BRIAN HOOD: The Digital Nomad Myth, The “How Can I” Mindset, and The Math of Outsourcing

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by the 2017 URM Summit, a once in a lifetime chance to spend four days with the next generation of audio professionals and special guests, including Andrew Wade, Kane Churko, Billy Decker, fluff, Brian Hood, and many more. The inspiration, ideas and friendship you'll get here are the things that you'll look back on as inflection points in your life. Learn [email protected].

Speaker 2 (00:00:30):

And now your host, Eyal Levi. Hey, welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. I am Eyal Levi and I want to apologize for the sound of my voice right now. I know it sounds like I'm in an echo chamber. What's going on is that I am moving next week and the room that I podcast in is torn down. All my acoustic treatment is torn down, so I'm in my living room with normal reverberant walls and wood floor, and that's what you guys got. This is going to be an awesome episode. I get to talk to Brian O today. He is an entrepreneur, producer, smart dude who, some people would call him a competitor of ours, but I don't really believe that. I think that he's offering a different perspective than URM on all things, learning how to mix, and also how to have a profitable studio business.

(00:01:24):

His stuff is great. We endorse it. If you're a fan of URM, you would also be a fan of his, and he's got a lot of free stuff on his site. Just go to the six figure home studio.com and you can check out his mixing course from Shit to Gold, a free website creation course, keys to a six figure home studio free ebook, a simple business roadmap for free, and he's got other programs coming up that he will talk about in the podcast. This is a guy who has done it for real. He lives a lot of people's dreams and we all love him. So enjoy this episode. Alright, welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. I am Eyal Levi and with me as a man that needs no introduction, Mr. Brian Hood of the six Figure Home Studio and 4 56 recordings. Hello?

Speaker 3 (00:02:18):

Hey. Hey. Hello. Hi. Thanks for having me back again. I know it's been a while, but I don't know how many repeat guests you have on the podcast other than the dear whoever type episodes.

Speaker 2 (00:02:28):

Only the good ones.

Speaker 3 (00:02:30):

I'll take that as a compliment then. Thanks.

Speaker 2 (00:02:32):

Yeah, I'm starting to go back through some of the guests that we've gotten really good feedback off of or that I had a great conversation with and trying to bring them back. But like Nali, we had him back. We had him back. Josh Newell been on several times. Yes, you're back. I mean, we're like at episode 1 72 or something like that, and so it's kind of like after a while, once you're years in, it's like, yeah, if I spoke to this guy two years ago, I bet if he has interesting stuff to say back then, I bet he hasn't had a lobotomy. He probably has interesting stuff to say. Two years later,

Speaker 3 (00:03:15):

One would think Yes, so hopefully don't disappoint today. It's like, damn, that first episode Brian did was great, but that second one, what a train wreck that was.

Speaker 2 (00:03:23):

Yeah, what happened to that guy?

Speaker 3 (00:03:26):

Drugs. Lots of drugs.

Speaker 2 (00:03:27):

No, lots of drugs in Thailand.

Speaker 3 (00:03:30):

Dude, that was a fun trip. Let's not talk about that. Alright, so

Speaker 2 (00:03:32):

Speaking of Thailand, real quick. I wanted to ask you about Thailand because something that we were talking about in your group earlier is about people who want to travel while mixing and you popped in, okay, so basically people were responding to an ad, not that you placed someone screenshotted an ad and posted in your group that there's somebody selling the lifestyle of traveling while mixing to people who don't have mixing careers yet. And you popped in and you said that it's really, really hard to get audio work done while on the road. I echo that.

Speaker 3 (00:04:14):

Yes. Yeah, so I was there earlier this year. I was in Thailand in Cambodia for an amazing trip, six weeks, and I got about 30 minutes of work done while I was gone, and it was literally to open up a pro tool session and fix something for my mix prep assistant, which really does tie into what we were talking about before the podcast starts, which is kind of talking about that outsource conversation, but let's not get to that yet. But yeah, 30 minutes of work in six weeks is all I can manage to do because there's so much to do. And back to the point you made with this advertisement, I think it was, I'm not going to give the name out of this company or this website, but just someone kind of selling the dream of travel mix on the road or what is it? The, it's been around for a while. The whole, what do they call it? The,

Speaker 2 (00:05:01):

Well, it's kind of the, I don't know what it's called, but it's kind of digital

Speaker 3 (00:05:04):

Nomad. Digital Nomad is a big podcast and a website and it's talking about basically traveling in really, really balls cheap countries and making a decent living. But in those countries that money does last longer and there is some truth to that, but trying to do something like audio while traveling, it depends on what you're doing of course, but I don't know how I agree with that, but I'm interested to hear your opinion on that. You were actually putting some pretty good feedback on there on the forum for that.

Speaker 2 (00:05:30):

Well, okay. I've been traveling my entire life because my dad is a traveling musician. I grew up with him and I would travel with him and even back before the studio days, I still had composition project, so I would bring a four track cassette recorder with me. This was in the nineties on trips to Europe and still try to write music, and it was really hard to do that. Then when my band was on tour, I'd bring a recording rig with me and I'd have a whole plan laid out for how much work we were going to get on tour. I always ended up being a 10th of what I planned on. Now I travel all the time for now the mix and stuff, and I crush work all the time, but I don't go out almost ever when we're on the road. The other guys will vouch for the fact that lots of times people want to go out and I'm like, nah, I got to go back to my room and that's the choice that I make in order to get the work done. Dude,

Speaker 3 (00:06:35):

You're a better person than I am. I've come to the conclusion that I just have to never schedule work that has to get done. If I'm traveling for a conference or any sort of vacation or anything that's not in my normal routine, you pull me out of that routine and I am worthless when it comes to getting work done.

Speaker 2 (00:06:49):

Well, I used to be, but I guess what I'm getting at is that it's a monumental effort.

(00:06:58):

It takes a lot out of you, and I don't think that if it was mixing work that I'd really be able to hang with it. That's also what I'm getting at. The stuff that I do for Nail the mix. Yeah, I'll podcast from the road. I'll follow up with people that are coming on. I'll post stuff. I'll do that kind of work. But if it was actually audio mixing work, no, no. It is just too hard to get into that headspace while in a new environment all the time, and I just don't see it. And so the thing is that if you're already a pro mixer and you're getting clients from all over the world, if you're already at that phase, then yes, you can go anywhere you want and do whatever you want with it. Sure. Any of the people that we've had on Nail the Mix or whatever or on this podcast could probably do that if they wanted to, but if you're not at that point yet where you're getting clients all the time from all over the world and making a really bang and living in the first world, why do you think that you're going to make it work somewhere else where you're remote and possibly don't have good internet and don't have the same resources?

Speaker 3 (00:08:12):

So it's getting the actual, and people wanted, what is it, the cart before the horse that saying where you're just trying to get the lifestyle together, get that validation that you're doing something that's awesome and different and unique, but you don't even have the career to support that sort of lifestyle yet, and you don't have the skills to support that sort of lifestyle yet. You don't have the network or the client base any of that stuff in place to do the things you need to do to be able to have that sort of lifestyle. So why make it harder for yourself to try to travel with that sort of lifestyle and that sort of dream that you may have, which is cool. I'm sure it can be a great way to do it if you already have it there, but that's just going to hold you back from really hustling that shit out that you need to do to get those things done and get those things put into place.

