Practice English Speaking&Listening with: 8 Things Every New Recording Studio Should Ignore (For Now)

- Hey there, Brian Hood here

from the sixfigurehomestudio.com.

There's a thing that I've noticed

amongst all my conversations with studio owners

that have made less than $1,000 from their studios

and the trend that I see

amongst all of these people is this:

They are overwhelmed, they are spread thin,

they don't know what to do.

They're trying to do literally everything

and the result of that

is they are getting absolutely nothing done.

They're trying to do paid advertising,

they're trying to build a website,

they're trying to get their logo made,

they're trying to get business cards made,

they're trying to go to networking events,

they're trying to do social media.

They're trying to do all of these things

and they have no traction in any of it,

so they are left with, really, no results,

they're not sure why it's not working,

they're really overwhelmed,

and they have no plan for what to do next.

Or even worse, what happens is people see all of the things

they should be doing and they get overwhelmed.

They get paralysis by analysis.

They don't know what to do, and so they do nothing at all.

So, if any of this sounds like you,

then this is the video for you

because I'm gonna cover the eight things

that you can safely and completely ignore

if you have earned less than $1,000 from your studio.

(upbeat jazz music)

Now, all of the things on this list today

are things that are not inherently bad.

As a matter of fact, they're probably good in most cases

but they're not quite right for you

at this stage in your career.

So, if you are taking these things on

and you're implementing these things in your business,

they're really doing nothing more than distracting you.

So, like I said, these are things to maybe do in the future

but things you can safely ignore right now,

and none of these are inherently bad.

Now, the first distraction on our list today is a logo.

A logo seems to be the first thing that most studio owners,

or really any business owner,

jumps to when it comes to starting a new business

or starting a new brand,

and I know in my life, really,

I've started several businesses

of all different shapes and sizes

and the first thing I tend to jump on is the logo,

and this really is more of a distraction by procrastination.

You feel like you're getting things done

when you get your logo done,

but at the end of the day,

to break that $1,000 barrier,

that $1,000 of income barrier in your studio,

you don't have to have a logo.

You don't need a logo.

As a matter of fact, I would say completely ignore the logo

until you've crossed that threshold

because until you have made the $1,000 mark,

it's just a distraction you're using to procrastinate.

Well, I can't reach out to people,

I can't network with people.

I can't get any clients until I have a logo, right?

Well, that's just an excuse you're going to give yourself,

so count this as my permission

for you to ignore the entire logo thing

until you've broken that $1,000 threshold.

That doesn't mean you always will ignore it,

that doesn't mean you don't ever have

to have a logo for your studio,

but you are most likely,

and this is no knock on you if this is you,

but almost all entrepreneurs that I have met,

including myself, will use the logo as an excuse

to not get starting doing the things

you really need to do in your business.

So thing number one, completely ignore the logo.

Now, distraction number two is business cards.

This is something that people jump on immediately,

just like the logo thing,

and they feel like they're getting a lot of things done

when they get their logo done, they get the 500,

the little pack of 500 business cards printed out

and shipped out to them,

and then I finally have my business card,

I'm a real business.

That's not the case, it's really a distraction.

Business cards are something that I don't, I've never had.

I personally don't have myself,

and I think you can get a really long way

without having those,

but that's not to say you shouldn't ever have them.

If you have made less than $1,000 in your studio, however,

ignore it.

Do not get business cards, you do not deserve them yet.

(chuckles)

I say this nicely.

I say this because I don't want you

to focus your effort and time and energy and money

on things that are not going to

really make a difference in your business yet.

So, thing number two, distraction number two

that you can completely and safely ignore right now

are business cards.

Distraction number three is your website,

and really, these first three things here

are the first three things that any entrepreneur,

including myself when I start new businesses,

I tend to wanna gravitate towards the website thing.

And in some businesses, it's completely essential,

but in the studio world,

I don't think a website is going to

make or break your first $1,000.

As a matter of fact, I think it's a distraction

that you should completely ignore.

You don't need a logo, you don't need business cards.

You do not need a website

if you have not broken that $1,000,

that magic $1,000 barrier, in your audio career.

This is something again, that's great for the future.

