Why COVID Is The Final Nail In The Coffin For Most Old-School Studios (And What That Means For Home Studios)

Brian: This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode one 35.

[00:00:19] Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm here again with my bald beautiful purple shirted for eye glasses, shiny head, but skinny. Now it used to be kind of a little thick boy, but now you're real skinny and looking good.

[00:00:33] Chris: Oh, Hey, thank you.

[00:00:36] Brian: J or H I G I forgot your middle initial.

[00:00:39] Now, Jay, Jay,

[00:00:41] Chris: that's a J

[00:00:42] Brian: correct. I'm leaving it. I'm not even gonna edit it out. You're a, for too many episodes, dude.

[00:00:47] Chris: I was man. I was, yeah, I'm doing good, man. I've done a lot of yoga. How are you doing? What is new in your life? How's the bread game.

[00:00:54] Brian: First of all, for those who don't follow this podcast, I don't really talk about it much because you've been gone. So I don't talk about myself. If you don't ask me about it. I've been strong on the sourdough game. Like I've got two, two month old sourdough starters in the fridge now. And so it has been about once a week, I'll bake two loaves and I have become an expert at I'd probably make 15 well, so far.

[00:01:13] And, uh,

[00:01:13] Chris: So in the six figure home studio,

[00:01:15] Brian: I see you trying to do I see you trying to do upon right now? I can look at it in your face and tell you about to do upon. Go ahead.

[00:01:21] Chris: well, this is a podcast about how to make dough. So

[00:01:26] Brian: I'm so mad at you right now. But you know what? I kind of miss it. I welcome a

[00:01:31] Chris: you need me,

[00:01:32] Brian: Oh I do. But I'm not going to say it anymore. You want to get out

[00:01:37] Chris: I would rate my previous joke, a gluten out of 10.

[00:01:42] Brian: fun fact, if you have a gluten intolerance, you can still eat homemade sourdough. It only has two ingredients in it. Flour and water and yeah. Yeah. That's what I hear. Anyways. I don't have a gluten intolerance, other update his wife's out of town this week for like a week. So her and a lady friend of hers went to the beach.

[00:01:57] Because they just wanted to change the scenery and I can't blame them cause we've been stuck in the house for tomorrow. So I've been here alone and I've gone back to my old bachelor ways. So like first night she's gone. What do I do up til 2:30 AM playing video games.

[00:02:13] Chris: Nah.

[00:02:15] Brian: Next day, I get up at like 7:00 AM, four hours of sleep.

[00:02:18] I'm hurting from it still. So that's where I'm at right now.

[00:02:21] Chris: Roe that does not sound fun. I bought it. I'm not a video gamer anymore. I just, it's not my thing.

[00:02:28] Brian: Well, I am, so I'm just gonna, I got back into a deer in the quarantine because it's like, it's the only way to keep me sane. So that's just where I am

[00:02:35] Chris: There you go.

[00:02:36] Brian: Helps me escape. If I can't go on to trips, I'm just going to go into my imaginary world of video games.

[00:02:41] Chris: It's too stressful for me to like, be in a situation where it's like solve this problem or die.

[00:02:47] Brian: No, I play roadshow games, man. I don't play like first person shooters or

[00:02:50] Chris: Oh, got ya.

[00:02:51] Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're ready to get into some value added topics here today. Chris, not your weak pun game. Actually your puns were pretty decent today.

[00:02:58] Chris: Yeah, I appreciate it. I wasn't loafing today. I really put a lot of effort into it.

[00:03:03] Brian: I didn't mean for you to get another point opportunity. It's actually amazing. You can just come up with these stupid puns out of thin air. Like just to the audiences, crystal clear, I in no way, participate in sharing what I'm going to talk about and help him prepare these puns ahead of time.