Speaker 2 (00:08:53):

Yeah, exactly. Because I mean, I know that your podcast partner, great podcast by the way. Thanks six Figure Home Studio podcast. I know that your partner has a whole system of how he does things through the, and yes, if you figure that out, sure, go to Thailand and get your clients that way. But that takes a long time to get established with. You have to really learn how to do that. And it's the same thing we were saying. It's like, yes, okay, so if you build the infrastructure and you build your skills, then yes, you can definitely do this. But if you're already worried about that before mixing, you've got your mind focused on the wrong thing because there's a lot of stuff that you've got to do, in my opinion in person. When you're first hustling for a career, when you're first trying to go to shows, to meet bands, first, networking first, doing all that stuff, you can't be halfway across the world from that. Nope. You got to be present. You have to learn how to work with clients oftentimes in the same room. I just think that there's so much stuff you have to do that requires being physically present that it's too early.

Speaker 3 (00:10:13):

Well, it's like okay for everyone starting out their careers, you have to be able to just crush anything you do, anything you do, you have to be amazing at it and make your clients so damn happy that they will come back to you time and time and time and time again for the rest of your damn life.

Speaker 2 (00:10:26):

Even if you're in Thailand,

Speaker 3 (00:10:27):

Even if you're in Thailand, great, but if you are somewhere where your focus is not your career, your focus is the lifestyle that you want to live, which is great if you want to do that, but you're not going to be able to focus on living this extraordinary lifestyle abroad while at the same time trying to build this career that you have a dream and passion to do. So you've got to pick one or the other. In my opinion. I'd rather build the career, build the rabid, I hate to say fan base, but any of your customers who love you, your thousand true fans is that one, I forget the guy's name who wrote that big article that lot of people are a thousand true fans. Getting those people that love you that are going to come back to you time and time and time and time again anytime they need your services. That is what I would rather focus on first, and that will allow me to do the things that I did earlier this year, which was travel for six weeks uninterrupted, where I only worked 30 minutes for that trip and that wasn't the point of the trip, wasn't to do some extraordinary live abroad and work type thing. It was to actually have a vacation and actually get a break and reassess my life and figure out where I wanted to go from that point on.

Speaker 2 (00:11:34):

Joel did that too. He does that once a year. He went to Russia for what, two months? Yeah. That's

Speaker 3 (00:11:40):

Awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:11:41):

I feel like also a lot of people who haven't traveled, they're taking a lot on in their minds, in the realm of fantasy about whether or not they really want to move to a third world country or something like that. Why don't you try it for a month and see if you actually want to leave the confines of comfort? I find that most people just need a break. They just want to go do something cool for a few weeks and then come back to real life.

Speaker 3 (00:12:13):

Yeah. I a thousand percent agree with that, and it's the same thing as whenever I'm talking to a new musician, I don't record anymore. I just do mixing and mastering. But when I was still recording bands and I had bands come in the studio, their number one goal every single person was they wanted to tour full time. They wanted to get signed, and that was the life they wanted to live. And anyone who has ever toured while it's fun, it has its ups and downs you're going to have it's work. It's fucking work. It's not just some cakewalk, it's not what you make it out to be when you're a brand new band. There's a lot of bullshit that comes with that, and I encourage people, yeah, do your tours, do all that, but that may not be where you want to spend the rest of your life.

(00:12:50):

And it very well could be, but for a lot of people, that's not the life that they necessarily want to live. When you realize, holy shit, I can't really have a very healthy family life or a relationship or I lose touch with my friends while I'm gone and all the arguments that happen on tour, it's just one of those things that until you get yourself in that position, you may not realize that that's not what you want to do for the rest of your life. Much traveling. After six weeks, I was ready to come home. I had kind of unplugged a little too far to be honest. I don't know if I would do a trip that long again because

Speaker 2 (00:13:18):

It took six weeks is a long time.

Speaker 3 (00:13:20):

It took so long to build momentum back up that I lost while traveling when I got home. It was another probably three to four weeks before I felt like I was anywhere near the same level of productivity when I left because I just had no desire to work. And it was honestly something that kind of scared me. I was like, did I just lose my passion for work while traveling? And while it was very refreshing, it was definitely a wake up call for being cognizant of that sort of thing, being able to happen where you leave for too long, you kind of lose that drive and that stuff you had going before you left. So there's some advice from an old man to the young guys.

Speaker 2 (00:13:56):

Well, at what point in your trip did you start to feel like this is gone on too long?

Speaker 3 (00:14:02):

Well, I don't want to, maybe after my seventh dive down in Al where I was a hundred feet underwater, no, there was no point in the trip where I was like, this is too much.

Speaker 2 (00:14:14):

Was just when you got back

Speaker 3 (00:14:15):

Is when I got back and I just hadn't gotten any work done. And of course, I was probably a year, year and a half into a relationship for that trip, and my girlfriend wasn't on that trip, so it was trying to maintain any sort of healthy relationship for six weeks while gone. That was a struggle too. So there's pros and cons to travel like that, but the cons are definitely losing touch with what's going on back home, especially in your business life.

Speaker 2 (00:14:40):

Yeah, I mean even traveling state side, that's something that can go wrong. I think that this is a problem that up and coming engineers or musicians or really probably any creative person has is that their focus on the wrong things. For instance, I think one thing that guitar players focus too much on is what kind of amp somebody is playing rather than focusing on getting

Speaker 3 (00:15:12):

The right, not picking like a bitch.

Speaker 2 (00:15:13):

Yes, exactly. I was about to say, getting the right hand to hetfield levels or whatever.

Speaker 4 (00:15:18):

They're

Speaker 2 (00:15:19):

Worried about does the dude play a Kemper or an ax effects or the latest PV thing? And it's like that's not what makes a difference. Like the two hours a night or three hours a night that you're spending online worried about that stuff, fantasizing about your gear, that's two or three hours a night that you're not putting in towards what actually matters, which is how well you play. Because if you play really, really well and someone notices you, then you'll get that gear for free or at a discount and you don't need to worry about buying it

Speaker 3 (00:15:46):

Preach to that.

Speaker 2 (00:15:48):

So I kind of feel like it's probably the same in photography. It's probably a similar thing, just a human trait to put the fantasy before the reality of what you got to do to get to the goal.

Speaker 3 (00:16:00):

I will say maybe with photography and videography, it makes a little more sense to travel, get your work is out in the world versus audio where you kind of have to be in a cave.

Speaker 2 (00:16:09):

No, but I'm sure there's an equivalent. Maybe I need a $20,000

Speaker 3 (00:16:13):

Camera for

Speaker 2 (00:16:15):

Sure before I can take pictures as good as,

Speaker 3 (00:16:17):

No, I spent

Speaker 2 (00:16:18):

X photography.

Speaker 3 (00:16:20):

So going back to photography and videography, I spent way too long researching for a pocketable travel camera that was great for photos and for videos, and I probably spent 40 hours researching this shit. It was so dumb. It was the dumbest thing I've probably ever spent my time on in my life was spending 40 to 50 hours researching cameras for a six week trip. When you'd look at the value of my dollars per hour that I earn in the studio, it's an idiotic thing to spend that much time on something. But at the end of the day, I could have picked six other cameras that'd have been the exact same results because I am an absolute amateur when it comes to photography and videography. And if you look at some of the results that professionals can get from this pocketable travel camera that I got, they could get infinitely better results than I could with even the highest end gear. So again, it's up to the user, it's up to the ability. It's up to what you know and how you use it more than the gear you use, and that'll be until the day you die. That's the way it's going to be no matter what anyone ever tries to lie to you about.

