How Mark Eckert Is Running A Thriving Pop Production Studio (Despite Being Stuck At Home)

Brian Hood (0:30)

At least the intro here. Today's episode is actually an interview I did last week with a very, very good friend of mine, Mark Eckert, who we interviewed back on episode 68

And back on episode 68, which is close to two years ago now, he was managing to get all of his clients from Instagram marketing. He was doing a lot of recurring payment projects, so where a client would pay him a set amount per month, and he would just produce songs on a consistent basis. And I checked in on Mark to see how his business is doing through the quarantine, and he said his business is good as ever. As a matter of fact, it's better than ever. And honestly, I'm not surprised. Just based on the interview we had with him on the previous podcast, a lot of his work is done remotely before all this, and his business was already set up to get clients online. In other words, strangers were already hiring him.

So I wanted to get him back on the podcast to see how he shifted his business through the quarantine, what he's doing right now to keep his business relevant. And we dive into a lot of things, things about how he's attracting clients right now, how he systemized every aspect of his business so he can deliver consistently good work, even when it's completely online. He talks about how he's hired people. And honestly, a lot of the stuff that we talk about today is very similar to the interview I did with Joe from the online recording studio a few weeks ago, except Mark is just generally working one-to-one with clients instead of hiring a bunch of engineers under him. So if Joe's interview was maybe a little over your head as far as something you could realistically achieve in a reasonable timeframe, I don't know how many people can hire on 30 audio engineers under them and keep them busy like Joe did. But if you're the type of person that you can't grasp doing what Joe is doing, then this interview with Mark is exactly what you need right now. His business is virus resistant. His business is flourishing right now in the COVID crisis. And once you've heard this interview, you'll understand absolutely why he is doing so well right now. So here is my interview with Mark Eckert.

Mark, first of all, how have you been since the last interview, my friend?

Mark Eckert (2:20)

Well, it's been two years. We've talked since then. We've caught up, I think, a couple of times since then.

Brian Hood (2:24)

No, we have. We talk all the time.

Our listeners have not.

Mark Eckert (2:27)

Oh, okay. All right. What's up, listeners? So yeah, no, life is Gucci as hell.

Business is good. Music's good.

Life is good. Everything's good.

Brian Hood (2:38)

That summation right there is why I actually wanted to get you on the podcast, because anyone listening right now this week, obviously, I mean, we've had a whole series on kind of virus-resistant business models.

Mark Eckert (2:48)

Coronavirus!

Brian Hood (2:50)

Yeah, and so there are a lot of studios that are struggling right now, and Mark's is not one of those studios. You're a fortunate position where you have set your business up from the get-go to be essentially recession-resistant and virus-resistant. So even if people are listening to this episode way later and the coronavirus is long gone and hopefully not forgotten about, this is still gonna be a relevant interview because we're gonna talk a lot about how Mark has his business set up so that it is running like a well-oiled machine through all of this crap that's going on. Where some studios have lost all of their work, Mark is still going strong. And how would you say, first of all, has the coronavirus affected your income with your studio in any negative way, a positive way? Have you seen any change before we get into the details here?

Mark Eckert (3:33)

We've actually been scaling from every aspect of the business. So everything has been growing.

Brian Hood (3:38)

Good, good, good. So first of all, if you weren't familiar with Mark, go back to episode number 68, where we interviewed him the first time. The episode title was, Using Instagram Marketing to Build Recurring Income as a Music Producer with Mark Eckert. And there was two fabulous things that we talked about in that episode. First of all, was just using Instagram marketing in general to find clients.

Really relevant right now in this climate. So go back and listen to that episode. The second thing was the stability of recurring income as a business. Is that still your main form of income is recurring? Or are you more off 1F projects now?