Why Marketing is NOT The Solution For Most Struggling Studios (Replay)

[00:00:00] Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 111

[00:00:07] you're

[00:00:07] Announcer: [00:00:07] listening to the six figure home studio podcast, the number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio. Now your host, Brian Hood and

[00:00:17] Brian: [00:00:17] Chris Brant. Welcome back another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I am not here. With my bald, beautiful, amazing purple shirted cohost, because it is the week before Christmas, and I'm recording this intro by myself.

[00:00:33] You probably heard me mention this on the podcast. If you listen to the last couple episodes that this week and next week are replay episodes, and that is because Chris and I wanted to take a couple of weeks off for the first time ever. For the podcast a couple of weeks off just to, to have some RNR, to have some time away from the podcast, enjoy family, enjoy the holidays in new years, and come back fresh with some strong ideas.

[00:00:55] Today's episode is arguably one of the best episodes from 2018 I look through our entire backlog of episodes and thought, if there was only one episode I could have someone listen to from 2018 which episode would it be. And it is this episode. And that is because when someone's studio is struggling, the first thing they tend to go to, to solve the problems of their failing studio is marketing.

[00:01:17] And it makes sense if I don't have clients that I need to get more clients. And how do you get clients? You do marketing. That's what the internet says to do, right? The reality is the reason your studio is struggling or the reason your studio is failing isn't because you suck at marketing. It isn't because you're bad at marketing.

[00:01:31] There is a laundry list of other things you should be focusing on before marketing even comes to the picture and nine times out of 10 if I see someone struggling or failing as a studio owner, it's because they forgot about or ignored or failed to invest in one of these other six things that come before marketing.

[00:01:47] So in this episode, we're going to go through the seven levels of what I call the home studio business hierarchy. And I think we call it something else in this episode, but that's what I call it now, the home studio business hierarchy. And it's based off the premise that until you have certain foundational pieces of your business and life into place, you cannot move to the next level.

[00:02:05] So if you're struggling to get more clients right now, you're struggling to earn more money, you're struggling to make this business work. This episode is an absolute must listen. And just in case you missed in 2018 or in case it's been two years since you've heard this episode, it is time to refresh your memory.

[00:02:20] So without further ado, here is our episode replay for episode eight why marketing is not the solution for most struggling home studio.

[00:02:32] Okay, Chris. So I am a struggling home studio owner. I don't know why I'm struggling. I don't know what to do. I am beating my head up against a wall. What do I do? How do I figure out where to go from here?

[00:02:45] Chris: [00:02:45] That's a good question. Essentially, what are the most important things that you need to do to run a home studio and what are the quote unquote best practices on how to build that up?

[00:02:58] Brian: [00:02:58] Yeah, so where do you even start? If you're struggling or if you can't find clients or you, you know, you're not making any money from your studio or you are just. Uh, out of things to do, to try. Where can you turn to figure out what to do? And that is what today's episode is going to be about. It is a framework that is inspired by Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

[00:03:18] Chris, can you explain Maslow's hierarchy of needs in, you know,

[00:03:22] Chris: [00:03:22] quickly, I've read about Maslow's hierarchy of needs in like half a dozen different books. It's constantly brought up. As this fundamental thing that you need to understand to understand humans and why we do what we do. It's essentially a pyramid and the base of that pyramid, the first thing that all humans need that they need before everything else.

[00:03:42] Is physiological, and that's, you know, obviously breathing, food, water, sleep, pooping cetera.

[00:03:49] Brian: [00:03:49] Yeah. And what he's saying is, if you don't have the physiological needs in place, like you don't have water right now, that is going to be your number one concern before you worry about anything else in your life.

[00:04:00] It's getting those things taken care of, food, water, uh, and then whatever else is involved in the physiological needs. And then what's the second step in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

[00:04:09] Chris: [00:04:09] Yeah. Once you are fizzle, physiological needs are taken care of, then you move on and you deal with issues of safety.

[00:04:16] Um, security, um, employment resources, et cetera.

[00:04:21] Brian: [00:04:21] Yeah, it's like shelter and safety. It's like taking care of you yourself, uh, your family. Uh, and that actually kind of brings us to the next level in this, in this hierarchy of needs. And that is the social stuff, the need for being loved, for feeling, belonging, inclusion.

[00:04:35] Uh, and these are kind of, it's, it's a foundation thing. So the first is physiological. So you need all the food and water and rest and health in your life. Then you need the security. And if you don't have that taken care of. You're going to be worrying about staying alive if you have a, if you're in a war stricken area, that is the primary concern of a lot of people in those areas.

[00:04:52] If you were a caveman back in the day, that was one of your main concerns is staying alive, and then after you have those two needs taken care of, only then can you really worry about the social things then that is being loved being included.

[00:05:04] Chris: [00:05:04] Absolutely. And then from there, the second glass thing is, is steam.

[00:05:09] Which is essentially how you feel about yourself. Ego. Ego, yeah. Respect of others and all that stuff. And then the last one, I think the most complicated is self actualization is the term that Maslow, uh, used. And this is sort of feeling like you're a part of something bigger than yourself, that you are artistically fulfilled.

[00:05:29] For us in the audio fields and the arts. This is a big one. The whole point of what we do by and large isn't just money. It's self actualization.

[00:05:39] Brian: [00:05:39] Yeah. It's this top part of the pyramid. So if you are, if you're still struggling with those first four levels, that may be one of the reasons why you are struggling with this fifth and final level of the ho, the Maslow hierarchy of needs that, uh, maybe you don't have the social thing taken care of.

[00:05:53] You are isolated from other humans. You don't have any sort of social life. Uh, you don't have any other connection with people outside of that. And then, or maybe it's the second to last level, the fourth level of the ego. Getting self esteem, power, recognition, prestige. Uh, it doesn't have to be anything huge to really get that box checked off.

[00:06:10] It can be something small. It can be somebody appreciating what you've done. It doesn't have to be anything massive. Like you're getting an award for some great achievement. These are all done in small, simple ways, but when we get to the self's, actual self actualization part, that is what this thing that this entire episode is going to be about comes in.

[00:06:27] It's called the home studio hierarchy of needs to be quite a while to come up with this, and it is the order in which you should be approaching your career in recording and it's seven levels in the home studio hierarchy of needs, and it's basically covering the self actualization part of this Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

[00:06:44] In seven steps or seven sections. And so when we go back to what we are talking about, the beginning of the episode, which is, you know, I'm struggling, I'm stuck. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Where can I turn? This is where this home studio hierarchy of needs, I think will be very, very helpful to a lot of you people who are.

[00:07:00] Maybe kind of wondering what you're doing wrong, where you could improve, what is going on that is holding you back from achieving what you're trying to do. The self actualization part of the home studio are the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I know we're talking about a lot of hierarchies here. I would highly suggest Googling a Maslow's hierarchy of needs if you just want a quick visual of what it is and then if you want to go to the show notes of the six figure home studio podcast.

[00:07:25] Uh, whatever episode number this is, it may be seven or eight. I don't know yet what episode this is going to be. Whatever episode this is, just go to the six figure home, studio.com/the number seven or slash number eight. Um, the show notes will be there and you can see the home studio hierarchy of needs that we'll be referencing for the rest of this episode.

[00:07:41] So you have that nice visual of what we're talking about here.

[00:07:45] Chris: [00:07:45] Yeah. So a fun story here. Um, rewind about a year or so. I had heard about the six figure home studio, I'd heard about Brian Hood and you know, people had mentioned him to me before and I'm part of a group. We affectionately refer to ourselves as blammo and it's a mastermind group.

[00:08:03] We meet once a week on Google Hangouts or zoom and it's a bunch of audio entrepreneurs, bloggers, et cetera. And we kick each other's butts. We encourage each other. And you know, it's, it's awesome cause when you get in the hot seat with a bunch of other guys that are running a similar business. Or in a similar field.

