How To Choose a Profitable Niche For Your Studio

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast, episode 12

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

Welcome back to yet another episode of the 6 Figure Home Studio Podcast, where we come on once a week to help you with your recording studio business.

Today's topic is something that is near and dear to my heart. And it's near and dear to my heart because it's something that I kind of stumbled into without really knowing what I was doing. See, in my studio, 456 Recordings, I have been recording, mixing, mastering. I've done it all in the heavy music niche. I did not niche down by service like my podcast co-host Chris, but I've niched down by genre. And I've even moved down further to niche down to mixing and mastering in heavy music. This has been a niche that I've been a part of since high school. I don't know how I got into it. I just fell into it. I toured in a metal band for a number of years. I've traveled around the world in 44 states in the US, eight countries around the world on tour. And I've built a lot of relationships up over the years doing that. So when I started recording bands, it was a natural niche for me to fall into. You, as the listener, you may not have that same story. You may not have that same background where you just fall into a specific niche naturally. And so if you are currently struggling to figure out how you are supposed to niche down, to choose your niche, to find your happy place, as we call it, then this episode is going to be for you. So here is my conversation with Chris Graham.

Chris Graham (1:41)

Brian Hood.

Brian Hood (1:42)

Yes.

Chris Graham (1:42)

How are you today, sir?

Brian Hood (1:43)

I'm pretty good. It's a snow day here in Nashville. So the world has ended for all of the city, and I'm stuck in my house, and I had to resort to eating pancakes for lunch.

Chris Graham (1:52)

It's snow day in Columbus, Ohio as well. We have like eight, nine inches, and I had a snowball fight with my oldest son yesterday.

Brian Hood (2:00)

Oh, nice. No, we had three inches of snow, and it's over here. The city's gone.

Chris Graham (2:05)

That's amazing.

Question. I have noticed, as I have gotten into conversations about our podcast, and as we've gotten emails from people, podcast at thesixfigurehomestudio.com, and I would say probably the most common question we get is people wanting to know more about niching down. What does that mean, Brian? What is niching down?

Brian Hood (2:32)

So, niching down is focusing exclusively on one area. If you're to look at all the genres in the world and all the services you could offer for your studio, that's the entire ocean.

Niching down is like diving deep into one specific area and focusing only on that. If you can niche down, if you can cater to one specific audience or genre or service or location, if you can niche down in some way, shape, or form, you will ultimately do better. You'll make more money or you'll have a more successful career if you can do that effectively.

Chris Graham (3:02)

Yeah, I love that. And I think a good example, a proof of that, if you will, is if I try to name someone in audio who is successfully a jack of all trades. They do everything.

I don't think I can.

Brian Hood (3:19)

Honestly, we were talking about this before we started recording today, and I honestly, it doesn't matter what genre it is or what producer, whatever it is, I can't think of one single person that is a master of everything.

Chris Graham (3:28)

Yeah. So there's a great phrase that I love that I use all the time, and it's major in your majors, minor in your minors.

Brian Hood (3:36)

What do you mean by that?

Chris Graham (3:37)

It's this idea that we all have majors. We have things that we are just innately good at.

Brian Hood (3:43)

So like college, because I didn't go to college, I didn't have a major, or a minor. So speak to me when you're talking about this stuff.

Chris Graham (3:49)

Gotcha. Well, it's not a college thing. It's, you know, I am good at making puns.

Brian Hood (3:55)

Well, you're a dad. So you have to be.

Chris Graham (3:59)

Yeah, my pun skills are really good. My knock knock joke skills are not so good. So when I'm trying to make my kids laugh, I'm going to make a pun joke. I'm going to leave the knock knock jokes alone. So this idea of major in your majors, and minor in your minors is figuring out what are you not that good at.