Speaker 2 (00:17:17):

So that brings up a question that I've always wanted to ask you.

Speaker 3 (00:17:21):

No,

Speaker 2 (00:17:21):

Something that I've No,

Speaker 3 (00:17:24):

No. Go for it.

Speaker 2 (00:17:25):

I'm disappointed that the answer is no. No. So you have a lot of students now through your profitable producer project or from Shit to gold or people who follow your blogs, a lot of people who you've got a good size following, and I'm sure kind of like we have at URM, it spans the range of people who live by the shit and get tons of results to people who just aren't getting the same kind of results because they don't really apply themselves. What do you wish that your students did if you had a perfect scenario where it was like, I wish my students did X with my materials, what would that look like? What's your dream scenario?

Speaker 3 (00:18:14):

A lot of different scenarios around this, this is what I stay up at night thinking about all the time, is how to get people to do more. Well, one of the big things is the mindset behind two simple phrases. And this is what separates the guys that I see that are absolutely crushing it in either my mixing course from shit to gold or the beta program that I just did with my students where we went through a week bootcamp, essentially like a business bootcamp. It's the two different mindsets, the mindset number one, which is I can't, and that's usually followed by I can't because insert excuse here. And the other kind of mindset, which is how can I, and they see a problem and they think, how can I get past that or how can I work around that versus the unsuccessful student or the unsuccessful person, which is I see a problem so I can't, and I've seen this again and again and again, and I say, for shit to gold, I think I have a 30 day refund period and I just had a refund request to date. I mean, my refund request is so damn low. If you look at the industry standard for online courses like ours, I've seen people claim that it's normal to have a 20% refund rate. That sounds insane to me.

Speaker 2 (00:19:27):

We had three refunds for speed mixing.

Speaker 3 (00:19:29):

Yeah, yeah. So I have about a 2%, 2% refund rate or refund request rate. And of course, if it's in 30 days, I give them no questions. I ask, I give the refund. But I had one come in today and it was a guy talking about how he's gone through some of the videos. What I do in my mixes is just way off from what he does, and he just can't see how he can make use of it. So he's asking for a refund. That kind of shit makes me so angry, and it's not because of the refund request, I don't care. That's fine. It's the mindset that I'm just giving up because it's different than what I'm used to, and I don't see how I get past that.

Speaker 2 (00:20:03):

Isn't that the idea that in order to get better, you need to take on stuff that's different than what you're used to.

Speaker 3 (00:20:09):

If your mixes suck ass, at least consider trying the way I'm teaching you and see if you don't get results like the hundreds of other students who have gone through. Yeah, okay. If that's the way you're going to be, I will be happy to. I'm not going to be happy. I'm going to be pissed about it because you just gave up, but I'll refund your money and you can move on. And if something else you find that helps you better than my course, awesome, fine, great. But if your mindset is always, that's just not the way I like to do things or that's just not the way I can, I don't know, that just seems a little weird, then I guess I can't do it. If that's your mindset, man, Godspeed, good luck. I don't want you to be a part of my clan because I've seen that. I had for this eight week bootcamp thing, this business thing, it was called the Profitable Producer Project, but that was just a one time, one and done thing. We're completely revamping it and relaunching it later this year. But I had 50

Speaker 2 (00:21:02):

This year, 2017. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:21:04):

It's going to be nice. Right now it's looking for early December.

Speaker 2 (00:21:07):

Cool.

Speaker 3 (00:21:08):

And maybe again in January, we'll see what happens. We're wrapping up the video editing now and we're trying to figure out all the launch planes, but awesome. This is the first place I've actually talked about it, but exclusively on URM. Get the voice guy, the super hype voice guy that's just over the top. I'm going to get him to

Speaker 2 (00:21:25):

Announce it exclusively announced here. He's awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:21:30):

I love, I've got my own hype voice guy for our podcast, got a super deep voice, does sports, sports trailers and stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:21:36):

Anyways, got to have a good announcer.

Speaker 3 (00:21:39):

So back to this, we had 50 students go through eight weeks, and it was really, really interesting to see the types of attitudes and mindset people had and how that turned into results because we had people that were constantly making excuses. We had guys who would make an excuse and then ghosted, and then we had guys who constantly overcame every single obstacle that they could possibly have. One of the things we had was an accountability program. We had split them into teams, and this is a live eight week course, so it was like three times a week. We're meeting up live online in a group chat setting similar to Google Hangouts, but it's through something called Zoom. And it was just more you could fit more people in there. You get up to 50 people in a room, everyone could see each other and hear each other.

(00:22:23):

And it was more fun that way. But the accountability program was every single week we had assigned them action items. They had homework to do each week and they had extra credit they could do. And if you didn't finish the homework, you got to strike for your team. And at the end of the eight weeks, if you had the team with the least strikes and most extra credit, each member would win a $500 gift card to sweetwater.com. So it was like a cool little carrot at the end of the stick over the eight weeks to keep you guys engaged for the eight weeks. And I would say,

Speaker 2 (00:22:52):

And if you're the guy that holds the group back, we

Speaker 3 (00:22:57):

Use all sorts of would suck. We used all sorts of commitment devices and accountability mechanisms to keep people engaged through the eight weeks. And we had a public accountability scoreboard. You could see each team the strikes and extra credit week to week, and you could see every single individual member for each team what they had and had not turned in. So that alone was enough to keep people engaged. But what I noticed was we had just to say the winning team, they had 120 points, so like zero strikes, they got a perfect score, zero strikes, and they had 120 extra credit points for the eight weeks

Speaker 1 (00:23:34):

Between

Speaker 3 (00:23:34):

The seven of 'em. They just dominated the difference between that team and the last place team that had negative 20 points. They had just tons and tons of strikes and very little extra credit was like a hundred, I dunno, somewhere ridiculous. A hundred twenty, a hundred thirty, a hundred forty point differential between those two teams, first and last place teams. And the difference that I saw was Team Delta, which was the winning team, every single person in that team had the mindset that was it doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter how we do it, we're going to get it done, we're going to make it happen. Even one guy who was stranded in Canada with no access to his studio, he literally got one of his guys from his team to snail mail him something or do something out. I forget exactly what it was, the scenario, but went out of his way to help his teammate out so they could keep their perfect record of zero strikes. And so it wasn't like, well, I guess I can't do my homework this week because I am stranded here and I don't have the stuff that I need. He was like, how can I get this done? It was not, I can't, it was, well, here's this problem, so how can I overcome this? When you have the other team, which I think it was Team Beta was the last place team, no surprise there.

Speaker 2 (00:24:41):

Yeah, that's appropriate.