[00:03:17] This is all Chris Graham on the flow on the mic live just like back to back to back. So

[00:03:22] Chris: I gotta do it again to do, man. You gotta

[00:03:24] Brian: there you go. I'm a Fetcher, but I need another plant. All right, let's talk about the topic we're gonna talk

[00:03:27] Chris: I'm trying, but I think they're done. If I go another one, it'll be awful. So I'm going to hold back.

[00:03:31] Brian: They've got me. They've all been awful. So that's,

[00:03:33] Chris: Oh, come on. I appreciate you toasting me for my excellent bread ponds though. Just now

[00:03:39] Brian: And there's the awful one. You were afraid of Chris. Now the audience hates you.

[00:03:43] Chris: it's not worthy.

[00:03:45] Brian: That was a reach dude. All right. Topic today, we're talking about life, death and rebirth of industry. God, I hope I have a better title than this for the episode title, but that's what we're talking about today. So we are in the middle of a pandemic right now, or kind of on the middle and late stages, but we don't actually know where the end of this is going to be like

[00:04:04] Chris: We don't know.

[00:04:05] Brian: As of the time we record this, it's. Early June. So who knows how much longer it's going to be before we actually get to the end of all this stuff. But there is clearly some industries dying right now in our own industry is being affected right now. And so we want to have a, an episode about this because there is light at the end of the tunnel, believe it or not.

[00:04:22] And there are some lessons in our past that we can look to because there is always a cycle to it. It is very cyclical. What happens in not just our industry, but other industries and there's things we can learn. We're looking at other places and it can be encouraging. So. At the end of the day, the takeaway of this episode is to not get discouraged about whatever's happening to you and your business and your life.

[00:04:42] Right now. We're going to talk about what's happening on the other side. When we get out of this death phase or this death part of the cycle and transition into the rebirth cycle

[00:04:51] Chris: So this whole cycle is fascinating. This episode by and large is inspired by one of my favorite shows of all time. It's called

[00:04:59] Brian: and a Griffith.

[00:05:00] Chris: Well, that's pretty good. I was more of a Lassie guy myself, but I'm really into the show called one strange rock.

[00:05:06] Brian: I bet. You're going to say one tree Hill.

[00:05:08] Chris: One shirt. so one strange rock is narrated by will Smith and they interview a bunch of people who have spent time on the space station about what they think about earth.

[00:05:19] And they talk about how freaking weird earth is. And one of the episodes they have is about the life cycle. And it's fascinating. . Basically everything. There is a cycle of life, death, and rebirth, and each time the cycle goes around, life tends to get a little bit stronger. One of the best examples that I've ever heard in the life cycle category is Redwood trees.

[00:05:44] So Brian, you and I were out in San Francisco last year. Um, we went to Yosemite. We almost went to the redwoods because of how much snow there was. And redwoods have a really interesting story. I Redwood national forest or whatever it's called up there. When the national parks association took over the redwoods, about 70 years ago, they said, you know, we want to protect these trees are a national resource.

[00:06:06] So what we're going to do, national national natural resource. There we go. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna have a zero tolerance policy on forest fires. Absolutely no forest fires. If there's any fires we're putting out immediately and what they were shocked to find over the course of the next 70 years, is that not a single Redwood seeds sprouted?

[00:06:27] No new redwoods for 70 years. So the national park service is thinking like a what going on here. This isn't good. And what they found out was it, there was a natural life, death and rebirth cycle.  a Redwood forest that needs fire. So a giant pine cone falls out of giant Redwood it's the ground. At some point there's a forest fire and that forest fire opens up the pine cone and helps the seeds be dispersed, which then become baby Redwood trees.

[00:06:59] They were trying to stop the life cycle by controlling things they weren't supposed to control and humans in classic form messed it all up. Now, uh, that's not the case. And. Redwoods are growing again. So I'm fascinated by that story. And there's just a million different parallels in our own lives. And obviously in our industry, that's what this podcast is about.