[00:08:19] Um, they have unique insights. Um, and there's this guy Bjorkman of audio issues.com who had invited Brian Hood. I hadn't met Brian yet, so I started doing a little creeping and I'll, I won't ever forget it. I went to his blog, saw that hilarious picture of the guy playing keyboard on the home page and saw the first blog post at the time.

[00:08:41] And the title of the blog post was, why you don't need marketing? For your home studio or something like that. And I am pretty heavy into marketing. I love it. And I immediately was like, yeah, right, whatever, dude. And I was hating in my heart, man. So I pulled the blog post up and I read Brian's blog post about the home studio hierarchy of needs.

[00:09:01] And he totally convinced me like by the end I was like, yeah, he's totally right and brilliant. And I was wrong. He's right, man. I wish I had found this blog like 10 years ago, way before it existed, cause I broke a lot of these rules.

[00:09:16] Brian: [00:09:16] So yeah, so the, the whole blog is basically saying that marketing is not the savior.

[00:09:21] Oh, for your studio per se, it can help a lot. But the gist of that article and what the entire home studio hierarchy of needs is, uh, is, is this there, there are a lot of things you need in place before you can ever worry about the marketing side of things, especially the paid advertising things. And what people tend to do is when they're struggling, when their studio is not making money, when they don't have a lot of clients coming in the door, their initial response is to just say, Hey, I need to improve my marketing.

[00:09:46] And that is where I would say the vast majority of people are wrong. Uh, if they, if that is your initial response, uh, there's probably other things in play that are going against you right now. And let's talk about this. Let's actually do a quick overview of what the home studio hierarchy of needs is. If you go to the show notes page, you'll see a visual representation of this.

[00:10:03] But, uh, there are seven levels, and if you start from the bottom to the top, just like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, uh, the bottom part and the most foundational is mindset and psychology. The second level is skills and knowledge. The third level is relationships and ethics. The fourth is positioning and differentiation.

[00:10:21] The fifth is systems and management. The sixth is the second to top is marketing and awareness, and that's the like second to last thing you worry about, and then the final level is profit and maximization. And we're going to go into depth with each one of these. But that's the quick gist of it. And as you see here, the sixth, uh, you, you go to these in order of importance.

[00:10:42] And if you, for example, if you don't have mindset and psychology down, you can put all the money in the world into marketing and awareness and you're going to fall flat on your face. So let's kind of start in the bottom here. Uh, Chris, and let's talk about mindset and psychology.

[00:10:55] Chris: [00:10:55] Let me tell a story just in case people aren't completely tracking here.

[00:10:58] Sure. The thing that makes a hierarchy like this, so, um, beautiful is. It's a great way to think about how to solve a problem and the steps that you need to solve a problem. That problem being, how do you run a successful home studio? So if you were in a boat trying to go across the ocean and the motor broke and then a hole opened up in the side of the boat and the boat began taking on water in this situation, would you try to fix the motor first or the whole.

[00:11:27] In the boat. First answer obviously, is you're going to want to fix the hole before you worry about fixing the motor. And that's a hierarchy right there. First of all, the first requirement of boating is floating. So you want to get your floating down before you worry about propulsion, you know about moving forward.

[00:11:47] And that's what this hierarchy of needs is all about. Let's get the boat to float. Then let's get it to float a little better, then let's get it to move forward and then let's worry about which direction should we head. You know, so the hierarchy like this is so important and of all the things that I probably wish I could like understand 10 years ago, cause most of them, mostly for me, this podcast is about preaching to myself from a decade ago.

[00:12:14] Uh, when I was a struggling producer and had absolutely no idea what I was doing and didn't know what, other than the fact that my bank account had no money in it.

[00:12:23] Brian: [00:12:23] It's a good indication that you're, that you are struggling if the bank account is trending on the low side. Indeed. All right, so let's get in here at the very bottom level of the home studio hierarchy of needs, and that is mindset and psychology.

[00:12:35] What is, what do we mean by mindset and psychology?

[00:12:38] Chris: [00:12:38] Yeah. Well, I think mindset and psychology. Is like not to immediately pull this card, but is the thing that's the most lacking, you know, as a mastering engineer, I know tons of audio engineers, hundreds of mix engineers, and you know, I've gotten to know them pretty intimately cause I'm working on projects with them.

[00:12:58] You know, I'm becoming friends with them and we're talking about, um, you know, what they could have done better on a project or how that makes good or sound better or why there's this weird song that the artist chose to put on the record. And it's the thing that I noticed the most of, that their mindset and psychology about how they run their business is their biggest issue.

[00:13:16] And most of the time, any issue you have, I think, um, with skills and knowledge in a relationship and ethics, all these other levels on, on Brian's. Homestead do hierarchy of needs. Most of them come back to an issue with mindset and psychology.

[00:13:31] Brian: [00:13:31] And so more specifically, it's your mindset specifically. And I mean the psychology is part of that is, is part of your attitude is part of your outlook on life.

[00:13:41] It's part of how you react to everything in your life. It's, it affects everything you do. And so if you're depressed, um, I'm not going to be, I'm not going to medically diagnose anyone or say anything about. Uh, clinical depression. But I will say a lot of times it's a mindset thing. Um, not always, but a lot of times it can be that your mindset, your approach, your, your, uh, the way you see things in your mind this way, you see the world in your mind, uh, may be a bit skewed in some ways.

[00:14:08] Chris: [00:14:08] Yeah. One of the biggest mindset and psychology issues that I see is entitlement. Oh yeah. It's this idea that I went to school, I graduated, and now the world is obligated to give me money to do what I'm passionate about. And that's one of the biggest things that I see with people that are, you know, first starting out as they believe, while I'm passionate about it, and that's going to be enough.

[00:14:29] The world owes it to me to hire me to do the thing I'm passionate about. Doesn't work that way at all. That's a serious mindset issue and you won't. Unless you win the lottery creatively, you will not build a successful business on that sort of mindset.

[00:14:47] Brian: [00:14:47] Yeah. I'll, I'll also say that there's something called limiting beliefs.

[00:14:51] Uh, Chris, you know what? Those are limiting beliefs. You've heard of this?

[00:14:53] Chris: [00:14:53] Oh yeah, absolutely.

[00:14:55] Brian: [00:14:55] So it's, it's basically, it's when you're your own worst enemy, it's when you have a certain belief about the way something works or the way the world works, or where the way certain people act. It's this belief in your head.

[00:15:06] That keeps you from doing something, it limits you. Whether that belief is true or not, it limits you from even trying. It's one of those things that it's a silent killer of a lot of careers, uh, and there's a lot of different symptoms for it, but it's one of those things that if you say a statement and then you put the word, but in there, it's usually followed by a limiting belief.

[00:15:27] Uh, I would quit my job. I really think I would love to do this full time, but I. Don't think I can get enough clients or I don't think that. Uh, I can get paid enough or there's too much competition in my area, or bands are too cheap to record me. Bands just don't have the budgets anymore. Insert whatever belief you have about the industry, the way it works, and the easiest way to get around that, although it's not easy, it's really hard to get past your own limiting beliefs.

[00:15:53] It's just to ask, has anyone ever done it? Is anyone doing it right now? And if that's the case, it's completely not true. It's just a matter of me getting past my, getting around my own, getting out of my own way.

[00:16:05] Chris: [00:16:05] Yeah. Well, another one of these limiting beliefs, um, we've talked about it before in the podcast is the fundamental attribution error.

[00:16:12] Ally, chip and Dan Heath. Um, some of our favorite authors, they talk about the fundamental attribution error, which is, um, so my fundamental attribution error is when I began my business, you know, over the, over a decade ago was, well, I'm just not that good at business. That's it. That's a given. I'm not good at it.

