get out of yes mode where he's saying yes to literally any project that comes his way. The good part about stage one is that you get to dip your toe in a bunch of different areas and find out what you're good at and what sort of genre and services you're best at and what is basically attracted to you. Because I said it before, you don't really get to pick your niche. Your niche chooses you. Yes. And you don't really get to have any sort of niche until you've experimented with a bunch of different things. So people ask us all the time, how do you niche down? This is how you do it. Step one is go listen to an episode. But in Stage one you say to everything

and eventually you'll start to discover which areas you can start to specialize in. So here's the thing, but rock bury. His big mistake here isn't charging $5 I feel like a pun is coming on. It's not. I wish it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't made any dad jokes yet. I'll see what I can do. But, but rock Barry, he has already niched. He says, well this is the niche that I have exist and it's like I have a metal and stuff. That's his problem. What but rock Barry should've said was one not $5 I'll make your first one for free and just threw it out there. Yeah, I'll mix you first song for free. Free test mix. Free test mix. Yeah. If you are struggling that bad where you're willing to fully mic songs for $5 each, you're in a desperation mode that I can't even fathom.

However, offer one song for free. Do it, give it to them for free. No strings attached. And if they like it, they'll come back to you. If not, they're going to move on. Yeah. And that's the thing, what you'll probably find, I would say 90% of the time in a situation like this that some kid, hey, I'm kinda good at this, am trying to get to do this for a living. I tried the $5 per song thing. That didn't go very well, so I started doing one song for free and you know, I found the country guy did the song for him and went, okay, I found a folk rock guy does on frame and went, okay, I did a a vintage TCE hip hop tune. They went nuts for it and then he sent his buddy and then that went really well and then he sent his other buddy and this other buddy and all of a sudden, boom, you've got a business here.

You'll start getting referrals in the niche that chooses you. That's how you know is when you start getting referrals. Yes. Oh Brian, that was so good. You will start getting referrals in the niche that chooses you. They're a bunch of guys that I've talked to or that I'm either, there's a couple of guys I'm even currently coaching that they did not choose their niche. They are in a niche that they don't even really like, but they're killing it and that niche and they're trying to figure out how to leverage their success in one niche that they don't necessarily love. It's not perfect and to a niche that they do want to be in. And so I think the big thing to take home here isn't just that like there's no such thing as competitors unless you've commoditized yourself, but also don't niche early. This [inaudible] Barry niched way too early and he has no opportunity to figure out if hey, it turns out like, I was joking with you Brian Right before the show, you were listening to this like electronic song, the sort of like rant one. It's called vaporwave vaporwave. That was my best impersonation of vaporwave. But you sound like a dial up modem just now. Well that's what everybody sounds like, right? It's like no, not at home. Oh, stuff.

So anyways, you were listening to this song and this isn't the first time I've like video chatting with you and you've got a song like that going in the background and I was like, dude, you should try to mix a song and that genre because you know you've specialized in big angry, aggressive over the top enormous mixes and that's a genre that lends itself to that same sort of like girth. And so we were joking around about that, but rock Billy, it might turn out that, but rock Billy ends up being the vaporwave mix engineer of all time. I'll never know. He'll never know. That's the point.

That's kind of one of those big things that I think the podcast helps people with, which is people like Barack Barry, they do not have a vision for where they're going. People who listened to this podcast are getting continual input every single week of different directions they could go and now it's up to you to take from this buffet and figure out which direction you should be going in. But at least you were calling him some direction, which is a big difference from someone like Butt Rock. Barry, I do want to 0.1 thing that surprised me out. This is surprising. His copywriting is actually good. It's not bad. Let me point something out. The first part of this is better than 95% of professional high-earning websites that I see. He tells a story. Yeah. Most websites that I see are like, I've been working for 22 years. I got all this gear and I can, you know, it's like, and I've got platinum records.

Like that's how it's all about me, me, me, me, me bought rock. Barry gets one thing, right? He talks about you, you, you, you, you, here's what he says. I'm gonna read it one more time. Rock and metal. Music is all about the energy. Let's make your song the best it can be. Then when he talks about himself as an engineer, I care about your music as much as you do because in the past when I started out, I got shot mixes, which is terrible grammar, but bad mixes from recording studios. So I know what it's like to be disappointed. So he's relating to them. So this is actually good copywriting. Yeah, but not for five times mixes. So you can take what he did here. This is actually a good way to appeal to your target demographic and level with them and make them feel like they are understood, but then go charge them 500 or so.

Yeah, there's something like that. Yeah. That's an interesting point. His copywriting was pretty good. The shot mix is, I wonder if like he wasn't allowed to write say shit. No. Well let me say something. Have you ever heard that phrase shot mixes before? No.