[00:07:20] Brian: Yeah. So I think one of the important takeaways just to get out of the way straight off the bat is you cannot stop this cycle. This is an immovable force. It is always going to happen. There is a life, death and rebirth.  every possible industry and not just industry in other areas like you just mentioned in nature, this is just a part of nature.

[00:07:37] This is just part of life. There's going to be a cycle in it and you cannot stop it. So what you can do is when you were in the middle of a death part of the cycle, which is kind of what we're at right now, especially in our own industry right now. If you look at. The recording industry as a whole, we was already and a transition of a death cycle from the classic, like big studios.

[00:07:55] You've seen between 2008 and 2020. So many big studios have closed up shop and it's moved more to the rebirth of. The industry in the home studios now, because of COVID, you've just accelerated the end of the die off. And it's sad for a lot of businesses. We're not trying to say like one is better than the other.

[00:08:14] We're just talking about the reality of the situation as it is. You cannot control it. You cannot stop it. But because of what's happened now, the remaining big box studios that are out there. With the rare exception of a few are struggling so bad right now. Like they have more debt. Most of them do. Then the average lean home studio, they have more expenses, more overhead, and most of them rely on in person clients.

[00:08:36] And so because of that, they're getting no money right now. They still have bills to pay mortgages, to pay. And it's going to be a really hard time to dig themselves out of this whole, if they make it the other side at all. So what you're going to see is the ones that were still hanging on. They're going to see a lot of those closed down if they haven't already.

[00:08:50] And it's sad and I'm not trying to take away from the livelihood of, of the fact that these people have, like they spent their time building up something that is failing right now. Like, I don't want to see any business fail, but this is similar to what you were talking about in your Redwood story.

[00:09:02] Trying to keep the fires from happening. Isn't going to help the industry as a whole, like these fires are going to happen. Things are going to burn. They're going to close down, not physically burned. They're going to close down and on the other side, It's going to be a stronger industry as a whole. So with all of that being said, if you're on the rebirth side of the industry, when this starts to happen, you're going to be in a very, very good spot.

[00:09:22] And I think Chris, you were telling me your yoga studio story that I think is really applicable to our audience, because this is a good illustration of what is going to look like for the recording world. When we're out. The other side of this.

[00:09:32] Chris: So for anyone that's listened to the show. For any amount of time, you know, that yoga is one of my favorite things in the entire world. It's something that I found a lot of healing through. It's something that I do all the time. And especially with the past a couple months, I do it a couple of times a day.

[00:09:44] It's been great, but I would much prefer to do yoga. At a yoga studio than I would in a bedroom and the yoga studio that I like to go to just recently reopened last week. And I walked in and I was talking to the owner and she's super cool. And I just kind of asked her how business was going. And she said, something kind of blew my mind.

[00:10:02] She said, well, we're doing great, but that's because we have a huge room in our yoga studio. We can fit 20 people with social distance, with six feet around every single person we can fit 20 people in here. Who's going to be really be struggling. Are these smaller strip mall yoga studios that after you do social distance can get like five people in a classroom.

[00:10:22] And it blew my mind. And I said to her is like, Oh man, that's crazy. So a lot of them will probably go to business, which means this is probably going to be good for you guys. There will probably be a lot more people coming to this yoga studio. Specifically because this yoga studio can support having margins because the room that we do yoga in is just astronomically huge.

[00:10:40] As far as yoga studios go, the point that she brought up there. And the point of this story is that when there is a life cycle happening, when you're in the midst of a death and rebirth cycle, that supply and demand start to shift that certain parts of the industry start to see more demand and other parts of the industry, you start to see less demand.

[00:10:58] And where I think you start to get lots of problems is if you own a small yoga studio and you have refused to do the math and be like, well, we're going to lose $17 for every class we teach based on what we pay our teachers and what are students pay and how many people we can get in the room. In that situation, you should die as quickly as you possibly can.

[00:11:18] Brian: Okay.