[00:16:31] I never will be, ah, I'm just not a reader. I'm not, I never will be. When you're making statements like that, those are limiting beliefs or you're where you're just making an assumption and saying, I will never change. This is just who I am. I'm owning this, and most of the time that's crap, man. You are, you have more capability than you could ever possibly imagine and just accepting that you have a limitation that can never be changed.

[00:17:02] Is totally ridiculous and man, the world of business is full of stories of people that have overcome dyslexia. Add. I'm not having a high school diploma. You know Dave Thomas? I'm from Columbus, Ohio. Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's is from Columbus, Ohio. He's got like a fifth grade education. How freaking cool is that.

[00:17:24] But I would guess that he had a limiting belief that he broke through at some point, which is you can't own a chain of successful restaurants that spans the entire globe. You only have a fifth grade education.

[00:17:34] Brian: [00:17:34] That's what the world will tell you though. Yeah. There's no way you can succeed with a fifth grade education.

[00:17:39] So, and it's pretty easy to see why this is the, the foundational level of the home studio hierarchy of needs. If you can't get this down, you can have the best network of people in your life. You can have the best systems. You can be the best manager of your employees or any people you outsource work to.

[00:17:55] Uh, you can have, you know, all the skills in the world. It doesn't matter anything else past this point. If you do not get this part down because you will self sabotage your way to failure if you cannot get past this first and foundational level. Of the hierarchy of needs.

[00:18:08] Chris: [00:18:08] Yeah. I think there's a great story about a Henry Ford here.

[00:18:13] After he had all his success selling model T cars and the teens and twenties, um, people started asking him, you know, how did you get so successful? Did you do market research? He said, no, I didn't do market research. If I ask people what they wanted, they would've said a faster horse. They wouldn't have been able to comprehend.

[00:18:32] Of what it would be like to have a, at the time, $400 a car, it was revolutionary. So, you know, on the one hand you need to be rational about starting a small business and growing a small business. But then the other hand. What you've been told by your fifth grade teacher or by your high school teachers or by your mom and dad when it comes to entrepreneurial-ism is probably a load of crap

[00:18:55] Brian: [00:18:55] in a lot of families.

[00:18:56] That's, that's true.

[00:18:57] Chris: [00:18:57] Yeah. So you have to take haters with a grain of salt. Um, and especially, and this is the most important part, your own limiting beliefs about what you can and cannot do and what is and is not possible, uh, with a grain of salt and evaluate and think this is an important exercise for everyone.

[00:19:13] Always. Is to evaluate what are the assumptions I've made about my own ability and about what's possible in this world. You know, when you look at how our world has been changed, you look at someone like Steve jobs. He totally gave the middle finger to the system and built the most valuable business in the history of the world.

[00:19:31] And there are so many people like that. The founding fathers of America took on the largest Navy in the history of the world to defend a country that was primarily coastline. To embark on an experiment, to test a new form of government that no one had ever tried before as insane, but they had vision and they were not going to be held back by their limiting beliefs because most rational people would have said, are you nuts?

[00:19:57] I'm going to take on the British.

[00:19:58] Brian: [00:19:58] So the more of that story is what, who are the British in your life?

[00:20:03] Chris: [00:20:03] No offense to any British listeners.

[00:20:05] Brian: [00:20:05] Yeah, I know. All right, so, all right. We, we've kind of touched on the mindset psychology part, why this is so important, why it's the bottom level of the home studio hierarchy of needs.

[00:20:13] Uh, but then now we get up to the second level, and this is the skills and knowledge level. Uh, and this is. Your ability to do what you should be doing. This is like to me, you know, once you get past the mindset area, you have to be good at what you do. It doesn't matter anything else in your business if you are not good at what you do, I does matter.

[00:20:31] But I'm just saying in the hierarchy of things, you know, this is the whole, the plug in your boat when your motor's broken. If the motor is marketing. You know, your skills and knowledge are the hole that needs to be plugged. You have to be good at what you do.

[00:20:43] Chris: [00:20:43] Yeah. And a great story on that. I love this story.

[00:20:46] Um, and we can fly through skills and knowledge cause this podcast really isn't about skills and knowledge. It's true. It's, there's an assumption that you have some degree of that. Um, so there's a great story about a dog food company and the CEO of the dog food company had this dog food that he's trying to market.

[00:21:03] So we hired the best marketing firm in the world and. The best graphic designers, the best PR company, and they marketed the heck out of it. It was on every channel. You know, every newspaper and sales didn't go up. So we fired the marketing firm, hired a new marketing firm, did a whole new, huge, expensive, multimillion dollar marketing push.

[00:21:25] Nothing happened, no more sales fires, the marketing department, and he's in, and this happens several times. And finally they're in a company meeting. And he is slammed his fist on the table in sand. Why aren't we, why aren't our sales going up? Who do I need to fire here? Who is the problem? And a young 20 something, uh, employee of the company wearing a short sleeve, uh, you know, white button up shirt looking like a total weirdo, uh, who, who didn't know any better than did not say this, uh, spoke up to, uh, the, the manager of the dog food company and said, sir.

[00:21:59] The dogs don't like it.

[00:22:03] Brian: [00:22:03] It's such a good representation. It's, yeah, you could, you can put all the money in advertising behind your studio or your business in this case, and you can, you know, go with all the experts in the world. But if you're. End product is not enjoyable. Yeah. If your mixes suck, AKA your dog food is gross to the actual customer, the dogs, you're not going to make it.

[00:22:23] And so we have to assume that you know what you're doing because if you're still struggling with the skills and knowledge portion, meaning you know you can't even get someone to do. Free work with you. That's a good sign that your skills and knowledge need to be worked on when it comes to recording. If you don't have that part down, you know there's not much else at this podcast, and to help you with to improve your business because you have to get that first and foremost.

[00:22:44] Now, that being said, if you doubt yourself. It could be a more of a limiting belief than anything else. And that's why mindset is psychologists first, because a lot of people, I've heard people that really, really nag on themselves. They are negative about their own recordings or mixes or productions, whatever they do, or masters, but they're actually great at what they do.

[00:23:02] They've just never gotten that positive reinforcement. Uh, which we'll talk about in the next level of the home studio hierarchy of needs, which is the relationships surrounding yourself with people that are supportive of you, but they've never gotten that positive reinforcement. They don't believe in themselves.

[00:23:14] And so their mindset behind their own recordings, they can't get past the fact that they are good enough to actually charge. And so again, that goes back to mindset psychology. But, um. There are plenty of great resources on the internet to help you improve in this area. This is why the home studio here are the six figure home studio was created because I didn't want to start another recording or mixing blog or website.

[00:23:36] Uh, because there are hundreds of great ones out there. Just pick the one that works for you and go with it. Membership sites, courses, we have the audio issues.com we have mixed with the masters. I mean there's, I'm going to go down the list. There's just a million that you can go with, but. Focus on that if you're still struggling, and again, the litmus test for me is if you can't get paid work, can you even get someone to work with you for free?

[00:23:59] And if not, that's a good a chance that you're not very good at what you do yet.

[00:24:04] Chris: [00:24:04] I think probably where most people aren't. Here's a good, I think I could segue is I would bet most of you listening are thinking, have or have thought to yourself, I'm pretty good at this. Yes. Why can't I make this into a business?

[00:24:16] You know, here's where we start to get moving. Obviously you've got to get the mindset and psychology down. If you don't have that down yet, boy, that's, that's the first step. Then the skills and the, and the knowledge, and then relationships and ethics, that's the next thing.

[00:24:31] Brian: [00:24:31] And so I think going into that next level now.