I 100% recommend that every studio have a website

after they've crossed that $1,000 threshold,

but until you hit that $1,000 mark,

that magical $1,000 number that says

okay, you are serious about this,

you have some amount of traction, you've had some clients,

and now it's time to start taking things seriously.

When you've done that, then you can get a website.

Until then, it is safe to ignore the entire website thing.

It's just gonna be a distraction for you right now.

I know many studios, by the way,

that have crossed the $10,000,

and tens of thousands of dollars mark without the website.

So it can be done,

I don't recommend it, getting that far into your career

without a website for your studio,

but the $1,000 mark, you can safely ignore your website

until you have crossed that income threshold.

So distraction number three,

completely ignore the website for now.

Now for distraction number four.

This is social media.

Social media is something to completely be ignored

for any new studio owner,

and before I start getting hate mail from you,

I do recommend having a Facebook page for your studio

or for your brand or for your mixing, your personal brand,

if you're just a mixing engineer and you go under your name.

I do recommending having a business Facebook page

for people to contact you,

as a good alternative to a website.

If you're brand new at this, instead of having a website,

it's smart to have a Facebook page.

But, past the point of setting everything up

and having a way for people to contact you,

and then, maybe posting occasionally,

once every couple of weeks,

with a new piece of music for your portfolio.

Anything past that is a waste of time,

and a waste of effort and a big distraction

on what really matters in your business.

Social media strategy, if you Google everything

about content marketing and social media marketing

and digital marketing,

if you Google all these things and look up YouTube videos,

they're gonna have all these things

where you post three to four times a day at specific hours

or you post every single day of the week.

This is something that's gonna be

a massive distraction for you,

it's not gonna bring in a bunch of leads

for you right now,

this is not the lowest hanging fruit

for your business right now

if you're less than $1,000 of income from your studio.

So, if that is you,

completely ignore number four here, social media,

and save that time and effort for the things

I'm gonna be talking about later in this video.

So, distraction number five is one of my favorites,

and it's paid advertising.

And it's one of my favorites because this is the one

that people seem to gravitate towards

when they're struggling to find clients to work with.

Any studio under $1,000 of total income

would say that they struggle with

finding enough clients to work with,

and in the back of their head,

they think that they can just market their way to success.

If you are struggling to get clients,

you're under $1,000 of income,

paid advertising is gonna be nothing more

than a waste of time and a lot of money.

Any money you put into at this point in your career

is most likely going to be a waste,

and that's because to reach that $1,000 threshold

takes very few things,

and paid advertising is definitely not one of those things

you should be putting your time and effort into.

If you need more on this, I have an article about this,

you can go to thesixfigurehomestudio.com/marketing.

This is an article about why most studios fail

and it has nothing to do with marketing,

and if you don't believe me,

if you don't think paid advertising

is a complete waste of time,

especially for early-stage studios,

then go read that article

and I guarantee your mind will be changed.

Distraction number six is another thing

that I see a lot of questions about,

and that is pricing.

Specifically, price optimization.

That is the distraction I want you to avoid right here.

If you are early in your career,

you should not be worrying about what you can charge,

you know, how to get the most out of your clients.

You shouldn't be worried about should I double my prices,

should I charge $100, $150, should I do per song or per day?

Really doesn't matter, it's a distraction at this point.

At this point, your entire focus should be

how can I over-deliver for every single client

that I work with?

The very few that you have.

How can I over-deliver so that

they are going to be clients for life?

They're gonna be coming back to me

again and again and again.

And how can I under-promise and over-deliver?

How can I charge a rate

that's enough to get me my $1,000, right?

That's one thing, you have to charge something

and it has to be, you're not gonna charge $10 a song

and reach $1,000 of income at any time soon,

but if you're in the $50 to $100 to $150 range

per song or per day, that's a good, safe bet.

You don't have to worry about getting the absolute most.

Don't worry about extracting value from people,

worry about adding value to people, and then,

and only once you're past the $1,000 to $10,000 mark,

then you can start worrying about,

well, should I charge per song or per day,

should I do $50 or $100 or $150?

Should I start asking budgets?

All those things can come later, but for now,

those conversations, those questions, those strategies

are a complete waste of time and effort and focus,

and really, it's gonna just serve the wrong thing,

which is making the most money you can,

when it should be, right now,

making your clients as happy as possible.