[00:11:19] Chris: You should lean in and invite the lifecycle into your life and move on and try to do something new. I'm fascinated by this though, because. In our own industry, I'm sure there are going to be areas already and not yet where supply and demand are going to shift. And I share this in the community recently, but like Sweetwater is a good example of this Sweetwater is exploding right now to water for you.

[00:11:42] The guys that don't know it's one of the biggest, most popular places to buy audio gear and instruments

[00:11:47] Brian: In the U S and I think Canada.

[00:11:49] Chris: in the U S and Canada and their sales are up like double digits across the board.

[00:11:54] Brian: Actually, I think it's just us. Canada has some other big thing they use.

[00:12:00] Chris: One of the most popular ones. And it's fascinating because of the quarantine, a lot of people are like, well, I'm going to buy a mic and start recording at home. So I think I saw what was it like USB microphone sales were up like 26% or something crazy like that and this Forbes article, but that's a great example of in this rebirth section that I think that we're in right now.

[00:12:19] I don't think we're in the death as much as we are the rebirth. But I tend to be an optimist. I tend to see every industry is going through rebirth always, but that's a good example of some where in our industry, that's experiencing rebirth right now. And I would imagine that there are a lot of audio companies right now that were like reluctant to come out with a USB microphone.

[00:12:35] Cause they kind of get a bad rap. It definitely get a bad rap years ago that are now like, whew. Oh my gosh. I'm so glad we have USB microphones.

[00:12:44] Brian: Well, also like this actually brings up the story of the iPod where. It's not always the death of an industry. It's maybe the death of a segment within an industry. And so like in the audio world, you're right. It's not the death of this industry. We're on the early side of the rebirth of our industry.

[00:12:57] What's dying off like the last gasping breaths of the old guard recording industry, where it's the big box studios. Again, there will always be a few of them around. They're not going to go anywhere. The big, like staple names because they're supported by labels or by this huge projects with big budgets still does.

[00:13:14] There will probably always be demand for those. But it's the small studios that are thriving in those people that still held on from 2008 to 2020. I don't know if they're gonna make it through this without shutting down. I just don't see it happening unless they are debt-free, which is always a great move or unless they have some other sources of funding, that's actually keeping the studio open, like another business or something else, keeping it open, not the business itself.

[00:13:34] So. All that to say in the iPod world. And you can probably tell the story better than I can, where Steve jobs had to kill off one of his own products, because he saw an inevitable future where there was going to be a rebirth in another segment of the market.

[00:13:48] Chris: Right. And the story there is it's in Steve jobs, his biography, which if you haven't gotten any biographies yet the Steve jobs biography is just an awesome book. It's fabulously interesting. If you're a nerd. But there's a story there where Steve jobs, I think he's in like a boardroom meeting and the iPod.

[00:14:03] I think this is probably the only 2002, 2003. The iPod is killing it. Everybody in like 2003, got an iPod for Christmas and myself included. I think that year, it was funny. Cause you know, when the iPod came out initially like all Apple products, I was like, that's stupid. Why would anybody want that? And then I finally, I was like, ah, I guess I'll ask for one for Christmas, got one.

[00:14:24] And I was like, this is the greatest thing ever. And what Steve jobs did is, was in a board meeting and he said, you know what? I paused, you're killing it. We're absolutely crushing it in sales, but here's the problem. Guys. Somebody is going to put an iPod inside a cell phone and when they do no, one's going to want an iPod anymore.

[00:14:39] So what we should do. Instead of letting somebody else eat our lunch, we should eat our own lunch. We should be the first person to put an iPod inside a cell phone. The iPhone was born and the iPhone is a wildly more successful product than the iPod. And that rebirth is so interesting. There would have been no iPhone without an iPod.

[00:15:02] But there might have been no iPhone unless Steve jobs that had the discipline to lean in and say, you know what? This is coming to an end. We are going to make decisions to get out in front of this. We're going to make decisions to be on the bleeding edge of rebirth here so that we can control our own destiny.