[00:24:33] Relationship and the ethics. Why is this so important and why is it, why is it after skills, do you think? Well,

[00:24:39] Chris: [00:24:39] that's a great question. You know, I think the play devil's advocate on some level. It could even be before skills.

[00:24:46] Brian: [00:24:46] Yep. And I, and I know that was a, that was a thought in my head when I was creating this.

[00:24:49] Where should it go on the hierarchy? And here's why I have it after skills and knowledge. And that's because it is very difficult. To build relationships in your life if you don't have a foundational set of skills that adds value to those relationships. So it's one of those things where if I'm trying to be friends with Leonardo DiCaprio, but I have no idea how, what it's like to be an actor at his level, I have nothing of value to add to the conversation on an actor level.

[00:25:16] I'm never going to be his friend. Um, and that's a terrible example, but you kind of get what I'm saying here, uh, to, to really hang in big circles. You have to be good at what you do. You're not going to be taken seriously by your peers if you're not good at what you do. And that to me is why this is above skills and knowledge.

[00:25:30] Uh, I think skills and knowledge, you approach that first to get great at what you do. It's easier to build relationships with the type of people that you want associate yourself

[00:25:37] Chris: [00:25:37] with. Man, that's great. Um, I think you're 100% right there. You have to be able to keep up. You have to be able to hang with the right types of people, um, in order to get customers, but also to form, you know, sort of mentor relationships.

[00:25:53] Um, and you know, I mentioned before earlier this sort of blammo mastermind group that me and Brian are a part of being in a group of likeminded people who are experiencing success. Is really awesome and it's convicting to see, Oh my gosh, like I, before, before we were doing this, being Brian was showing me some of his marketing stuff or for a class that he's, he's doing right now, and it was really a kick in the butt for me.

[00:26:16] Like, Oh man, my Facebook marketing game is not solid right now. I need to make some adjustments. So yeah, I mean, being able to hang out with people of like, mind. Um, you gotta have the skills first.

[00:26:28] Brian: [00:26:28] Yeah. And to piggyback off of what he just said, I would have never been invited to the mastermind group in the first place if I, if I didn't have my shit together as a, uh, as an audio blogger, if you will, because the group is all about people that are doing, uh, things in both entrepreneurism and music.

[00:26:44] And if I didn't have both of those boxes checked, I would not have been invited. I would never met Chris and we would not have this podcast right now. To bring to your earbuds. So, uh, if you could get these first three levels down, or at least the first two levels, it makes it a lot easier to get that third level down, the relationships.

[00:26:59] Um, just touching on the ethic real quick. I don't need to say this, but your, uh, reputation is your career. If you are known as a dishonest person, disloyal person, someone who's going to stab people in the back, someone that talks shit behind everyone's back, you will not have many friends. You will not get past this level to make it onto the higher levels in this hierarchy.

[00:27:18] You will be stuck here forever and you're going to sabotage your career if that is you. So I don't have to really touch on this much because most people that would listen to this podcast already get that. But if you're tempted to ever. Discredit or talk shit about somebody behind their back. Um, this is, this is an area that you are going to struggle with for the long term because people know, whether they say it or not, they subconsciously know that if you're talking crap behind that person's back, that you're probably talking about, um, you as well.

[00:27:45] Like you're talking to crab about everybody behind her back if they're talking to him about anyone. So I just say, um, do what you say you're going to do. That's the over over-delivering, under promising and don't talk shit. Or you get hit.

[00:27:56] Chris: [00:27:56] Well, I think a component of this too, that's just so interesting is I know for me, you know, I'm talking, I'm, again, I'm preaching to me from 10 years ago.

[00:28:05] I always thought that business skills essentially meant how to be more sneaky and trick people into giving you their money. What I've learned through the, you know, dozens and dozens of business books I've read and running my own business and seeing it become successful, is that business skills are ethics skills.

[00:28:23] It's. Being a person of integrity and beyond that, having a reputation as a person of integrity that you will do what you say you do by when you say you'll do it and that people know that they can trust you. And I've said this before in the podcast, I'll say it again. People only hire anyone ever in the history of the world for two reasons.

[00:28:43] One, they want what the person is selling, and two, they trust the person who is selling it. It's so important. There's no such thing as valuable business skills. In the absence of integrity,

[00:28:57] Brian: [00:28:57] you can make a lot of money in a year's time, being dishonest and basically stealing from people or tricking them into working with you, uh, through false pretenses.

[00:29:07] But you will not last more than a year. You may have one amazing year. You may run off with everyone's money, but. The next year you're done. You're not going to make it past a year because you've already burned all your bridges, and so if you want a longterm career, it just goes without saying. You have to be an honest person with integrity.

[00:29:25] Chris: [00:29:25] I have to throw out a pitch here. Me and my wife are really into this. Dr. Henry cloud, this guy, Dr. Henry cloud, he wrote a book called integrity, and you know, if this is resonating with you, it's a tough read. This book kicked the crap out of me. Um, and my wife too, and we are obsessed with it. It was a, a formational book for me as a, a man, but as a woman to my wife, you know, took it the same way I did, um, of just how important integrity is and that you can't possibly overvalue integrity.

[00:30:02] Can't do it. It's always undervalued. And that book is just an amazing resource. So if you guys are looking for more book recommendations, integrity by Dr. Henry, cloud mind blowing.

[00:30:11] Brian: [00:30:11] So good. And one more thing to touch on the relationships side of things. If you are not surrounding yourself with people who are building you up, if you are surrounding yourself with people who are tearing you down, they're dragging you down, that are telling you, you can't make it, that are, um, that refuse to let you succeed.

[00:30:27] This is a great time to start severing those ties. Start getting yourself away from those people. You don't have to do it in some grand. Bridge burning fashion where you just tell everyone off with a middle finger and say, you're not good enough to be around me. You don't want to do that. But you can start phasing those types of people out of your life.

[00:30:43] People that are not doing anything, that is, uh, pushing their lives forward. People that are complacent, the type of people that, uh, just sit and binge Netflix all day long every day and don't do anything to build their future forward.

[00:30:55] Chris: [00:30:55] Well, and more than that, our industry's notorious for this. Of if your friends who are audio engineers are only interested in having pissing contests, dump them, that's not what you need in your life.

[00:31:08] Being a great audio engineer, running a great home studio business isn't about comparing yourself to the next guy and showing off about how much of a man you are. No, no offense to any women that are listening, but men are notorious. As audio engineers for it just to be about ego, ego, ego, ego.

[00:31:26] Brian: [00:31:26] If you are ever a part of our mastermind groups on Friday mornings, there's none of that in our group.

[00:31:31] Nobody has that sort of mindset about or out there businesses, um, the guys in the group that have. Massive success and the guys in the group that are relatively new, they are on the same level as far as respect for each other.

[00:31:42] Chris: [00:31:42] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:31:44] Brian: [00:31:44] All right. So I think we've touched on relationships and ethics pretty well.

[00:31:47] Um, let's talk about the next level in the hierarchy. And just real quick recap. The bottom level was, uh, level number one, mindset and psychology. The second level was skills and knowledge. The third level was relationships and ethics, and then we move into positioning and differentiation. This is where we really start talking about the business of running your business, which not to be confused with the series we just did, but this is where we start getting the business stuff.

[00:32:11] Positioning a differentiation for your studio. Let's touch on the definition of positioning and differentiation because a. Are two different things with similar, uh, that are always tied together in my mind.

[00:32:22] Chris: [00:32:22] Yeah. Well, there are, I think they're very much related to, um, this concept of niching down that you bring up so often.

[00:32:28] You know, when we get emails@podcastatsixfigurehomestudio.com many of the questions we get are related to this niching down thing. How can I niche down? How can I own something where I am the guy for, um. Editing world drums, world music, drums. I'm the number one guy for that.

