Graham Cochrane Teaches Us How One Free Source Of Marketing Can Change Your Business Forever

Brian Hood (0:29)

With my just plain beautiful guest, Graham Cochrane, how are you guys doing today? Let's start with you, Graham.

Graham Cochrane (0:38)

The real Graham?

Brian Hood (0:39)

The real Graham, the only Graham, yeah.

Graham Cochrane (0:42)

I'm doing great. I'm blushing over here.

Chris (0:45)

I'm also great. I'm pumped to be interviewing the actual most famous person with the name Graham in audio. I'm probably top five, though, so.

Brian Hood (0:56)

Well, I would be hard pressed to believe that any of our listeners have never heard of Graham Cochrane before, but if you have not heard of him before, he is the mastermind behind The Recording Revolution. He is one of the two guys in Dueling Mixes who's also in it with one of our good friends, Joe Gilder.

And he also has a new business platform that he launched somewhat recently in the last several months now, as far as I remember. It's just Graham Cochrane. You just go by your name with that.

So you're in a lot of different places. You're doing a lot of different things. And I can't think of a better entrepreneur to bring on this show. So we are excited to interview you today.

Graham Cochrane (1:28)

I'm excited to be here. I appreciate both of you bringing me on.

Chris (1:30)

Kind of on a personal note, I'm super pumped to have you on. When I first started really getting heavy into paid advertising, and we've emailed about this before, one of the channels that I ran ads for Chris Graham Mastering on was Recording Revolution.

And it was great. So much appreciated, man. And you're welcome.

Graham Cochrane (1:48)

You're welcome.

Yes, you're welcome. I'm welcome. I remember looking at my videos and seeing some of the ads. And usually there's a lot of generic ones. And then for whatever reason, I would see a lot of Tai Lopez ads. Maybe it's because I'm into passive income and stuff. But then I would see this guy named Chris Graham. I was like, that's strange. Mastering engineer with my name, but in the wrong place.

But I thought it was really well executed. And I hope it was successful for you.

Chris (2:11)

Well, thanks, man. I definitely at least once a month get an email from someone that says, man, I just love your tutorial videos on YouTube. And I'm always like, oh, thank you so much.

Let me show you who that actually is. I could see the confusion there.

Graham Cochrane (2:25)

Just smile and say thank you.

Brian Hood (2:28)

So, Graham Cochrane is by far above and beyond anyone else that I know the master of content marketing. And this is something that we've brought up on the show before. We actually talked about it on episode 42, which is part one on how to find more clients for your studio. We talked briefly about content marketing as being a viable path for a lot of studios. I've seen studios successfully implement this content marketing strategy in their businesses and get clients that way. One of my friends, Mark Eckert does this with his ebook, the Indie Pop Cookbook.

And Graham has a very successful business related to content marketing. And I think he could definitely shed some light on the pros and cons of content marketing, the struggles of it, and really the key to making it work. Because I think anyone that's ever tried to do content marketing on a high level, they know it's not easy. It is very difficult to both maintain and gain any traction in.

So I think a good place to start would be giving us a look into how you first found that content marketing was the key to making it work for you. How you first stumbled into that and kind of just go from there.

Graham Cochrane (3:35)

Yeah, I didn't know it was called content marketing when I started. I didn't really know anything about business when I started. I had been freelancing for a long time, so I understood that. I've been doing that since I was in my freshman dorm room in college.

The content started out of a need for more clients. So it makes perfect sense when you brought it up. But I had always been freelancing as my side gig. It was nights, weekends, extra money, and then I had a day job.

And then it was during the recession in 2009 when we moved from Virginia to Florida and we bought our first house, had our first baby, and then I lost my new job.

And it was hard to get jobs. I was either overqualified for just basic jobs or there were no jobs. It was just a really rough time. And so in the meantime, I was just doing freelance work and it wasn't enough to pay all the bills. My wife's a photographer, so she was trying to get some gigs and I was trying to get some gigs. And I was like, I need to get more gigs.