[00:15:17] And there's something just kind of cool and beautiful and mature about that.

[00:15:20] Brian: I wouldn't be surprised if the AirPods pro is actually a better seller than the original iPod ever was like,

[00:15:26] Chris: You might be right.

[00:15:27] Brian: The original iPod was a big deal at the time, but I would bet that just one of their like side items is selling better than the original iPod, because they were willing to eat their own lunch.

[00:15:36] Early on to make a bigger market overall. One of the things that came to mind when you're telling that story though, is back to the USB mic conversation. A lot of these companies made these USB mics and ate their own lunch and they were afraid to do so because they rely on interface sales. And if you have a USB mic, you don't necessarily need an interface to go with it.

[00:15:54] So if you were an interface company that didn't jump into the USB Mike game, You're struggling right now because they're not selling as many interfaces as they are USB mics. I am a hundred percent guessing that that's the case right now is there's bigger. There's a lot more USB mic cells right now than interfaces, but also venture to say that there are more interface cells right now than usual, because everyone's stuck at home.

[00:16:14] Everyone trying to produce their own music. Even my, I mentioned this on a previous episode, I think for me, it was in a coaching call with my students, even the commissioner of my fantasy football league. Hit me up asking about interface stuff. Cause he wanted to get it home interface just for his own music at home.

[00:16:27] So like he is in no way, like involved in the recording industry at all. He's like a corporate guy, but that's something he's getting into now. All that to say. And this is kind of going back to our central point about not getting discouraged in the current life end of death, early in the rebirth phase, not to get discouraged, especially for those of you that lost a lot of work.

[00:16:45] Because again, I, in coaching calls, my students, a lot of my students have gone through a recent visits COVID they lost a lot of their clients and they're trying to scramble to either move to online, remote recording sessions or remote editing sessions or move their stuff online. Or they're trying to shift completely online services like mastering or mixing.

[00:17:03] But here's the thing. If you come out the other side of this and you're still alive, not physically alive, although that helps. If your business is still alive, you're actually still trying to make this a viable business. You're going to be better off for it because here's the big takeaway. The demand has not gone anywhere.

[00:17:19] All it is is they deferred demand. It's not like music has stopped. People have not stopped writing music. All it is is people have lost the ability to record or edit their own music temporarily, or they've lost the ability to do that. So that means if you are up, for example, Chris Graham mastering, if you a Chris Graham, which you are Chris, me talking to you, that is actually you.

[00:17:39] And if things slow down for you from mastering, which I don't know if it is right now or not, I will say like when studios start to open back up. Whatever studios are left, are going to get a big rush of recording gigs because not all musicians can record themselves and send it off to mix. But also you're going to get a big rush of mastering gigs because people are going to go back to studios and record because not everyone can record their selves right now.

[00:18:02] Chris: This idea of deferred demands. Really interesting.

[00:18:04] Brian: Yeah. Deferred demand is the big thing.

[00:18:06] Chris: Yeah, I had never actually heard that term before, but I had noticed when there was like a presidential election or a holiday, especially when it fell on a Monday that my, you know, when I was doing the really high volume, really low priced thing years ago, then what would happen is I'd be like, Oh my gosh, sales dipped dramatically on XYZ day.

[00:18:24] But then the next day ended up being one of the best days we'd had that month. And it was fascinating, just like, Oh, well, everyone took, you know, mother's day off or everyone took Memorial day off. And then a lot more people bought that next Tuesday. So it's this idea of deferred demand that over the longterm things even out.

[00:18:39] And I, I really do think that there still is for a lot of sections of our industry, a COVID records rush. That's going to come and it's going to come in a couple of different forms.

[00:18:48] Brian: Well, this is one point that I was, it's starting to make it the end of that last year. And that I lost track of, but this is an important point is the deferred demand means that all of those recording sessions that were canceled for a lot of my students who had to like 10, $12,000 worth of sessions wiped out of the blue for the foreseeable future, those are going to come back whenever studios can open back up again.