When you're at the $1,000 threshold,

then you can start worrying about these other things,

until then it's a distraction, it's a waste of time,

and you can safely ignore price optimization.

Distraction number seven is

focusing too much on a niche right now.

And this is something,

if you listen to The Six Figure Home Studio Podcast,

over at thesixfigurehomestudio.com/podcast, hint, hint,

if you listen to podcast,

we talk about niching down all the time.

It's a fantastic tool for increasing your income

and increasing sustainability in the home studio world

and finding your little niche,

your little place to live long term.

That's great for people that are at a certain level.

But if you are less than $1,000 of total income

for your studio,

that is way, way, way too soon to be worrying about a niche.

You don't need to worry about focusing on metal bands

or hard core bands or EDM or hip hop,

or just mixing or mastering.

You don't need to worry about doing a podcast studio

or a vocal-only studio.

All these things are distractions for you

if you're at the level of $1,000 or less of income

from your studio.

Once you get past that point,

I 100%, wholeheartedly, am behind you finding a niche,

or niching down as we call it,

but until you reach that threshold

of $1,000 of earned income from your studio,

niching down is not the move.

You don't know what you're good at yet.

You don't know what kind of clients

or what kind of niches are attracted to you.

You don't know what you're really gonna enjoy

until you've tried a lot of everything.

So it's okay to be a generalist,

to do everything when you're at this early,

early stage of your career,

because the last thing I'd want you to do

is to focus on a niche that is not right for you,

and until you've been able to really play the field,

to see what it's all like and see what it all entails,

niching down too soon is going to do nothing but limit you.

So again, if you are less than $1,000 of income

from your studio, you can safely ignore niching down.

And finally, number eight.

The eighth distraction on our list is gear.

Specifically, buying more than $1,000-$5,000 worth of gear.

Anything past that point is a waste of time

and effort and money

that you should be spending on your business in other areas.

And, if anything, you should just be holding onto that money

as an emergency fund or saving it up

instead of spending it on gear.

My studio, I started with $5,000,

which is honestly more than

I would recommend for most people, but I earned,

my first $30,000 year was my first year with $5,000 of gear.

I actually probably made my first six figures total

with about $5,000 or $6,000 worth of gear.

Now, I don't recommend you going that far with it,

but if you have $1,000 of gear,

you do not need to worry about gear

until you've crossed the $1,000 of income point.

If you have $5,000 of gear,

you definitely don't need to be worrying about gear

until you've crossed the $1,000 income point.

If you already have that much gear,

then I will bet you $1,000 that that is not the thing

that is holding you back from breaking that threshold.

There is a lot of other things you can focus on,

in which we're gonna talk about in a second,

but gear, if you have $1,000-$5,000 of gear,

and you've earned less than $1,000 from your studio,

do not put another penny into gear

until you have done the other things

that you should be doing in your business.

Do not worry about gear.

So, if you have earned less than $1,000 from your studio,

you can safely ignore buying any more gear for now.

So to wrap all this up,

if you earned less than $1,000 of income from your studio,

you can safely ignore your logo,

you don't need business cards, you don't need a website yet,

you don't need to worry about social media strategy,

you don't need to worry about paid advertising.

You can ignore price optimization, you can ignore a niche,

and you can ignoring buying any more gear

past the $1,000 point.

Those are all distractions for you right now.

And again, none of those things are inherently bad,

but they are nothing more than distractions

for those of you that are less than $1,000 of income

from your studio.

You should be focused on four things,

and really, only four things right now, in your career.

The first is education.

Education is something you should never really let up,

but especially this early in your career,

you're probably not getting clients for one of two reasons.

One is, you're not very good.

Most people at that income level

are not quite where they should be skill-wise,

and so they're gonna continue to struggle to find clients

until they get their skills to the point

that they should be.

Now, that's a common issue, but the even more common issue

that I see at this level is mindset.

They don't understand

that they are capable of doing certain things,

they're beaten down, they have no self-confidence,

and they don't know, really, how to interact with people.

A lot of this comes down to reading books and articles

and watching YouTube videos

and reading blog articles about mindset, as much as skills,

because those two things go hand in hand

to getting you past that $1,000

and beyond point from your income.