[00:32:48] Brian: [00:32:48] I always use the example, I know one or two guys here in Nashville.

[00:32:50] They are the GoTo guys for pitch correcting vocals in a specific niche. One is country music, one is CCM, contemporary Christian music. They both make great livings. They just do that. Nothing but that. But they are the guys who all the tracks are sent to for all of this, uh, in the city. And that is what I call a niche.

[00:33:09] It's, you are oddly specific about what you do.

[00:33:12] Chris: [00:33:12] Yeah. So I think the, the flip side of this is that most of the audio engineers that I talked to that are struggling do a little bit of everything. They're like, well, I do some composing and I do some tracking and I do some voiceover work. You know, they do literally every job that an audio engineer could possibly do.

[00:33:32] And you know, this is something me and my friends talk about a lot and the guys that I'm, that I'm mentoring that we talk about a lot of, man, you know, you can't do it all and be good at any of it. And so I think this is sort of related to skills and knowledge. You can't really have a Ninja level skill.

[00:33:48] Until you've began to, uh, niche down, uh, which has a lot to do with this position in differentiation.

[00:33:54] Brian: [00:33:54] Let me give a quick, um, like a more succinct definition of these two things. Uh, just really quick and then you can kind of dive in, which we're gonna talk about. But differentiation to me is what sets you apart from your competitors.

[00:34:05] And you can differentiate in a number of ways. It can either be by niching down, uh, in , it can be by niching down in service that you offer, or both. Better yet, both where you're just really specific, really honed in about what it is that you are the best at. And then positioning is how you show those differentiating factors to the world.

[00:34:25] Because you can have, let's just say Oceanway studios, they are a fantastically differentiated studio because of the history, because of the facilities, the gear, they have their, um, the heritage of the place. But if Oceanway studios. Had nothing about any of that on their website. They had no photos of the facilities, no list of their gear, no photos of their gear, no story about their past, none of those things on their website.

[00:34:50] It was just come record with us. That is terrible positioning. You've just taken all those differentiating factors and thrown them away, and so now you just look like some. Small time studio, you're positioned as a inferior product to anyone else because you've did not showcase what makes you so unique.

[00:35:07] So they go hand in hand. Differentiation is what sets you apart in the positioning is how you present those differentiating factors to the world.

[00:35:14] Chris: [00:35:14] Yeah, so case in point, I think when most people hear this, they say position in differentiation. Okay, that means I need to post my gear list on my studio website.

[00:35:24] And man, if I've got, um, some nerdy piece of audio gear, that's kind of esoteric. Um, that's how I'll differentiate from the other guys.

[00:35:33] Brian: [00:35:33] Nope. I talk about this all the time. Gear Garin facilities are what we F what we flock to when it comes to differentiating ourselves, but it is the most expensive way possible.

[00:35:43] To try to set yourself apart and the return on that investment is nonexistent or very, very, very, very low. If you have another source of income and you want to, uh, you want your gear collection to be a hobby of yours, that's a completely different conversation. But it is not, it is not the way you're going to become a very profitable business.

[00:36:02] I'll say that.

[00:36:03] Chris: [00:36:03] Yeah, so in a fun fact with that, you know, I've mentioned it before, I'm going to mastering studio on my website. I specifically. Say, I don't have a gear list, I don't post it.

[00:36:14] Brian: [00:36:14] No one, no one cares about your gear list. First of all,

[00:36:17] Chris: [00:36:17] guys, if they do, you don't want to work with them.

[00:36:20] Brian: [00:36:20] Amen. That is a red flag.

[00:36:22] If someone ever asks for your gear list, either a, they're an audio engineer and they need specific gear to work out of your studio, and that's completely understandable, which is the case for Oceanway studios, or B, they're a gear slut band and they're probably going to be high maintenance,

[00:36:37] Chris: [00:36:37] super high maintenance.

[00:36:38] So yeah, I, and I've been really open about this for years, um, about how I don't post a gear list. Because what inevitably happens is it's just a, it's a nuclear arms race, and at least in my field, in mastering, um, it's, it's been pretty well known that there are a lot of companies that have fake gear lists who have fake pictures and maybe even a picture of somebody else's studio.

[00:37:01] So I don't compete on that. What I choose to do is I do a free mastering sample. And encourage people to, Hey, send me a song, let me do a sample for you. Send it to some other guys who do mastering as well, and let me prove that I can do a better job.

[00:37:13] Brian: [00:37:13] So let the work speak for itself at the work.

[00:37:15] Chris: [00:37:15] Speak for itself.

[00:37:16] Brian: [00:37:16] And really quick, I'm jumping ahead of myself here, but the reason this part is on this level, it's before systems and management. Before marketing awareness, before you spend a dollar on paid advertising or doing anything to ramp up your studio success, if you don't get this part right, nothing else is going to matter.

[00:37:31] You can spend millions on advertising. But if nothing is setting you apart from everyone else, why is someone going to pay you money? What is the point? There's, there's no reason for anyone to pay if you can't find some way to set yourself apart, even if it's just in your local area.

[00:37:45] Chris: [00:37:45] Yeah. The last three things in the hierarchy are systems and management, marketing and awareness and profit maximization.

[00:37:52] These are all responses to a flood of customers. You will not have a flood of customers until you've differentiated yourself in the market. You won't. So sorta like economics one Oh one here that's surprising. And like none of us are taught in elementary, middle school, high school, and in most cases, college.

[00:38:12] The way a free market system works is that various entrepreneurs find what I like to call soft spots in the market areas where there's pent up demand. But no supply. There's a lot of people that want a certain thing and they can't find it. So what happens in a free market economy is an entrepreneur says, Hmm, people want this thing.

[00:38:33] I will provide it and charge money. And when they find the soft spot in the market where there's pent up demand and no supply, they find success. So in order to do that, you have to differentiate. You have to say, a good example is this. Most people when they think I want to start a studio, they're like, I'm going to build out, uh, in a space, in a shop, in an uptown area, or I'm gonna build out a space in a warehouse, and it's going to have this gorgeous live drum room with 57 foot feelings, ceilings, and you know, like exposed beams, and it's going to be gorgeous.

[00:39:10] And then your rent is five grand per month, when in fact there's huge pent up demand for people who want to record great vocals. In most cities. There's huge pent up demand for somebody who could walk into a very small studio. I'm talking 500 square feet or less. That's maybe just a control room and vocals are done in the control room.

[00:39:32] Or maybe there's one ISO booth, and if you've got a pretty decent vocal chain and you can mix pretty decent vocals, there's usually a soft spot in the market for that because everybody wants great sounding vocals, and it's the hardest thing to get

[00:39:46] Brian: [00:39:46] in places like Nashville. There's a massive supply of big fantastic drum rooms that you can record drums and have all this gear to work with, and.

[00:39:56] You know, artists are moving away from real instruments right now. So the, the need for that is pretty low. So why would you want to spend all that money building out this massive facility that your overhead is five grand a month when realistically go listen to the Spotify top 50 playlist? How many actual real drum tracks are in that top 50 playlist?

[00:40:15] Chris: [00:40:15] And more importantly, when you have a big live room like that, every second that it goes unused

[00:40:21] Brian: [00:40:21] losing

[00:40:21] Chris: [00:40:21] money that you still have to yeah. That you still have to pay rent for, you're losing money on. That's a huge problem. In a bad business move. You shouldn't have a giant live room unless you think you can at least have a client in there five times a week.

[00:40:35] Brian: [00:40:35] So I think you understand why positioning differentiation is so important. So let's move on to the next, uh, level in this hierarchy. And that is systems and management. This is level five in the home studio hierarchy of needs. Um, when I'm talking about systems in management here, I'm talking about. With systems specifically, I mean, what are the things that you have in place to make sure everything is running smoothly?