[00:19:08] And not only that during all that time, when musicians are writing and recording or editing or whatever it is they can do when they're home, everyone's got a different skillset. All of those songs that have been written now need to be recorded or mixed or mastered. So you're getting caught up on all that demand that was lost, AKA deferred, and there's new demand that has been built up during all this time.

[00:19:27] So again, that is what I think is going to lead to this boom over the summer into the spring, as in the U S at least a lot of the restrictions have been eased up. Even the numbers have not fallen. Let's not get into that right now

[00:19:37] Chris: Not in the UK dude, the UK.

[00:19:39] Brian: is still strict.

[00:19:40] Chris: Oh my gosh. It is wild over there right now.

[00:19:43] Brian: They've had much better numbers, recovery. I checked the numbers every week or so, and see what the daily new cases look like. And most countries are, are way on the other side of the bell curve. We fit this plateau at the top of our bell curve and it's slowly ramping down. Every other country is like big bell curve and daily new cases are dropping except the U S but we're not gonna get into that right now.

[00:20:04] The whole point is at some point in the future, That will go away. The vaccine will come out or it'll just be wiped out magically through thin air and magic. I don't know. I'll cast a spell or something or there's that one? Preacher who said like COVID-19 and then he blew into the mic and then it was hilarious.

[00:20:22] And there's a whole remix for it. If you haven't seen it, if you've seen it, you're laughing right now.  it's utterly ridiculous. Anyways, somehow it will go away. And when it does, studios was starting to get clients back in the door. And when that happens, all of this pinup demand will be released and you'll get those clients back that you've, that you lost.

[00:20:37] So I think if it's not the second half of this year, then maybe it's early next year. You're going to see people with some of the best months they've ever had in their studios. And it's going to be even better because so many studios are going to shut down or give up that your options are even more limited.

[00:20:49] So there's something to be encouraged, something to look at the other side of this. And have something to be working towards or something to keep yourself motivated, even in these tough times.

[00:20:58] Chris: Yeah. Well, it's funny, you mentioned the song writing thing. I hadn't thought of that. I've written more songs in the past a couple months than I have and years

[00:21:06] Brian: Oh man, I haven't written a song since 2009.

[00:21:09] Chris: there's, there's not a lot to do right now. I was talking to one of the guys I coach about this, uh, earlier this week and this idea of, for a lot of people, he's in the UK and we were talking about, well, what can you do right now to help yourself in the future? And the answer is try to get people to write.

[00:21:26] Brian: That's part of it. We talked about it last episode, which is. When it comes to being a Go-Giver marketer, which go listen to episode one 34, I believe it is. There was a five-part process to that. It's about helping your clients solve problems. And the golden goose area is solving a problem that helps increase the demand for your services.

[00:21:44] So we talked about it, Chris Graham, if you want to have an amazing Q three Q four this year go help clients mixed her own music. Or help your clients get more clients right now, which is what you're doing right now. If you're a recording studio, help your clients write more songs. If you're a mixing studio will help your clients record more music, whatever it is, you do help them get past the roadblocks that they're experiencing right now.

[00:22:06] And that is a true Go-Giver, it's a win, win, win. So again, go back to episode one 34, if you want to really. Good deep look at that sort of thing, but that's one of many things you can be doing right now. The other thing, but you could be doing right now, and we're not going to get into the specifics of this is plugging the down leaks in your funnel.

[00:22:21] This is one thing that I've been talking about at great length the last few weeks and something I've had a lot of focus on. Is sit down and think through  the middle to bottom of your marketing funnel and look at all the places that you're leaking out leads in your funnel. And that means if you can take the time now to plug those leaks in the future, when more and more people are coming to your website or coming to your social media page or whatever it is that you count as part of your funnel, you're going to get more clients that come out the bottom of that funnel.

