How Free Work Fits Into A Healthy Audio Business

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast, Episode 141

SPEAKER_2 (0:04)

You're listening to the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast. The number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio.

Now your hosts, Ryan Hood and Chris Graham.

Brian Hood (0:20)

Welcome back to another episode of the 6 Figure Home Studio Podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood. I am not here with my big, bald, beautiful co-host, Christopher J. Graham. He is not with us this week, so I am doing another solo episode. This is going to be a pretty short one and straight to the point. And the goal here is to answer a question that is a pretty common question amongst a lot of our listeners right now, especially through this COVID stuff that we're going through with so many studios struggling, so many people struggling to make ends meet, so many of your potential clients struggling to make ends meet, so many studios struggling to make ends meet. And that is on the topic of free work.

Should you do it or should you not do it? When does it make sense to do it? When does it not make sense to do it? And since you know how I do things here, I'm straight into the point. If I don't have Chris, my co-host here today, there is no pre-show banter. There is no personality going on. There is no humor with me. I'm straight into the point. I am a machine. I don't do anything to get off topic, to get off point. All I want to do is get shit done, shove information down your throat, whether you like it or not. And without Chris here to ease the tension, you're just going to get my super type A, Enneagram 8 personality telling you how it is without any of the lovable, pun-filled side that is Chris Graham. So without further delay, let's just get into the topic today. Should you do free work?

It's pretty easy question to answer, right? It's just a yes or no, right?

Wrong, no, there is no straight answer to this.

And I see advice all over the place on the internet. I've seen big name people shitting all over free work. It is a waste of time. You should never do free work. You are too valuable to do this.

And I see people that are on the exact opposite perspective. People who are also big names, Grammy winners, household names in the production world, saying that they got their start doing free work. You should always be humble and be willing to do free work if it means getting your foot in the door. So what's the right answer? Actually, our own co-host, Christopher J. Graham, who's not here with us today, I mean, he's here with us on Earth. He's just not with us on the podcast. He's still alive. His lead magnet, his source of work comes from doing free work. And if you listen to this podcast, you know what I'm talking about. If not, I'll explain that in a minute. So what's the right answer here? Well, I'm just gonna go through my thoughts on free work, and you can take this advice buffet episode and apply it to your own businesses. But I feel like with so many studios struggling right now, the topic of free work has come up more and more and more in my own group coaching calls with the profitable producer course students, in emails, in our Facebook community. And so I wanna take a full episode and just address it here, or at least this little short episode, and address it here.

So let's talk about the two main types of free work. There's the free work that people like Chris Graham does, where he's doing a free test master for his clients, so they can hear what the work would sound like if they hired him for the full project.

And then there's free projects. That's where you're doing an entire project, either a full single or more, for free, as basically what's called spec work, meaning you are hoping to get paid in the future, or you're hoping that that band will refer people to you, or you're hoping that some other good thing will come after the fact, so you're willing to do the work for free now.

So I'm gonna talk about these two things and these two types of work. They both serve different purposes, and I wanna talk about those right now. So let's talk about your goal first. What is the goal behind free work?

Because depending on what your goal is, it's going to determine which approach is right for you, and if either is appropriate for you at all. So there are a few main things that people look for when it comes to doing free work. The thing I'm gonna cover first is attracting leads, getting someone to fill out a form, or getting someone to show interest in your work, have a conversation, and so they use it as basically a lead magnet. If anyone listens to this podcast for any amount of time, or if they go to the sixfigurehomestudio.com, or they've seen any of my Facebook ads, a lead magnet is just a thing that helps your ideal customer give over their name and email address in order to be brought over into your world as a business. While these can be things like PDFs or webinars or eBooks or live workshops, these can be any number of things.