Speaker 3 (00:24:45):

So they had early on one member who was just like, well, I'm on vacation so I can't do the action items this week, so I'm going to take three strikes right then and there. And from that point on, setting the precedent for a bad score because of just circumstances where you could have worked around it, if you really wanted it bad enough, that just dragged the team down from there. The entire eight weeks on, they never had a chance because early in the course they fucked up because one person had that bad attitude and it just circulated through the entire team. And from that point on, it was a losing proposition for that team. So I really, really more than anything, hate to see that sort of mindset in any of my students or any people that I work with. And that kind of shit pisses me off to no ends, and I will do anything I can in any of the programs that I want run to keep that kind of stuff from manifesting and spreading to other students

Speaker 2 (00:25:36):

I remember. And I think that that's a brilliant way to do it. I remember in 2005 or something, I think Slipknot released a DVD where they talked to all the members. And I always thought that that band was fascinating because the same way that Tony Robbins or Bill Gates are fascinating to me, I always thought Slipknot was fascinating, so much bigger than almost every other band in that genre and still to this day. So they were talking about themselves and what they kept on saying in their individual interviews was that no one in that band wanted to be that guy who would cause the team to fall behind. So they each had work they had to do for the band since the beginning of the band, and everyone has always just crushed their work. And being that guy was the ultimate shame in their little world. And it makes sense. That's what you see in winning teams. Guys don't want to let their brothers down basically. Dude,

Speaker 3 (00:26:39):

That's so true and so powerful.

Speaker 2 (00:26:41):

It's true though. You see it time after time all the way to the very top of the mountain. So I mean, I think that's a brilliant way to bring it out. And I feel bad for a guy who gets stuck on a bad team, but shit that's, you can't always choose the cars you're dealt.

Speaker 3 (00:27:00):

And there's things I can do to make it more engaging and keep one bad apple from ruining the whole bunch. And there's things I'm going to redo to revamp that whole accountability program to keep it less likely from one member tainting the whole team. But you have to look at it. Think about you can't pick your team always. So if you're in a band you don't always get to, of course you're going to kind of choose your members, but at the same time, what if you pick one bad one and you have all of a sudden you have one bad apple in your band and it's really hard to get rid of that one bad apple? Well, you have to figure out some way to make it work no matter what. It's just like, I'm not going to say

Speaker 2 (00:27:34):

That's kind of what killed my band. We had a bad apple, we had two bad apples, and even after we got rid of them, the damage that they had done prevented us from it had just set a cycle in motion that even two albums and years later, we couldn't get out of the shit that they had created for us at the beginning. So I know exactly how that works. So you pick the wrong person and you're fucked.

Speaker 3 (00:28:03):

And again, just like if you happen to be in a bad team, say you were on Team beta or you're band, you're in a band and you do feel like you have no control over that one bad apple you have in the band. Well, the problem with that is you can't just say, well, I guess I can't change that. It's more like, how can I make it work even though this is not ideal? And it all comes back to that same mindset of not I can't, but how can I, and I dunno, there's a million ways that applies to your career and the people you hire and the people you surround yourself with and the people around you and the teams you're on, and the teams you get assigned to and the teams you get to pick for yourself. It all applies across the board, but at the end of the day, you don't always have control and you have to make it work somehow. And the team that made it work was Team Delta and they wrecked even the second place team wasn't close to them.

Speaker 2 (00:28:49):

It's interesting to me that did Team Delta have a particular leader?

Speaker 3 (00:28:57):

Every team had a team leader.

Speaker 2 (00:28:58):

Okay, because I'm thinking that usually if there's a good leader and a good culture in a group, lots of times people who wouldn't naturally be a great team players just rise to the challenge

Speaker 4 (00:29:12):

If

Speaker 2 (00:29:12):

They're in a good situation. You described the opposite to where too many bad apples or too many fuckups towards the beginning will spread like a cancer to everybody else and then discourage them. I bet you that there's lots of people who could go either way depending on the situation they land in, and I don't think that's very good. I think that you should put your fucking foot in the sand and decide you're going to be the proactive person. But I don't think that everybody's naturally like that. I wish they were though.

Speaker 3 (00:29:45):

Yeah, and it's a skill you can kind of develop as far as that grit. They said there's a TED talk you should watch if you haven't already, just go Google grit, GRIT and Ted talk and you'll find it. But

Speaker 2 (00:29:56):

I've seen it actually. I love it.

Speaker 3 (00:29:58):

Basically the whole talk is essentially saying, what is the number one determining factor for successful people? It's not necessarily your iq, it's not necessarily your socioeconomic background. It's not necessarily this or that or whatever you happen to think it is. The number one determining factor for success is grit. And then she goes on to explain what that means. But the gist of it is persevering despite whatever circumstances are thrown your way and sticking to it until it's done. If you started a job, get it done. If you started something, finish it. If you set out to achieve a goal, you get that shit done no matter what happens. And the people that I've seen that are successful, the people that I've worked with, the people that I hire have that mentality. And the ones that I've let go or the ones that I've parted ways with are the ones that I've separated myself from in social circles are the ones that do give up when times get tough, or the ones that do let things slide through the cracks when they could have gotten it done. And I won't say that I've never been guilty of this myself. I've definitely struggled with grit in the past, but it's something that I've constantly been working on to when I start something, finish it when I want to get something done, fucking do it. Don't let excuses happen. Yeah. So that's a Ted talk worth watching for sure. And should be in the show notes if you actually have show notes. I don't know if you do or not.

Speaker 2 (00:31:13):

Yeah, we do. The link will be in the show notes. Cool. Grit is also something I've struggled with. Just to echo your point, that it is something you can learn. It's not something you're born with. I mean, maybe some people are born with it, but it's definitely learnable. And I know that when I was a lot younger in my life as a kid, I would draw a lot and I would start lots of art projects and abandon them to lose interest. And that was kind of like a theme in my life for years, starting stuff and just losing interest and moving on. It was never that I was scared that I couldn't, I would just lose interest. And I really worked hard and have worked hard to not let that happen anymore. Not to hit that Seth Godin dip

(00:31:58):

And just let it peter out. Ever since I really started paying attention to that in the past 10 years, I'd say the success in my life has just gotten, there's been more of it every single year. And I think that there is definitely a mindset involved with actually following through with stuff. It's like I have to put it at the front center of my mind right here in my forehead, the goal, or we'll do this and I just can't let anything get in the way. It is almost to the point of being obsessive about it, but it gets shit done. And I kind of feel like if anyone has a hard time with getting things done, they're just not focusing on it hard enough. They don't care enough. They're not putting it at the forefront it should be.

Speaker 3 (00:32:52):

I would also kind of want to chime in and talk about my biggest struggle when it comes to not getting shit done, and it's not necessarily the focus problem, it's the perfectionist problem. And so I have struggled and everything's so slow that I do. And something I've struggled with for the longest time is if you were to look at the six figure home studio.com, which has been my main focus for the past, I still do audio work, but it's been my main focus is if you're to look at it between maybe April and August of this year, it looked like I basically died. I hadn't posted anything on social media. I hadn't posted anything on the blog. I hadn't announced

Speaker 2 (00:33:30):

Anything. Yeah, we were actually wondering if you had bailed on the thing. I kind of thought you'd be back, but I wasn't sure.