[00:22:46] This is all stuff you can do right now. When you may have a downtime, but we have talked about this on the podcast where it's time to work on your business. You may not be able to work in your business right now. You may not be able to record clients, or if you can, you may have some downtime between projects and now it's time to work on your business, make the most of it.

[00:23:03] So I think just kind of sum up this whole shorter episode is look at what is dying in our industry right now. And to me, it's the big box studios I still think are like the last gasps of this big box industry. And I don't know if there's a better term for that, but like these studios that I call on the death zone there too big for 2020, and now with COVID put an even worse situation in an already bad situation for them.

[00:23:25] Don't be part of that. So don't start going into debt. Don't bring up unnecessary expenses, be as lean as humanly possible. Because if you look at what's dying, it's the studios with high overhead, a lot of fixed expenses that are struggling right now because you have no incomes. And then look at the rebirth.

[00:23:39] What are the things that are in the middle of a rebirth right now? And that is what we talk about all the time in the podcast, working from home. You want to be part of this. What is part of the rebirth it's working from home? And it's not just the recording industry. A lot of industries, a lot of corporate world is going to look differently too, because so many people are gonna be working from home now.

[00:23:55] Companies have been forced to try to work from home thing. They found that it generally works really well. There's a lot of benefits to it for them because they can start hiring from anywhere in the world. Now, instead of just being stuck in their geographic location, meaning all these businesses and expensive cities like San Francisco in New York can now go to people in Alabama and hire them because they are all working from laptops on zoom.

[00:24:15] So their talent pool has opened up dramatically. And they can pay less for that talent because living in Alabama is way cheaper than living in New York. And so it's very similar in our recording industry. In our world, we have unique advantages. One of which is we can work from our home. That's just nice in and of itself.

[00:24:31] The other thing is we have less expenses. Outside of our normal living expenses in our home. There aren't that many things you need to run your business. You don't need a lot of gear. We've talked about this in the past many, many times, ad nauseum on the podcast. You don't need a lot of gear. Anything can be done with plugins.

[00:24:46] It can be done with hardware nowadays. In most situations, you don't need a big mixing room because the surviving big box studios around. We'll be more than enough to do the mothership model, which is what we preach on this podcast, which is where you do everything at home. And when you need a big room, just go to a big studio and hire it out.

[00:25:01] It's almost always cheaper than owning a big studio or a big room for yourself. And other than that, there's not really expensive. I mean, some software for your CRM and maybe a few things here and there, software wise or subscription wise, but it should be so cheap for you to run your business unless you have maybe some people you've hired on.

[00:25:18] We definitely don't dissuade people from hiring cause that's a good part of. Bringing on expenses into your studio, but this is the part that's going to be part of the big rebirth. So look to that as to what you want to model your business after if you're in this phase where you're not sure which way to go now, more than ever, I urge people do not try to go down this path where you're getting as much gear as possible.

[00:25:38] You're building up this big, beautiful studio that is not the path for this immediate future, or anytime in the near future or longterm future. It's going to be all about doing it out of your home in a lean home studio.

[00:25:56] So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in for this episode. If you have anything that you want to hear us talk about as far as topics to cover things you're struggling with, we'd love to hear from you. And the best way to do that is to either email us podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com.

[00:26:12] If you have a topic you wanna email us or just doing our Facebook community and post in there and tag us in it. Just search for the six figure home studio community on Facebook, we've got over 6,000 members in there, very active community. And if you have a studio that you are trying to make a full time living, and eventually even if it's just part time right now, even if you're just a hobbyist right now, or even if you're having to revamp your entire business from the ground up, because of all the COVID related stuff going on in the world, that is the community that you want to be a part of right now, because you need to surround yourself.

[00:26:38] My people that are all working towards the same goal, the six figure home studio community, or you can just email this with a topic idea podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com.