Social Skills: If You Don't Get This Right, Your Home Studio May Pay The Price

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast, Episode 14

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

Chris (0:19)

So on our last episode, we interviewed Billy Decker and it was really fun. It was really, really educational for us. For me, it was, you know, frankly, one of the reasons we wanted to do this podcast was it's an excuse for us to reach out to amazing people and get them to mentor us as they mentor you for a good hour or two. There was one thing in particular that Billy Decker said that blew our minds. And you don't have to have listened to that episode for this episode to make sense. We're going to go off one quote. You know, we asked him about his business and he said he was talking about social skills and how he loves on people well and treats them with kindness. And what he ended up saying that was so shocking was we asked him, you know, how much of your business would you say is social skills? And he said, 98 percent. This guy has 13 number one hits, maybe 14 as of this week. And social skills are 98 percent of his secret to success.

How many of us as audio engineers, you know, we're notorious as a group for not having social skills. How shocking is that to hear someone at the top of his game that's internationally renowned for being amazing at this stuff that says social skills are 98 percent of his business. So our episode today is going to be about social skills as an essential part of your business. It's probably the most undervalued skill you can have as a business owner.

Social skills are without a doubt a multiplier. And no matter how good you are at audio, no matter how good of an engineer you are, no matter how good of a musician you are, in the absence of social skills, you will likely not have a six-figure home studio. So here's my conversation today with Brian Hood.

So me and Brian were talking about what Billy Decker said about social skills before we started recording today. And we learned about something we have in common, and that is when we were both producing, that we thought being a good producer meant having really excellent criticism for our artists. So I, in a much younger portion of my life, was a pole vaulter.

Brian Hood (2:36)

What?

Chris (2:36)

And I used to pole vault.

Brian Hood (2:39)

Literally pole vault?

Chris (2:40)

Yes, you run as fast as you can with a 14-foot pole.

Brian Hood (2:42)

This is new to me.

Chris (2:43)

Jam it in the ground and try to jump up on top of it. And it's fun.

Brian Hood (2:46)

And try not to ring your nuts.

Chris (2:48)

Yes, you have to be not sane to do it because it's very dangerous. Anyways, so I was a pretty intense guy. So a common production technique for me was I would record somebody, they do a chorus, and I would say, that sucked.

Get back in there. You can do better than that.

Brian Hood (3:05)

Anyone who has ever recorded with me right now is listening to you saying, that sounds exactly like Brian Hood. I used to say that exact line 10 times a day, if not more. This is how I approached my communications with artists in the studio. Basically, they would do a take.

I would immediately tell them that that was the worst thing I ever heard in my life, and to do it again.

And I would like halfway be joking. I would have a smile on my face, so that they would take it lightly. And most of the time they did. But at the core, I really meant it. I would be like, that was awful.

I was not a good person back then. I wasn't good at communicating. I wasn't good at telling people, supporting them in the studio and making them feel comfortable. It was very much like, I want perfection out of you. It was out of love for wanting them to create good music and have good takes. It was coming from a good place, but it was absolutely toxic for anyone that recorded with me.

Chris (3:58)

Oh, ditto, same. So funny story, I'm married to a wonderful woman named Allison, and she has one of the best singing voices I've ever heard. She's phenomenal, but we don't do anything with it. We have a family and hang out with our kids pretty much. When we first got engaged, she wrote a song for me, and we went to the studio and recorded it, and I'll never forget, this was sort of like a perfect example of my complete lack of social graces in the studio. She recorded the first take, and I don't remember what I said, but I communicated, let's try that again, and she burst into tears.