Speaker 3 (00:33:38):

Well, here's the issue with that is I struggle with perfectionism with a lot of different things. So that entire period, I was working on that profitable producer project beta program because every single little thing had to be done before I could ever talk about it, which is ridiculous. And so I still struggle with the perfectionism thing today, which is basically procrastination by perfectionism. And so it can be that, yes, it's at the forefront of my mind. Yes, I'm focused on accomplishing it, and I've experienced similar things in the audio world as well, which we can talk about that if you want. But it's just this unfortunate thing that I do that I've definitely been working on the past few months with. I have a business coach getting past that perfectionist where it's like, just fuck it, get it done, get it out there, and start failing faster so you can learn from your mistakes sooner.

(00:34:23):

So that's kind of been my motto now is just fuck it, get it out, fail fast, learn from your mistakes, move on and make it better. Because here's the analogy, I've taught my students from learning my own mistakes and something I've noticed in my own life when comparing, which I never suggest anyone ever compare yourself, but occasionally it's good to gauge yourself against other people who are in a similar position just to see how you stand and where you could be if you weren't a perfectionist asshole like me. But one of the things I look at is if you look at two people, you take two people, and I'm using myself and one other person in my head right now in this example. You take two people. You have one person who is an absolute perfectionist. They take their sweet ass time to make everything perfect and they release something.

(00:35:04):

And it may be put yourself in this position. It could be you with your music, it could be you with a mix you're doing. It could be you with whatever you're trying to pursue right now. And you put that out and it takes for fucking ever to do it, but you put it out, you get great response from everyone. That's a win, right? Well, then you can pay yourself to this other person and this other person just shout out something quickly. It got a decent reception. It was not nearly as good as what you did. It was not nearly as, for lack of a better word, successful than what you did. But they got it out faster than you, and they got feedback faster than you. And then they went into the iteration process and revised it and refined it faster than you, and then put out another version or another mix or another product or whatever it happened to be.

(00:35:48):

And they just had that feedback cycle infinitely faster. So at the end of a year or end of two years, someone like me who's a perfectionist, gets way less feedback over time and many less chances to revise because you're taking so damn long to put things out into the world when this other person is 10 times further ahead than you in life or business or whatever. If it's a band dude or whatever, they're infinitely further ahead because they failed fast, they learned from the mistakes, they pivoted or they adjusted from those things that they learned and they did it again and they failed fast and they learned from the mistakes and they did it again and again and again. And they're 10 times further ahead of you because they failed 10 times more than you, and they had 10 times as many lessons, and they were able to implement 10 times as many improvements to what they're doing compared to you, the person who does three things a year because you're so damn slow. So take that for what it's worth. But that's something that I've really struggled with, and I know a lot of people can probably resonate with that, and it is another form of procrastination or another form of maybe not the grit conversation we were just having, but it is something that I think a lot of people try to get past that perfectionist mindset so hard.

Speaker 2 (00:36:56):

It's very natural, man. It's very natural at URM, we're lucky that it's not just one person. If it was, I feel like we might get into those traps we have at times, but then there's always one guy who will be like, yo, we're releasing this, and if there's a problem, we're going to fix it, but we're not because we've had certain things that just took forever to get done trying to make it perfect. And then a year goes by and you're like, why is this not out yet? What the fuck? Why is this not out? I'm actually angry with you guys right now. Why is this not out? And then we don't let that happen anymore, obviously, it's got to be incredible. We have to hit a certain level with our products or services now. So obviously we're not going to just rush something out, but we will put stuff out understanding that we might get some negative feedback immediately and have to fix something.

(00:37:59):

And that's totally cool. And we go into it knowing that, and that's helped us out tremendously. And I know exactly what you're talking about. I've had to deal with that in audio with endless mix notes from people where it's like, look, you're not making the mix any better. You're just making it different at this point, and you're wasting time and life and why? Why? But it's just so natural, because I mean, it's what you're working on. It's your baby. Those of us who are creative, it's very hard to distance yourself from what you do, even if you are teaching a course. I think that if you're a creative person and you have created art in the past, even if you're just making a course for people, it's still something that's a part of you that is a creative part of you and it's represents you and you're the person teaching it and it's you. So of course you want it to be perfect. It makes perfect sense.

Speaker 3 (00:38:58):

So one thing that I've found that I think helps a lot when it comes to the perfectionist issue or the perfectionism issue, and I'll go ahead and say, a lot of the lessons I learned in business are in the six figure home studio.com, that world, and it's not necessarily in my studio, but it doesn't mean you can't translate that to the studio world. So anything I talk about here related to my blog or any of the videos I'm doing or any of the courses I'm doing, you can still take those lessons and convert 'em to whatever you're pursuing in your audio world. Because again, business is very, very universal with a lot of the principles and struggles and things like that. So I'm going to try to talk about the things I learned, but I also pivot it in the way in the audio world that makes it work.

(00:39:37):

But talking about the getting past the perfectionism thing, biggest thing that I've seen that works is accountability. If you have no accountability in your life, you'll sit and tweak shit until the day you die and you'll never release it. So my accountability is my business coach. Now, I don't know if that's for everybody because I pay her probably way too much money for the accountability, and of course she gives me guidance, and we do strategy and all that sorts of stuff as well. It's not just accountability, but even if you just have people that you're telling them, Hey, I'm releasing this on this specific day, and they hold you to it, that can help a lot. But I will say one thing that I've gotten my students into, so the 50 students, they're part of the dream team is what I call 'em. The dream team is the 50 students that were in the Profitable Producer Project, the dream team.

(00:40:22):

One of the things I left them on was splitting 'em into mastermind groups. So I have my own mastermind group. Every Friday morning we meet, it's about 10 audio guys. They do. They're podcast guys, blog guys, course guys, different websites. We got audio issues.com, Bing from there is on you have Rockstar recording Studio, rock Stars podcast, working class, audio podcast, all of these guys, home studio corner, all these guys meet on Friday mornings. And we have a mastermind session where we talk through our struggles and pain points and we keep each other accountable and we have hot seat things where we all help one member out with an issue. Well, I put all my students into their own mastermind groups where weekly they're meeting up with each other and holding each other accountable. And so if you don't have something like that in your life, fine. And especially if you're a nail the mix student, it's super easy. You already have this massive community around you. Just find five.

Speaker 2 (00:41:15):

We'll get together in real life already, right?

Speaker 3 (00:41:16):

In real life. So my meetup is online. You can just do it on Google Hangouts or you can do Skype group chat. You can do Zoom if you want to pay for that, which I do. There's a whole bunch of solutions, and you can of course do in person, but find five or six or seven people that you really resonate with that are on the same path as you, that are around the same level as you and find a group. Don't let any bad apples in, but find a group that you can use to build each other up. It's really, really powerful to have a weekly meeting where you are talking about what you will be doing this week, what you have done the last week, and have it written down on record so every single person can be held accountable for what they say they're going to do. That kind of shit will get rid of that perfectionism so fast.

Speaker 2 (00:41:57):

So I am glad you said that. I was about to ask you what you've done to combat it.

Speaker 3 (00:42:02):

Yep. My accountability group and then my business coach. And then also just kind of, again, I hate comparisons and I'm the kind of person I stay off social media just for that fact. I don't like the comparison lifestyle type thing, but I still will, I am not going to say compare, but gauge myself to someone who started out in a similar position as me and kind of see what they're doing. And that kind of keeps me the top of mind of how quickly they're moving in certain things they're working on and how much faster I need to get shit out. Because at the end of the day, it's not necessarily the one who does the perfect thing that's going to win is the one. And again, I don't like to use scarcity mindset. Things like you win or you lose. If he wins, I can't win.