It is used all the time in metal and hardcore. Really? Yeah. It is like a phrase that bands like that use all the time. Like that band is shot or those mixes are shot. It actually speaks to the target demographic. If that doesn't appeal to you, you're probably not part of that target demographic. So that's actually one other way that he appeals to his target demographic and qualifies them and they're automatically disqualifies people who don't even know what that means. So it's interesting. So I don't get this at all. I feel like it's almost a troll because the copywriting is actually good.

You might be right, but rock Barry, if you're a real person, whether you're a troll or not, please email us podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com. We would love to hear from you. You know, it'd be funny,

Steve Simpson, the guy who posted this is the one who made that, you know, I'll give you Kudos Steve, if that was you.

Yeah, this is, it's an interesting problem. This is an interesting scenario because it raises a whole bunch of issues for our community and a lot of insecurities from people. Yeah. It showed a lot of insecurities. The fact that the copywriting was so good was very, very, but also so many people saying such brilliant things about like, dude, get back to work, start working on your own business. And Man, I remember this all the time when I was in high school, I'd be running a race, especially as like a younger guy like freshman, sophomore, and you would come around the curve to like, you know, you're almost done with the race and a young immature guy always looks over his shoulder. He's always like, was anyone coming?

Is he going to get a pass? Me, I don't want anyone to see someone pass me. That'd be embarrassing. And then you trip and fall and break.

Yeah. Or lose. Here's the thing that my coach has always taught me. He's specifically coach fully Dublin style Outta high school is they would teach and say, hey, when you look backwards, you start to run a little bit slower. It throws off your ergonomics. Your body doesn't run as well when your head is like all the way to the left or all the way to the right. It's not the fastest that you can run by looking over your shoulder at someone like this. It can throw you off. You can lose the race. Just because you looked back. I'll never forget. One time I was, I was in high school. The guy looked over his shoulder and the fact that he looked over his shoulder, slowed him down and he lost. Don't be that guy. Right? Keep your eyes on the prize. Keep your eyes forward and run like hell for that finish line and try to PR. Try to make sure that you're learning from each experience on how to do better the next time instead of freaking out about it.

There was this kid and he's behind me and you might catch man [inaudible], but he's not as good as I am. How's he winning?

So there's just a whole lot to learn from this. There's a whole lot to take home. I love that his copy was so good. That's amazing.

Yeah. It's one of those like you understand empathy with your clients without understanding the value of what you bring. Again, so many people do this at a different level. People that continue to charge way under what their value is, continue to not raise their rates year after year after year. It may be $5 but it might be charging $50 or $60 a song for a mastering engineer who's way above their game and should be charging way more.

Well, I've been thinking about this a lot. Obviously, you know, I've, I've mentioned the podcast a few times, I'm only mentioning this because it's so relevant and not because I'm trying to brag or something, but something like four out of the past five months have been the best months Chris Graham aspirins ever had. It's been crazy. A big piece of that has been me raising my rates and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it. But one of the things that I keep coming back to, and it's applicable in this scenario, is let's, let's Kinda pretend let's coach, but rock bury here for a minute and let's say, but Roxbury, a hundred people reached out to you and they paid you $5 for their one song, right? So, but rock bury made, I mean, what is that a $500 500 but very made $500 for that. If, but rock Barry had charged $10 and only 50 people had hired him, but rock Barry would've still made $500 but you know what, he would have worked half as much. He would have worked half as much, which meant he would've made twice as much per hour. He would've made $4 an hour instead of two.

Probably less than that. Maybe a dollar an hour instead of 50 cents an hour. Exactly. But You keep extrapolating that, so now you're, instead of $10 a song, let's just say you were $100 a song, which is a little less cringey, but still not a respectable rate for mixing and mastering. But if you're brand new, that might be a reasonable number. Well now out of those hundred people, only five people hire him, which is a 5% conversion rate, which is actually closer in line with what you'll expect to see on the Internet. He's still made 500 bucks, but he's only had to mix five songs.

[inaudible] not dimension. The type of person willing to hire him as totally changed at this point. There's a certain, we've talked about psychographics, there's certain psychographic of someone that's like $5 a song and I'm going to be a rock star. You want to be very far away from these people.

And so those five songs that he mixed for $100 each one of those five bands may have actually taken it seriously and gained some traction and now they're on tour. They're out there getting heard, their songs are getting played on Spotify, they're getting played on youtube, the music videos, and now bought rock. Barry's got referrals coming in from this band that actually has success. So now that one client that he recorded for $100 turns into 10 more clients. So he's able to charge two or $300 a song and now he's actually at a good place. He can build sustainable business off those sorts of rates long term, if he can keep up the momentum.

