18 Quick Tips For Running (And Growing) A Successful Studio

Brian Hood (0:29)

Brian, Chris, how are you doing today, man?

Chris Graham (0:31)

I'm good. I'm excited to talk to you, but I'm feeling a little weird. I think our audience should know this. I have a three-year-old daughter who has the hots for Brian.

Brian Hood (0:41)

There's probably a better way of phrasing that.

Chris Graham (0:46)

Maybe some less accurate ways.

Brian Hood (0:49)

What is your evidence for this, Chris?

Chris Graham (0:51)

Okay, here's my evidence. We were getting ready to leave for NAMM a couple weeks ago, and I told Nora, as her name, I was like, you know, I'm gonna go spend a couple days with Brian out in California.

She says this all the time. She's like, I want to see pictures of Brian. I was like, okay. So we pull out Instagram and we're looking through, and she says, I want to see pictures of him in the coveys, which means like in bed.

And she's three. And I was like, oh my God.

Brian Hood (1:15)

Oh my gosh.

Chris Graham (1:17)

And then today I told her, again, I was like, yeah, I'm talking to Brian today, recording the podcast. And she said, I want to talk to Brian. And my wife said, well, what do you want to talk to him about? And she said, hearts.

Brian Hood (1:27)

Oh, she knows Valentine's Day is just around the corner. She's adorable. Well, you have the cutest daughter. It's only a little weird that she has a crush on me, but I am a taken man. I'm getting married in less than a month. Oh my God.

Then I'm going to be going away. And there may be the first gap in the podcast ever coming up around mid to late March. We'll see.

Chris Graham (1:46)

We'll see.

Brian Hood (1:47)

We'll see if we can get enough episodes in the bank before I leave.

Chris Graham (1:49)

Indeed.

Brian Hood (1:49)

All right, well, let's get into today's topic. What are we doing today, Chris?

Chris Graham (1:53)

What we're doing today is we're going to have a list of small, actionable tips, things that you can do to move your business forward immediately.

Some of you will know some of these. Some of you will know none of these. All of you will not know all of these.

Brian Hood (2:07)

That is an interesting way of putting it, but extremely accurate.

Chris Graham (2:10)

Our goal is that all of you walk away with at least one tip that's actionable, that can help you grow your recording studio business. And one of the cool things, Brian, I've had a lot of people reach out to me recently that are like, I don't have a recording studio, but I listen to your podcast religiously.

Why?

Brian Hood (2:26)

My fiancee is listening to the podcast, and she's never touched a preamp in her life or a compressor.

Chris Graham (2:31)

What's interesting about that is that business advice applies pretty much universally.

And so many of the tips we're going to give you guys today would work in many other businesses.

But one of the cool take homes with that is that there are people outside of our industry with business expertise that can help us in our industry. For whatever reason, we're resistant as a whole industry to just like, quote unquote, best practice. So anyways, let's dive right into it. We've got a bunch of tips. We're going to move pretty quick. And hopefully you hear at least one, maybe two, maybe three, that you're able to be like, oh, I'm going to start doing that today. Yes, business.

Brian Hood (3:09)

We want at least a couple of aha moments for each of our listeners today. So first one, and this is honestly a huge one. And if you can do this specific tip, I would venture to say that almost all of you will earn more money over the next 12 months if you can do this.

Chris Graham (3:25)

Maybe even the next month.

I'm excited about this section of tips because Brian is an expert at this stuff. We're talking about follow up. Brian knows more about follow up than anybody I've ever met in my life.

Brian Hood (3:36)

It's interesting because I'll give you a little stat in my business. About 40 to 50 percent of my income, depending on which section of time you're looking at, probably about 45 percent overall throughout my career, 40 to 50 percent of my income comes from follow up five or more.

And there's a number of reasons for this. I'm not going to dive into them right now.

Chris Graham (3:54)