[00:40:57] For example, if you have a flood of court requests that come in through your website, are you equipped to handle them, to follow up properly to make sure that no. Lead slips through the crack cracks and you're taking advantage of every single one that comes in and your everything is going smoothly because the reason this is below marketing is because if you do not have systems in place to manage your leads appropriately, going back to our CRM episode, go listen to that was episode number seven I think, or maybe six, I don't know anymore.

[00:41:28] Go listen to the law, the one that came out the day after Christmas.

[00:41:31] Chris: [00:41:31] Maybe we should have a system to keep track of that, Brian.

[00:41:33] Brian: [00:41:33] We do, but it's on a spreadsheet on another page. You are correct though, where we can improve our, our podcast systems. Now that we're on this conversation here, but you understand what I'm saying?

[00:41:42] If you don't have a way to properly track everything, then you can spend all this money on getting all these leads for your studio and you're not taking full advantage of it. You've just wasted a lot of money. So getting systems into place to manage your leads, getting systems in a place to set up tracks.

[00:41:57] If you're a mixing engineer, getting systems in place to get your mastering tracks of a, for a mastering engineer, uh. And then going on to management is getting people into place to take off some of the workload. If, if you're trying to, um, get rid of some of the things that are, you're spending time on that are low value tasks, putting, uh, employees or outsources in a place in properly managing them is a big part of really ramping up your studio for longterm success.

[00:42:24] Chris: [00:42:24] Yeah, so fun story with this. I met with a guy this past week. Um, and we were talking about, uh, systems. Uh, he's in a pretty successful band. So he was talking about what, uh, and this is going to be a slightly different from a home studio. He was talking about the work that he needs to do to keep the band running.

[00:42:43] And he said, you know, last night I was, uh, at our warehouse where I practice space and studio is till 10 o'clock, shipping out merge orders. So tee shirts and hats and LPs and you know, vinyl, all that stuff. And, you know, I asked him, I said, you know, it was really fun hanging out with him, and I asked him, you know what, um, what do you think you could pay someone to do that for?

[00:43:07] Is it minimum wage? Is like, awesome. You're struggling with your business because you just did minimum wage work. So if each week you're putting in 10 hours of something you could pay somebody else minimum wage for, it's no wonder. That you are struggling financially because you're at how you're doing financially is going to come down to the average amount you made per hour over a given period of time.

[00:43:32] When you introduce a minimum wage work into that, it's really, really hard run a business.

[00:43:38] Brian: [00:43:38] It's dragging that average down.

[00:43:40] Chris: [00:43:40] It drags that average down so fast, especially in an industry where you have to make an investment in at least some technology. In order to be able to earn minimum wage, you don't need an investment in technology to get a job.

[00:43:52] They McDonald's. So this sort of systems and management comes down to making a list of all the things that you do and putting a number next to each one of those things. How much is this worth in the free market? How much could you pay somebody to coil up my cables? If you spend, I doubt that you do, but if you spend an hour a day, coiling up my cables.

[00:44:14] That's an hour a day where you're making minimum wage or an hour a day sweeping up the studio or making coffee or what have you. One of the ways that you have to, uh, you have to go through to grow a business. Is to make that list of all the things that you do, despite the things that you could outsource to somebody else for.

[00:44:34] I doubt that you'd pay them minimum wage, you'd probably pay a little bit better, but finding ways to avoid doing those things a do not do list was the thing that me and this guy were talking about of how do you, you make a list of things that are holding you back and if one of those things is taking a long time and you are making minimum wage or in many cases, let's be honest, for most people in our industry.

[00:44:57] These things where you're making absolutely nothing. There's a nightmare story. I heard one time about a guy that spent a week at an in drums for a band that he had recorded and he showed it to him and they said, we hate it. We don't want any of the editing. He just did a week worth of work for nothing.

[00:45:12] Awful. Yeah, awful systems and management. I love this guy, but systems and management would say, Hey, I'm going, my system will be, if I've got. More than one song and I'm going to do a significant change to it. I'll do one song, send it to the band, get their approval, and once I've got their approval, I'll do the rest of them.

[00:45:32] Brian: [00:45:32] That's how I know my mixing work for the past eight years. When I have more than one song to mix, I mix one song suit to the band. We get big picture stuff done. Do you like the drum tones? You like the guitar tones? Do you like the bass tones and then once they've approved that, there are no surprises.

[00:45:46] Once I've mixed all nine or 10 songs on the album.

[00:45:49] Chris: [00:45:49] Yeah, so systems and management, this is a perfect example. A good system, if you are running a studio, is to not mix more than one song at a time until you've gotten approval from the artist.

[00:46:01] Brian: [00:46:01] That's just one example of dozens in our own businesses. We have so many that I couldn't even, we could even list them all right now.

[00:46:07] I know a lot of it's just learn the heart rate. We wouldn't, but it's a lot of, it's just learning the hard way. We're like, Oh God, that sucked. What can I do to never let that happen again? This habit is in me and in Airbnb all the time. I have an Airbnb downtown Nashville, and if anyone ever contacts me for any reason during their stay, I'm going to figure out whatever I can to never have that happen again.

[00:46:28] I don't want to talk to any of my people that are staying there, and if they have to contact me, it's because I did not explain something correctly. I didn't have a sign or instructions where they should be, or there was something that I did not explain correctly along the way. And because of that, because of two years of ruthlessly.

[00:46:42] Assessing every single time they contact me to make sure they never do. I have instructions everywhere in the house on laminated paper anywhere they could possibly ever need to figure something out the hard way. And because of this, I'd say maybe one every few months of those people ever talk to me.

[00:47:00] And that's amazing.

[00:47:01] Chris: [00:47:01] It's awesome. Here's a good example of a system that I use in my mastering business. When I first started out, you know, I would say, okay, you booked a song. You know, you hired me to master your record. It's 11 songs. All right, well send me the files. They would send me the files, however they wanted, not through my system.

[00:47:18] Um, and they would be unlabeled. And then I would get an email from them that would say, here is our track order. And inevitably they would use the song titles, which were very different than the file names every time. And I would have to figure out which song title related to which file name. And then I would, I would open up the files and find her, cause I'm a Mac guy and I'd put a number.

[00:47:40] Next to each file name, so it'd be Oh one you know, song name, Oh two song name, et cetera, et cetera. My life changed radically as a mastering engineer when I, on my upload form, started instructing people, when you send me your files, label them with your track order, so that's in your hands. So when you send me 11 songs, it should be Oh one song name, Oh two song name, Oh Oh three song name, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:48:07] When I started doing that. Know, I've been mastering about a record today for a number of years now. That saved me several emails back and forth in many cases, and maybe what, 10 15 minutes a day,

[00:48:19] Brian: [00:48:19] which is a lot of time over, over a week. That's an hour over a year. That's over a year. That's 12 hour. No 52 hours could guide

[00:48:25] Chris: [00:48:25] some like that.

[00:48:26] You know, I started doing this in Oh nine and I have been saving somewhere between five and 15 minutes a day at least. Because of that one system. Just because when you go to upload files, there's a little dropdown that says, Hey, um, did you label things with their track order? Yes or no?

[00:48:42] Brian: [00:48:42] And this is all about the ROI on time.

[00:48:44] How long did it take you to put that into the form field?

[00:48:46] Chris: [00:48:46] 15 minutes.

[00:48:47] Brian: [00:48:47] Yeah. So in 15 minutes or less, Chris can save you 50 hours. 50 hours a year?

[00:48:54] Chris: [00:48:54] Yeah. Or more. It's little things like that. And again, these come back to my position in differentiation. I only do one thing. I only master music for people.

[00:49:03] That's the only work I ever do for a client.