So, thing number one, focus on your education.

Once you get that out of the way,

thing number two is focus on your relationships.

These are the people in your surroundings:

your friends, your family,

your acquaintances, your co-workers.

These are all people that are going to help

bring you clients in the future.

There's also the people that are gonna help

connect you to other people,

that are gonna help improve your career.

So, other audio engineers,

other professionals in your area,

other people that can help improve skills, other mentors.

Your relationships at the end of the day

are one of the most important pieces,

and if you have absolutely no roots dug into your city,

you have no connections,

you know no people in this industry

that are musicians or other audio engineers.

Relationships are really where it's gonna move the needle.

If you don't have any of those relationships yet,

that should be one of your main focuses, for sure.

So that's thing number two.

Thing number three is lead generation.

If you're a new studio, you have no real income,

less than $1,000 of income,

then nothing's gonna change

if you don't have potential projects coming in the door.

Those are leads.

A lead is someone that is gonna record soon

or gonna need your service soon,

and a lead is someone, you have to find those leads.

You have to generate those leads.

So, you have to go out there and get those leads.

Now, relationships, networking,

all those things are gonna help generate leads to you,

but there's a lot of other ways you can do this,

like cold outreach.

Paid advertising is a method you can use,

but again, that's one you should ignore for now.

But there are a bunch of different ways

you can do lead generation, but at the end of the day,

that is the third thing you absolutely have to focus on

if you haven't broken that $1,000 threshold.

Again, very few projects are just gonna fall into your lap

at this level in your career,

you have to go out and find them.

So that's thing number three, generating leads.

And the fourth and final thing is sales.

If you can't turn those leads into customers,

if you can't do the entire sales process,

converting a lead to a customer,

it's gonna be a very long and hard road for you.

You have to be able to have the confidence and ability

and know-how to turn someone that is maybe interested,

that has a project that doesn't quite know you,

and turn them into someone that trusts you

with their babies, really.

They worked their lives,

or their entire last year or two on these songs.

They hold it close and near and dear to their hearts,

and now they're hiring a stranger, potentially,

to work on these songs as a producer or a mixing engineer

or mastering engineer or a composer.

If that's you, you have to be able to understand

the psychology of sales.

And so, that goes back to the education, thing number one.

If you don't understand the sales process,

this takes some education, it takes some trial and error,

and it takes some experience.

The good thing is, it's okay to be bad at this.

It's okay to be bad at sales.

You have to be bad before you can get good,

but you have to understand that if you don't focus on sales,

if you don't know how to sell people,

it's gonna be a very difficult thing.

Now, a lot of times your portfolio will speak for itself.

If you're great at what you do, that's really 90% of it,

but at the end of the day, that final 10%

is really what's gonna get people off the fence

of recording with you,

or with your competitor down the road.

So again, those four things are education, relationships,

lead generation, and sales.

If you wanna go more into depth with any of this,

I have a free workshop that I do.

It's at theprofitable.studio,

that's the URL, theprofitable.studio

You can go to that, you can sign up for that workshop,

and I cover the three really important things

for your studio.

The first I cover is lead generation.

I teach you a method that you can repeat every single week,

every single month to generate leads for your studio.

It's gonna be very important

if you're trying to break that $1,000 mark for your studio.

Thing number two that I teach in that workshop

is how to sell people.

How to turn someone from a stranger to a customer.

I teach a very specific framework

called The Needs Discovery Analysis,

I teach that in this workshop.

And thing number three that I teach in that workshop

is how to get a fair rate for what you're doing.

I'm not talking about how to maximize your pricing,

I'm not talking about how to get the absolute most

you possibly can to extract from someone.

Again, like I talked about earlier in this video,

you should be talking about over-delivering,

not extracting value from people,

but the third thing I teach

is how to get a fair rate for your services

so that you can break that $1,000 mark.

So, if you want that workshop,

again, it's at theprofitable.studio, that's the URL.

Go up, sign up for that.

It's a 90-minute workshop, it's very in-depth.

It goes over a lot of the things

that I didn't get to cover in this video,

including mindset, including sales,

including lead generation.

So again, theprofitable.studio.

Until next time, happy hustling and thanks for watching.

(upbeat electronic music)