(00:42:47):

But it's more like he's going to be more successful in what he is trying to achieve if I'm not willing to fail fast. So being aware of what they're doing, and I guess if you want to call it comparison, go for it. But yeah, those three things have been huge for this year. So if you've noticed anything that I've been doing online or on the blog or any of this, you've probably seen, I've ramped up things over the past couple months on social media on my mailing, this I've been mailing a little bit more. I'll be ramping that up a little bit more. I launched the podcast, I do that weekly q and a show q and a with Brian's brain on Facebook where I just put a stupid brain beanie on my head and answer a question and just, I have fun with that. So I'm trying to ramp things up, and that's part of it is just getting shit out there faster and then learning from my mistakes as I go.

Speaker 2 (00:43:33):

Well, I don't even think it so much as comparison, it's just, it's good to know what the standard is for what the market's expecting. If you're not paying attention, then you might put out something that would've been cool three years

Speaker 3 (00:43:48):

Ago. Oh yeah, you'll get left in the dust because just look at how much audio has changed. When I started in 2009, you could use slate samples and you're fucking cutting edge. And so my first drum sample purchase was slate drums, like 1.0. They meld it in a manila envelope on a cd, and they had a note in there that's just like, Hey, if you share this, we'll sue you. And that,

Speaker 2 (00:44:14):

That's what the note said. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:44:15):

It was a lie, I am sure. But it was like they basically said, Hey, if every single one of these samples has your unique identifying code inside of it, so if you share it, we'll know it was you and we'll sue you. It was worded something like, I need to find it. It's in a drawer somewhere at my studio. But yeah, that was the first experience. And those were cutting edge back when Joey Ser had popularized kick 10 in snare 12 A, and you could get away from that for a while, but then if you do kick 10 now, and people are still doing that and snare 12 A now, and people are still doing that, I can guarantee you that. That's what I call.

Speaker 2 (00:44:52):

Oh, they definitely are. I can confirm.

Speaker 3 (00:44:54):

I call those basic bitch drums. Those are common drum samples every single person has been hearing for the last eight years. And so you have to be comparing at least in some way against the rest of the world to see what they're doing so you can stay on top of what is new and cutting edge in this world. If you try to do what I did nine years ago, you're going to fail flat on your face. So you have to be staying on top of that. And it's the same in any industry. So when it comes to the online education world, like nail the mix or the Six Figure Home Studio or any of the other awesome resources out there, if you're not staying on top of what is happening, you're going to get left behind because things have changed massively. Even the two years I've been doing this since, I mean, I launched from Shit to Gold late 2015, and things have shifted drastically as far as what is acceptable now have, yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:45:44):

It is funny. I think about what I was offering in my Creative Live courses back then because 2015 was when we just had our podcast and we didn't launch Nail the Mix until the very end of 2015. Back then, I basically had already done eight creative lives. And when I started doing Creative Live in 2013, it was pretty awesome. It was a new thing to go through and give people quality information about how metal records are made. That alone was good enough, but if I just did that now, that wouldn't fly. It just wouldn't fly. We would not have a business.

Speaker 3 (00:46:28):

We have a higher threshold or a higher standard than people are held to now, which is great. I love it. I think what we're doing now is kind of raising the bar for everyone, and I think all across the board, it's better for all the students involved.

Speaker 2 (00:46:40):

Oh yeah, absolutely. We are always worried about raising the bar, and it's just making sure that our students are getting the most that they possibly can out of it. And so we're constantly asking ourselves, what is it that we can do better? How can we get the point across better? What is it about our service that's lacking? What is it that people really need to be totally engaged with this and get the maximum results out of it? And that changes, that's a living fluid thing. We keep saying what people wanted at the end of 2015 is not what they want at the end of 2017, and it's not what they're going to want at the end of 2018 either. So it's very much not a set and forget type of thing. And back to our original conversation. So okay, we're all internet entrepreneurs and stuff, but with the rate that this evolves at and the amount of stuff that you have to do, I can't imagine going to Thailand and running this business off of a laptop, for instance.

Speaker 4 (00:47:44):

Good luck,

Speaker 2 (00:47:44):

Man, even because we're pretty successful now and we're doing great, and we still got a long way to go, but we're doing well. I could do that if I wanted to. If I wanted to. I could afford it.

Speaker 3 (00:47:55):

Well, let's go back to this real quick.

Speaker 2 (00:47:57):

I wouldn't be able to do it.

Speaker 3 (00:47:58):

Yeah, let's go back to that conversation. We started talking about before we started this podcast, I want to talk about something, and we were talking about you're moving, you're about to move, your house is packed up. That's why your mic is so damn acco and shit.

Speaker 2 (00:48:09):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:48:12):

And so you're just moving down the hall, but still it's a pain in the ass to move that stuff. And you're talking about how no, you're hiring movers, of course. And I'm like, yeah, I'm never moving for the rest of my life by myself. I'm going to hire someone to do it for me. And we started talking about the outsourcing situation, and I wanted to talk about that if we have time,

Speaker 4 (00:48:31):

Because

Speaker 3 (00:48:32):

I think that's a conversation that I think needs to be had for, it's kind of advanced. And one of the things that I did was when I was talking about curriculum for the business course I'm teaching is what do you want? What do you not want in it? I had people look over an outline. I had maybe 600 people give me feedback on that. And overwhelmingly, one of the topics they didn't want to hear about was outsourcing or hiring people because it just seems so far and above where they thought they could be. But I want to kind of shift people's mindset around that. And the only way I know how to do that is to kind of explain what I've done with outsourcing in my own mixing world and see if that kind of wets your appetite with your mindset around hiring help in your studio.

(00:49:11):

So for those of you who are making $0, at least have this in the back of your mind when you do start making money with your studio so you can start ramping up things. Because here's what happens. As you start to ramp up your business and you start getting more and more clients, you're going to get more and more busy and you're going to have less and less time to actually work on your business. Improving systems, getting things more efficient, finding more clients, making your clients happy. All the things that takes to run a business is going to get more and more and more and more difficult. The more popular you get, the more busy you get. And so you have to be battling that constantly as you're growing a studio. And so one of the things talking about that hiring situation is as you're doing things, you have to be aware of two things.

(00:49:54):

One is called your base hourly worth. That is the minimum amount of money you should be working for at any given time. And anything below that money or anything below that number should be outsourced or removed or automated or delegated. And that's the first thing. And the second thing is where can you be systemizing certain processes like taking non-creative tasks? And I'm using really business jargony words, so I really forgive me on this because I have this thing called the curse of knowledge, which you know what that is El, where it is hard to teach something that you already know because people don't know certain things that you know. Sorry, that didn't sound cocky did. I didn't mean it to be.

Speaker 2 (00:50:30):

No, no, no. I was going to say that's the challenge of trying to teach a technical subject to an audience and making it engaging and why so many people are bad at it.

Speaker 3 (00:50:40):

Yeah, I also struggle with it, but I, I'll try to keep it easy to follow, but feel free to stop me if you think there's some term or something. I say that students or listeners may not know because I know a lot of people, honestly, they don't want to think about business at all. It's like the last thing. They just want to create music and that's great. And that was one of my students, Chris Bowman, it was his story. He didn't want to think anything about business, but he knew he needed to do that stuff in order to ramp up the actual creation of art in his studio. So those two things, base hourly worth. And then what are the non-creative tasks you can get rid of? So once you know your base hourly worth, which if you're charging $300 a day for eight hour a day, that's something like $35 an hour I think, or give or take.