[00:49:06] Brian: [00:49:06] And it makes it so much easier for you to set up systems in your business to make it as efficient as possible.

[00:49:10] Chris: [00:49:10] Exactly. So there are all these systems, you know, when you've got the, the first set of the hierarchy done and you're starting to get repetitive work, um, you start to figure out systems, one popular system, um, in some studios as they'll have a drum set and they leave the drum set set up every day, and they leave the mics on it every day and they leave them plugged into the same gear.

[00:49:32] Every day, and when it's time to record drums, the whole thing is sitting there. It's already set up. They've invested in enough gear to be able to have drums set up and ready to go so that they can record at any point in time.

[00:49:44] Brian: [00:49:44] And I can save them one to five hours for every single project that they do when it would normally take half a day to set up drums.

[00:49:52] Chris: [00:49:52] Yeah, it's huge. So there's all these systems. There is a gold mine in the systems, but. If you're listening to this and you're excited about systems you're, or as excited as I am about systems, I love systems, but you haven't done these first four things. Resist the urge to work on systems. You have to get everything else in place first so that you're getting consistent work that you can apply the same system to.

[00:50:19] It's super important to do this in order, but man, this systems thing, um, once you've got a flood of customers coming in the door. Man. Before I had systems, I almost lost my mind. It was so miserable to have so much insane work and variables in a project. Or maybe they labeled their files right, or maybe their files have been prepared properly, or maybe they sent me all MP3s in like 64 kilobytes per second.

[00:50:46] You know, like there were all these things where every project. Was sitting in a totally different way and it was just miserable and impossible to keep up, keep up with. It was only when I decided I don't know anything about systems, but I am going to become a systems Ninja so that I can do art for a living instead of having to untie knots, uh, with file labeling in file prepping and, you know, asking all these questions of, Oh, I saw that you uploaded an extra song.

[00:51:14] What's going on there? There's so many things that you can do. To create an amazing system for a business that can save you time every single day after that system has been installed. And here's the thing. This is in the home studio thing. This is a all businesses thing. This is a foundational concept that every industry and every successful business in the history of business.

[00:51:40] Has had to work on.

[00:51:41] Brian: [00:51:41] Amen to that.

[00:51:42] Chris: [00:51:42] For sure. That's a, that's a guarantee. You can take that to the bank.

[00:51:46] Brian: [00:51:46] So a quick, uh, just a quick actionable for you guys that are listening and girls, uh, is when you encounter a problem, something happens that should not happen in your business. Uh, related to the studio or communications or something.

[00:52:00] If something happens, it should not happen. Stop. Take five seconds, figure out what went wrong, and then figure out what you can put into place to ensure that that never happens again. I'm going to give one quick example that we're gonna move on. Say, uh, I'm mixing a project and the files are a hot mess.

[00:52:18] It takes me an entire day to set up the session to even start the mixing process. What can I do to make sure this never happens again? This has happened to me before, and so all I did was created one checklist for the audio engineer to follow on how to prep the files, how to label the files, how to organize the files, how to put the files in the right folders.

[00:52:35] And so when it comes time to actually set the session up, if I were to be doing it, which I don't. My assistant does it, but if I were to be doing it, I can do it quickly and efficiently with no frustration and very little time spent. And all it took was one simple checklist that. Now that my assistant does it, all I did was create a spent six hours one day creating a very detailed checklist for how to do my mix prep, and that has saved me hundreds of hours and, and increase my hourly pay by quite a bit just by implementing that system.

[00:53:05] So it's going to be an iterative process. It's an ever changing thing. You're never going to have systems. And management down perfectly. But if you do not approach it with the mindset that you are constantly working on systems and management, then when you get to this next level of the hierarchy of needs level six, which is marketing and awareness, you are going to wear yourself down and you're going to burn yourself out very, very, very quickly.

[00:53:25] Or you're going to waste a lot of money in one of those two things for sure.

[00:53:28] Chris: [00:53:28] So yeah, I mean, we could do a whole episode just on systems and management. It's like one of my favorite things in the entire world because for me, I've got three kids. I've got a wife, family. My family is the most important thing in the world to me.

[00:53:40] When I have a system that allows me to save two minutes per day, that's two minutes with my kids and with my wife. So valuable to me. And you know this for you guys that are, are single and just sort of starting out and you know, balancing, you know, a gig that you don't want, like working at a warehouse or something like that with trying to start a business.

[00:54:02] Your time isn't worth as much to you as it becomes when you're married, when you have kids. And man, you know, for me, I didn't really take system seriously until my wife was pregnant with our first kid with Joshua,

[00:54:14] Brian: [00:54:14] that'll light a fire up your ass.

[00:54:15] Chris: [00:54:15] Oh man. It was crazy. And I'll never forget, I, I had my first sort of system for the whole business about a month before he was born.

[00:54:25] He was born in October. It was, it was  and, Oh man, this is, this is 10 this is 2010. It was such a big deal that I wasn't working 90 hours a week or whatever it was, um, 70 hours a week and a all of a sudden could keep up and wasn't like mentally exhausted at the end of the day. And, you know, it's constantly gotten better.

[00:54:48] Systems have constantly gotten better because when I come up with a system, two things happen. One, I get more time with my family, and two, I'm able to spend more time being relational with my customers. Talking to them on the phone, hearing more about what their dream is. For the record, that's the businessman is I'm helping people make something that they've dreamed about making.

[00:55:10] And as my systems have gotten better, and I've had more opportunities to call and just chat and make friends with a customer a first time customer, second time customer, whatever it is. That's fun. I love that. I co I finish a day energized. When I've had a lot of phone calls talking to clients about, you know, what it is that they're trying to do and how I can help them.

[00:55:31] So systems aren't about doing less work. They're about doing better work.

[00:55:35] Brian: [00:55:35] So just to recap where we've taken you on this journey so far, where we went through the first section, which was mindset and psychology. That's the first foundational level. The second level, which is skills and knowledge. The third level, which is relationships and ethics, the fourth level, which is positioning and differentiation.

[00:55:50] Then we just finished talking about the fifth level, which is systems in management. Again, if you want to check out. A physical representation of visual, of the hierarchy of needs that we're talking about here. You can go to the six figure home, studio.com/whatever the episode number is, either seven or eight or nine.

[00:56:06] I don't know. Uh, just put the number in there and that will be the show notes for this episode and there will be a visual there, uh, of this home studio hierarchy of needs. But now we're moving onto the six level in the hierarchy of needs. And that is marketing and awareness.

[00:56:19] Chris: [00:56:19] We're going to kind of fly through marketing and awareness and profit maximization.

[00:56:22] The last two things. Because there's no way that anyone's listened to this and thought to themselves, Oh yeah, I got all five of those things down. Pat, you've got some work to do, I'm sure. So here's the thing. Here's my advice to you. Um, and I know you're listening to this podcast trying to pick up these nuggets of wisdom.

[00:56:38] Here's a, here's one for you. The best advice that I give business owners is this schedule time to work on your business, not for your business. When I first started getting this all together when my business started actually running. Well, it was because I read in a book that you should schedule time to work on your business, not for it.

[00:57:01] So I stopped taking client work on Wednesdays from noon to five Wednesdays from noon to five was all me about working on mindset and psychology skills and knowledge, relationships and ethics, positioning, differentiation systems management. No, I didn't. I wasn't clever enough to lay it out the way Brian did and his hierarchy.

[00:57:20] But what you should do, this is the best nugget of wisdom I give to every single small business owner I've met with, coached, mentored, whatever, and it's this, you have to have time each week. It only, it could be an hour, it could be two hours. It could be five hours that you have intentionally scheduled to work on your business, not for your business.