Well, and here's the thing we haven't addressed. We've assumed that as Roxbury moves, how many times have we said Butt rock buried? Too many times I can check the transcript. Let's just call Barry. I don't, we're going to get flagged by iTunes or something, but so we've assumed that the more he charges, the less people will hire him, right? That his conversion rate will go down. I said initially, well, let's say a hundred people hired Barry at $5 a song, but then he raises prices to $10 a song and only 50 people hired them. That's not what would have happened if, but rock bury raised his rate. I said again, if he raised his rate to $10 a song, he probably still would've gotten a hundred clients out of this

or at least 75 or at least 75 usually your rates will drop a disproportionate amount to the total project. This is really getting into nerdy math here, so I didn't really want to go down this rabbit hole too far, but a hundred clients at five bucks eats 500 bucks. 75 clients at 10 bucks each is $750 50 clients at 20 bucks each is $1,000 and then you start getting down to, let's just say he gets five clients at $250 each. That's $1,250 so now he went from mixing and mastering a hundred bands for a hundred songs for 500 bucks down to five bands for five songs for $1,250 that's more of a realistic curve. Now eventually you get to a point where your rates get so high that you're not able to convert anybody or that you're converting such a small amount. Maybe one band might pay him $1,000 a song.

Now his price is starting to go down out of the a hundred people. So there's an art to it and we've talked about this in the past and it starts to get any really nerdy conversion metrics and other things. This is beyond the scope of really what matters because then you're really getting a tweaking and optimization when you're get to that point where that sort of stuff matters. It's a different businesses, different problems, a different podcast. There is the 80 20 principle and if you could just apply 20% of what we talk about here, you can probably make 80% of the profits.

Okay, well, here's the thing that gets interesting is most people, if they're always looking over their shoulder to see like who's coming around the bend, am I gonna get passed? Am I going to get embarrassed? These people are obsessed with that and what happens is these guys are not willing to get rejected. It's a fear of rejection is the issue. And they price themselves to be sure that they'll never get rejected.

Is that what kept you from raising your rates for sodium long, Chris? Even after I hounded you for it.

Yes. Like I hated getting rejected by a band and be like, oh, we can't afford that. Couldn't stand it, man. So I feel the pain of what that's like. I struggled with that for years and I'm still working on that. That's still something that I'm not healed from 100% but here's the thing. If you price yourself to avoid rejection, you will not have a successful career. You can't make enough money unless you're like a Ninja at a million other skills. When you price yourself intentionally to get rejected by a certain percentage of people, that is the only time when you start to maximize what you're actually worth. This has been something I struggled with my own business is I was charging a lot less than I do now for a long time, but I was worth way, way, way more than that. And I'm finding that it's been interesting as I've been like, you know, working with clients that I've been working with for years and telling them a, hey, sorry, this is going to cost way more than the last project. They still pay it almost all the time. Occasionally they'll say no, but it's gotten to the point now where it's been like, Huh, I kinda like that rejection. That means I'm moving forward and that's probably demented.

No, that I've always looked at it. If I'm not rejected a certain amount of times, I'm charging too little. Exactly.

Say that again Brian. That's such a nugget of truth.

If I don't get rejected enough, I'm not charging enough.

Bam Baby. That's the wisdom nugget and I think probably where we should leave you guys to consider are you getting rejected enough? If you're not getting rejected enough, you only have one of two problems. Either you don't have enough leads, go fix that or you're charging too little

[inaudible] so that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. One thing I forgot to mention, this episode that I probably should've mentioned is,

uh, if you're, if you're not charging $5 mixes, what should you be charging for mixing services or whatever services you're offering? This is something I don't really push on the podcast that often, but I do have a rate sheet available that goes over different rates, whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or expert, and it goes over like five or six different services like tracking, editing, mixing, mastering. And then it also gives you five different rules to follow. If you're going to do any sort of free work for your studio, like I said earlier in this podcast, I'd rather do free work than to do $5 mixes, but if you're gonna ever do free work, you need to follow these five rules, so if you want that rate sheet, you can just go to home studio rates.com that is home studio rates.com and that'll get you to the right landing page for that rate sheet and as always you can join the six figure home studio community, which is our free Facebook community.

That's where we got the topic of this episode from a, it's a 100% free Facebook community. There's no reason not to be a part of it. If you're not a part of it, go join it right now. Just search for the six figure home studio community on Facebook or type in this URL to your browser and it'll forge you to the right place. The six figure home studio.com/community next week's episode A. I don't know what it is yet. I haven't recorded it yet. I've been out of town all last week on a family vacation, so we're going to hopefully get it recorded tomorrow, which means by next Tuesday, bright and early at 6:00 AM, that episode will be out and it'll be a surprise for both of us, whatever it is. Until next time. Thank you so much for listening and happy hustling.