(00:51:22):

And so basically anything below that number that you can outsource to someone else should be off your damn plate. And so that's the mentality that I took in my own mixing business. I took every single aspect that was a non-creative task. That is getting the files from the client, organizing and labeling the files, getting it into my daw, setting up my session, getting my template set up, getting the basic automation done whenever a guitar lead comes in that maybe the rhythm guitars get cut down, or maybe when two vocals overlap, maybe ducking the first vocal so the second vocal could come in. Things like that that are not creative. It's just like when this happens, do that, if this, then that. So I basically built this step-by-step checklist. It took me six hours to do. I built a step-by-step checklist that my mix prep assistant can follow from start to finish with every single project that I get in the door for mixing.

(00:52:12):

And there's even a video. I made an hour and a half long video detailing every single part of my mixed prep process took me six hours to do. And that has saved me hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours since creating. And because of that, instead of let's just use easy math and the numbers are not fully accurate here, but it's pretty damn close, instead of say about 30 hours for an ep, for me to mix it, say I get paid three grand for an EP and it takes me 30 hours to mix that, that's about a hundred dollars an hour, which is fine. That's really good money and no one will ever, ever turn that down. But again, if you were to dissect every single step of the mixing process and you looked at every single step in the process, how much of that can you get rid of for under a hundred dollars an hour?

(00:52:59):

How much can you outsource to somebody for less than a hundred dollars an hour? I would say the vast majority of that process, all that stuff I just mentioned, all of the mixed prep, all of the labeling, all of the back and forth of the band, all of getting those files they forgot to send, dealing with a producer who's taking forever, all that shit, I don't want to deal with any of that. So by outsourcing that, I'm able to cut my mix time to only the creative shit that only I can do, only the shit that makes a mix sound like a Brian Hood mix. That's the only thing I do on my mixes now. And that cuts down my mix time to about an hour a song. And I don't know how much of this you covered possibly in your speed mixing course, you may have already covered a

Speaker 2 (00:53:36):

Ton of this. No, we definitely talked about, that was a big part of the course was the economics of hiring a mix assistant,

Speaker 4 (00:53:42):

How

Speaker 2 (00:53:43):

To go about it, how we gave them spreadsheets and everything, and how we outlined exactly why you should do this, how it's going to make you money, why it's going to make you money. And yeah, it's huge.

Speaker 3 (00:53:57):

I've seen a lot of awesome feedback from people from that, and I had some of my own students or some of my own subscribers and listeners go through that. So if that's something you're interested in and you haven't done it yet, I would recommend going to do it. But

Speaker 2 (00:54:07):

Yeah, we'll re-release it I think at the end of 2018.

Speaker 3 (00:54:10):

Cool. So with this, my point is I was able to cut down my mix time to about an hour a song for that same six song EP that was getting $3,000 to pay or getting paid $3,000 to do it would take me six hours to do it, but I'm paying a mixed prep assistant $30 an hour to do all of the mixed prep for me. Now, $30 an hour is pretty good pay. I know a lot of people that would work for that in the studio, and he's getting paid a flat 30 bucks an hour. So my outsource fee to him is about $750 for that $3,000 ep. And if you do the math, that's $2,250 left for me. And I'm working six hours for that. That comes out to about $450 an hour. And my math might be a little bit off there. So I'm going from 30 hours for six song EP for a hundred bucks, an hour to six hours for $450 an hour, but I'm unquote only making $2,250 out of the $3,000.

(00:55:07):

So would you rather, as someone who is mixing, or especially as you get more professional, would you rather make only $2,250 on a mix, but spend six hours doing it or get the full $3,000 but spend the full 30 hours doing this? And that's the thing you have to get past. You have to be willing to give up a little bit of money to make more dollars per hour in your studio. And that way, all of the free time, you just save that 30 hours you can spend on other things in your life that could be wasting it if you want. And nothing wrong with that. If that's what you want to do with it, you're just not going to really push your business forward. What I do with that extra time and what I'm sure you do with your extra time when you start systemizing things, IL, is I have first of all built systems in my business to make things more efficient.

(00:55:53):

So that big checklist I built, I built a lot more of those to start getting rid of more of the non-creative tasks in running my business. So that's one thing. The second thing was actually building additional sources of income. So that's what has allowed me to make the from shit to gold course. If I didn't do this in my studio, I would've never had time to make a mixing course because I would've been too balls deep, for lack of a better term in my studio all day long with no time to actually do anything else. So I use that time wisely. I even built an entire extra six figure source of revenue from real estate on the side with that extra time spent. And I would've never again been able to build that up through Airbnb, be able to build that up if I didn't have that extra time because I had systemized my other business stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:56:36):

Well, I can tell you, I actually just hired personal assistant, dude.

Speaker 3 (00:56:42):

Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:56:42):

This week. Hell yeah. I finally did it. And I have had a studio assistant before, and for all the reasons that you just said, it made it possible for me to move on to the next phase of my life, which is now. But now things are so crazy with URM that I can't work on anything else and I can't even do everything I need to do for URM. So there's a bunch of stuff, man, that I do for URM that I don't need to do. I don't need to handle logistics, I don't need to install fast tracks, stuff like that. Why? I mean, sure, I know how to travel well and I make sure that we always travel great, but I can easily train someone to know what to look for and make sure that we're always taken care of. So yeah, I got an assistant and this assistant is going to do every non high level thing that I do in my life. They're going to do all of it so that I can focus a hundred percent of my energy on making URM better working on my beard oil company and hey, just getting some of my life back.

Speaker 3 (00:57:53):

Amen to that.

Speaker 2 (00:57:54):

Yeah, that right there is a big one.

Speaker 3 (00:57:57):

That's one for me is like, okay, it sounds like maybe I'm like, I don't necessarily agree with the whole hustle, hustle, hustle till you die type lifestyle. Although my sign off on videos and emails is happy hustling to me, I consider that a full phrase, happy hustling. Not I'm saying happy hustling to me is I work from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM at 5:00 PM I do something else. I play video games sometimes, or I go hang out with friends or I spend time with my girlfriend on the weekends. I don't fucking work. I watch football on Sundays. I'll watch all day long. I'll have NFL red zone on Sundays and I just veg out. I'll spend the whole day with my girlfriend on Saturdays. I have a life outside of my business and I want that for other people. That doesn't mean you can't just dick around and that happen.

(00:58:45):

You have to be able to sacrifice a little bit on the short term to get to that left level. But I want, I'm hoping people somewhere, even if it's just one guy in the entire audience listening right now, all four people because that's how many people care about me. No, however many people are listening. If there's one person that sees this new opportunity open up in front of them, that is like, okay, the studio is not necessarily the end game. The studio could just be a means to an end. It could be that your studio is something you build up in order to get to that next level and you're constantly stair stepping to new things. I've basically done that my whole life. I was in high school, I skipped college, and I went toward a band and I stepped the band to start my studio, and I was able to leverage my band's name to start my studio up.