[00:57:43] You need time scheduled where you're not working for a client, you need time scheduled where you've taken this hierarchy of needs. You've started at the bottom and you've worked your way up. You figured out what is the most important thing that I need moving forward, which is first of all, mindset and psychology.

[00:57:59] Once you feel like that's in a good spot, then skills and knowledge. Once you feel like that's in a good spot, then relationships and ethics, and then once you're in a good spot there, obviously, you know the next one and the next one, the next one. You have to schedule time to work on your business, not for it.

[00:58:15] Or success will look like misery. You're going to build a machine that's going to drive you insane unless you have that time specifically scheduled to become more efficient and Everly. What I see, it happens again and again and again, is people don't do that. They don't schedule time to work on instead of four and what happens is they eventually hate their clients.

[00:58:37] That's the inevitable conclusion here is that you hate your clients because your business is miserable. You have to be future use best friend. When you're working on your business, you have to say, I'm going to do this thing that's going to help future me. I'm going to create this system where I am no longer going to need to label files before I master them.

[00:58:59] Or I am, like Brian mentioned earlier, I am no longer going to need to figure out, um, what they're super weird abbreviations on each of their tracks mean by going through and listening to each one before I even start to mix.

[00:59:12] Brian: [00:59:12] Or when they label the vocal tracks by the singer's name.

[00:59:15] Chris: [00:59:15] Yeah.

[00:59:16] Brian: [00:59:16] Bob Bob one. Bob two.

[00:59:17] Bob three.

[00:59:18] Chris: [00:59:18] Exactly. So when you suddenly. Began to be future use best friend and do things that will save you time and misery. Uh, in the future. Few things happen. One, your dollars per hour go up to your enjoyment of your work goes up. And three, the quality of your work goes up because you're all in on being an artist.

[00:59:43] You get into a flow state faster and you don't have to worry about. Um, all this other junk that's repetitive and monotonous, and you should be paying somebody minimum wage to do it, or you should find a way to systemize it that removes that job or that type of work from your plate. So man, these things are so important, but in order for you to implement them, you have to schedule time each week to work on your business, not just for it.

[01:00:09] Brian: [01:00:09] And to piggyback off of what Chris said, there is, like I said, it's all about spotting those areas in your business that you can have a high ROI on time. So when Chris takes these afternoons on Wednesdays to work on his business, he's looking at where he can spend time right now. To save him time down the road.

[01:00:28] And that is all about being your future self's best friend.

[01:00:31] Chris: [01:00:31] Good stuff, man.

[01:00:32] Brian: [01:00:32] So really, we don't have time to talk about marketing, awareness of profit and profit or maximization, but I will say these two things. Until you get these first five levels down, don't worry about marketing and awareness about building your awareness for your studio yet part of it will come naturally as you get more clients, they're all going to be advocates for your studio.

[01:00:52] Um, part part of it is going to come with time as you build your client list. Uh, and part of it is not going to come until you get these first five levels down. And then the seventh level of this hierarchy of needs, which is profit maximization, that is just a result. Of every single thing else you've done here, that's where you start talking about where are you going to reinvest money?

[01:01:11] That's where you start worrying about, you know, getting your pricing, uh, maximize to the point where you're getting the most per project and the conversation changes from, uh, where can I find the most clients to? How can I make the most use of my time, uh, to the maximum effort, the conversation changes?

[01:01:28] But very, very, very few people are at that point in their businesses right now. And so, again. You should be focusing on the first five right now, and I do have, if you kind of want to figure out where you need the most help, I do have. Kind of a scorecard. It's an assessment that gives you a scorecard. At the end of it gives you a score on each of these seven levels.

[01:01:48] You can go to profit dot the six figure home studio.com and you can start the assessment there and it actually walk you through a bunch of questions to answer. It'll give you a score and then it gives you action items based on what your score is in each area. So your lowest three scores, it's going to give you action items to focus on right now.

[01:02:06] Instead of you walking away from this podcast, not having a clue what to tackle first.

[01:02:10] Chris: [01:02:10] Yeah. So the thing that's been the most fun for me about this episode, I've really enjoyed this a lot. Um, isn't like bragging that I've got all these things under control. I don't, I'm a lot farther along than I was 10 years ago.

[01:02:23] I'm a lot farther along than I was 90 days ago. What's fun for me about this is it helps me to rehash what I believe about what I need to do to grow my business, to be successful, to help people, and to generally feel good about myself. So these types of episodes are a blast for me to rehash, man, I need to work on this thing.

[01:02:45] I need to work on that thing. I need to improve on this. And so just to encourage you guys, it's not about whether you've done these things or not. It's whether you're moving in the right direction and you never stop moving in the right direction. You're never going to get to a point where you're like, got it done.

[01:03:00] Moving on. I don't think anyone does. And if you do, that just seems real boring. I never want to be that guy.

[01:03:05] Brian: [01:03:05] There is no end game. It's all about the journey. You. You're taking right now, and as long as you're focused on these seven areas in your business, it's going to help on your journey for that top level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is the self actualization part of your life.

[01:03:20] Um, it's not going to be the end all, be all. Be all end all. I don't know how with how you say there, but it's not going to be, it's not going to be the answer to all your problems, but it will definitely help guide you in your decision making on where to focus your efforts and really that's, that will get you further than, than what a lot of people would, would get without something like this to follow.

[01:03:39] Chris: [01:03:39] Yeah. I think another concept on this too is anyone that's listening is probably pretty interested in what we're saying at this point, that you're trying to build a business, um, and you want it and you're frustrated that you're not. You're not where you want to be. I would say another thing here is that trying to figure out how to apply what we have said and this hierarchy of needs is a high art.

[01:04:02] It's a creative endeavor in the same way that making a song is a creative endeavor in the same way that producing a song is a creative endeavor in my opinion. You know, I've, I've been in the arts for a long time, whether that was as a performing artist. Or a producer or for the last 10 years, a mastering engineer.

[01:04:20] And I find that this type of stuff, that business offers just as much opportunity for me to use my creative side as anything else I've ever done. Probably more, there's more possibilities. A business can change your life in a way that making a cool piece of art often can't. So I would encourage you, if you're listening to this and you're a creative.

[01:04:44] Creatives are in an excellent position to do well at business because business is primarily a creative exercise. It has to be because you have to differentiate yourself in the marketplace in order to sell anything. If someone's going to hire you, you have to be able to say, well, I'm a good fit for you because I'm the best at X, Y, and Z, or my competitors don't offer a, B, and C, and I do, and I know that's something that you want.

[01:05:09] That's why you should go with me. You have to be creative to come up with these things. And like I mentioned earlier with Henry Ford, if you ask people, you know, what are your biggest complaints about transportation? Back before Henry Ford was around, they would say, wow, my, my horse gets tired sometimes, or man, he smells real bad and I have to like keep him warm at night.

[01:05:29] They wouldn't have been able to describe, I wish I had a vehicle with four wheels and an engine that ran on gasoline. That took a lot of creativity on Henry Ford's part to figure out a way to bring a car to the masses. So there's a lot of opportunity to be creative with this and to use the same part of your mind that you're using to create music, the grow your business.

[01:05:53] Brian: [01:05:53] so that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Now you know how much base we used to put in our vocals back in episode eight. We have changed things a lot in the audio side. I think Chris actually uses a completely different mic now. So, uh, now that you're hearing the jarring difference between my voice in 2018 and my voice, now you can let me know which one you prefer.

[01:06:13] So next week's episode is going to be another replay. It's going to be a replay of episode number 76 titled how to raise your rates, improve your work life balance, and increase your profit margins. If that's not a juicy title, I don't know what is. So keep your eyes out for that hidden your podcast feed.

[01:06:30] Bright and early next Tuesday morning. 6:00 AM new year's Eve. Until next time, thank you so much for listening. Have a very Merry Christmas and happy hustling.