Kickstarter, Marketing, And Networking: How To Help Your Clients Succeed - Chris Greenwood

Brian Hood (0:29)

And I'm also here with our guest, Mr. Chris Greenwood. I've got two Chris's here. Chris Greenwood, how you doing today, Chris?

Chris Greenwood (0:35)

Doing absolutely incredible, my friend.

Brian Hood (0:38)

For those who don't know, Chris Greenwood, he's an artist who goes by the name Manafast, and he runs a website called Smart Music Business, smartmusicbusiness.com.

And Chris, his entire platform is essentially what the 6 Figure Home Studio is, except for musicians. So we teach recording studios how to run their businesses. Chris teaches musicians how to run their business as well. And so our hope today was to bring Chris on to the podcast to help give us some ideas of how we can help artists develop. And the whole thought process behind this is this.

As home studio owners, when our artists succeed, when the people that we produce succeed, we also succeed. And so if we can do anything in our power to help our clients succeed in their businesses, they're going to come back to us more. They're going to get our name out there more because our music that we recorded is out there being listened to. And that is going to do nothing but good things for our business. So Chris, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for taking the time here to chat with us.

Chris Greenwood (1:33)

Yeah, super stoked to be here, man. We're chatting like two weeks in a row here, so it's going to be great.

Brian Hood (1:37)

Yeah, so Chris was here in Nashville recently for a real estate event. Chris also is in the real estate. So he and I got to meet up down in Franklin, Tennessee for lunch, and it was awesome to see that. It's going to be weird. I got two Chris's here. When we interviewed Graham Cochran, we had two Grams basically.

I know. So I'm going to have to get used to this.

But Chris, before we started really rolling here, we started talking about the importance of networking to create contacts within the industry. And I would like you to kind of start there, and we can go from there when it comes to how we can help artists succeed in today's music industry.

Chris Greenwood (2:07)

Yeah. Well, first of all, I kind of want to give all you, you know, studio owners a little bit of a jab because you guys kind of got the better end of the deal here. And us artists, sure, we get all the glory in touring, but we're the ones who have to drive through the night and promote your songs. Well, you get to collect on the publishing and any points that you got. So I just want you to know you guys suck.

Brian Hood (2:28)

Well, hey, I actually, there's a lot of truth to that. Like when I started the studio in 2009, it was kind of after realization towards my last tour as a touring musician that the only people that really make money in the music industry, at least back in 2009, when I got started, the only really people that make it are the ones that are not making the music. So either producers make money, tour managers make money, our merch guy made more money than us. Labels tend to make money sometimes, maybe not back then. And booking agents make money, but not the musicians themselves because man, we weren't making much money back then.

Yeah.

Chris Greenwood (2:58)

It's crazy, man. But you know what? You know, I got to see the world and all that stuff and it was great. I used to just joke around with one of my producers. We went and toured Japan and I was trying to get him to come to Japan and he was like so focused on his craft. And you know what? It definitely paid off for him. Let's jump into that contacts thing like you're talking about. And you know, when we were talking even before then, I was just like thinking, okay, like how can a producer really, or engineer, you know, studio owner help artists?

And the first thing that came to my mind was contacts and your network. And maybe you've heard it before that your network equals your net worth. The more people you know, the more things that you can plug into.

And I remember when I was recording with one of my producers, obviously I wanted to work with him because he had results, he had hits already, you know? And so I knew, I was so confident that by working with him, I knew I would get a great song. Number one, I was so confident, like when I go to a dentist to get a cavity, I know I'm gonna get out of there with my cavity filled. Like that's how confident I was.