(00:59:27):

And then I used my studio and built that up and use that income to invest in other areas like real estate and to build out my course and to now the six figure ounce studio. And now I'm using that to even further push into the real estate world because that's where money can be made. And so I'm hoping that somebody sees that you don't necessarily have to just hustle your ass off working for dollars for hours your entire life when there's a whole other world out there that you can get opened up to you by using your studio. I don't want this to sound like some fucking get rich quick bullshit that you're like, start your studio and live on the beach and the rest of your life is happy. No, I'll probably never retire and I don't plan to. But I do want people to see that there are a ton of options with what you can do out there. And by taking some of the non-creative tasks, hiring an assistant like EL has done here with your, is it in person or is it a virtual assistant?

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):

Well, it's virtual, but I just found out that the person is in Atlanta and I live in Atlanta, so there will be some in-person

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):

Stuff too, picking up my dry cleaning and shit. I need a person here. But yeah, taking somebody and leveraging their time and abilities to then free up more time in your life to do bigger and better things. Because if you're only making 20 bucks an hour right now, there's less things you can outsource than someone like me or you or anyone else that's at the level that we're at. We probably have more freedom to outsource things compared to someone who's making 20 bucks an hour in their studio. But there are still tasks that you can outsource for less than 20 bucks an hour. And when you hire someone,

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):

Absolutely,

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):

When you hire someone to do those tasks for less than 20 bucks an hour, you are then freed up to use that time in other areas where you're earning, hopefully you're 20 bucks an hour and you're hopefully earning a little bit on top of what you're hiring that workout for. So what I tell people is, if you're making 20 bucks an hour, hire out drum editing for 10 bucks an hour to some kid that's new at it, you've trained him up, you've given him a system to follow. So he follows your system, and if he follows your system from point A to point B, he'll get it done. And again, I have a free YouTube tutorial for editing drums on YouTube that you can look up. It's in pro tools if you work on pro tools. But you can hire somebody and say you're getting for that drum edit, you're getting a total of on average, say 20 bucks an hour or even 15 bucks an hour, and you hire your guy out for 10 bucks an hour, you're making five bucks an hour for every hour that guy works, plus you're making your 20 bucks an hour on the other projects you're now free to work on.

(01:01:55):

And you do that enough times, you'll get your base hourly worth up and up and up. And that opens up more and more opportunities to start outsourcing work.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):

Absolutely. And I think something that you touched on earlier needs to be emphasized, which is that you do really need to be willing to take a little bit of a hit. So for instance, and this is all relative, so yeah, you're right. If you only make 10, I mean 20 an hour, yeah, you might need to pay 15 or 10, but I'm going to be paying well over a thousand dollars a month for this closer to two. And that's not nothing. I mean, to some people it might be nothing, but it's not nothing. It's definitely a significant amount. And what I see is that that time hourly is worth more than that amount of money already. And it's exactly what you said. This will free me to generate way more than $2,000 a month after probably just one month. I'll probably be able to have created something or optimized something that will have made that money back, and it's all scales. So maybe you're not ready to pay $2,000 a month for an assistant. Maybe you're only ready to do $200 a month for, or

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):

Even project by project

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):

Or even project by project. It will the moment you actually use that extra time wisely, it's amazing what you can get done once you have that freedom if you really focus on it. So yeah, dude, Brian, thank you for coming on.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):

Yeah, so if you are attending the URM Summit, which that's

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):

Right,

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):

Is this sold out now? Are people still

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):

It's sold? No, no, no, it's finalized.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):

Okay. So if you miss the but on, that sucks to suck. But for those of you who are coming and you're thinking like, how the hell do, will I get my first a hundred dollars a month? Well, there's URM summit, there's a lot of people, good people talking, but I'll be talking about how to ramp up your income to go from hobbyist to full-time, and then you can start taking into account what we just talked about, which was increasing your dollar per hour worth through outsourcing and leveraging. So hopefully I see a lot of you, or I guess a chunk of you at that URM summit where we'll be talking about that. But yeah, for anyone else wants any other info about any of this stuff, I'll make a website or a web page if that's okay with you. Can I,

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):

Yeah, of

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):

Course. Send 'em to six figure home studio.com/urm. I'll throw a couple of things up on there. One of the things I think will be helpful is a rate sheet I've been

(01:04:25):

Starting to give away as a rate sheet is like, how do you compare on your rates that you're charging for your services compared to what I'm telling you or what other people are charging? So I put up a whole bunch of services on there and I section them for prices you should be charging as a beginner, as an intermediate, and as an expert. And then I also have, I've talked about it before, but the five rules of free work. If you're doing free work, I give you five rules to follow on there. So that sheet will be on that page. And is there anything else we talked about that I could throw on that page that would be helpful for listeners?

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):

Let me just say something about free work.

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):

You should do free work, but you should take care not to get screwed,

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):

Which

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):

Is something that can often happen. So whatever your five rules are, I'm sure they're great, and I'm sure they cover that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:10):

It takes that into account for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):

Well, because you really do need to do free work and people do free work at all levels. Even top dudes sometimes have to do something for free, not something that ever really goes away. Sometimes unless you're Han Zimmer or something. There's pretty much always going to be something that you need to prove to somebody or a favor you need to do or whatever. So start early, start doing free work early, but do it right so that you don't end up hating yourself for life.

Speaker 3 (01:05:43):

I was talking about this on my Brian's brain thing, but that is like if you struggle to get people to pay, you try to get free work. If you struggle to get people to even give you free work, then work on your fucking craft. Because if you can't even get people to give you free work to do, then that's a really good sign that you are not ready to even get paid work. So start working on your craft improving, and that's where people nail the mix come in to kind of help with that

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):

Hopefully.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):

So I'll also add on the URM page, that's six figure home studio.com/urm. I'll throw a pack I released recently, which is a five song mix pack. So it's five songs that I've recorded myself in my studio, different bands, and they all gave me permission to let people download it for free. They can mix it for mixing practice, and then if you want like the way the mix turns out, just throw it on your portfolio and that's all 100% free. So you can download that and start mixing those songs and throw it up on your portfolio today. I've had people mix it within a couple hours of me releasing it and send me their mixes on it. And some of 'em are pretty good,

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):

Probably because they took speed mixing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):

There you go. Exactly. So yeah, if that's something,

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):

See it all works together.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):

So that'll be on that page if you wanted that. Maybe if I can find anything else that I think will be helpful to the listeners, I'll throw that up there as well.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):

Great. Thank you. You're helpful as always.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):

And if you want any more info about the business world, the Six Figure Home Studio podcast is out and on iTunes and everywhere else. Podcast is fine found now. So I'm on there with

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):

My, you can find it in the show notes too. We're going to have links to all things Brian in the show notes.

Speaker 3 (01:07:13):

Dude, you're the best.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):

So dude, can't wait to hang out in December.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):

Heck yes, me too.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):

Should be fun. Cool,

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):

Sick. The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is brought to you by the 2017 URM Summit, a once in a lifetime chance to spend four days with the next generation of audio professionals and special guests, including Andrew Wade, Kane Chico, Billy Decker, fluff, Brian Hood, and many more. The inspiration, ideas, and friendship you'll get here are the things that you'll look back on as inflection points in your life. Learn [email protected]. To get in touch with the URM podcast, visit urm.com/podcast and subscribe today.