The 4 Personal Bottlenecks Holding Your Business Back From Earning 6 Figures

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, episode 188

Welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place. Welcome back to another episode of the 6 Figure Creative Podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood. I'm here with my big, bald, beautiful, kind of smirking podcast today with no mustache, thank God, Christopher J.

Christopher Graham (0:32)

Graham.

Brian Hood (0:33)

Good to see you, my dude.

Christopher Graham (0:33)

It's good to see you too, man. How are you?

Brian Hood (0:35)

Dude, I'm so good. And here's the reason why. It's because we have done 188 episodes on this podcast. And except for the episodes that I wasn't on because of my honeymoon, these just absolute shit headphones that were $19 have been with me for every episode. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see how cheap these are.

Christopher Graham (0:52)

Get them away from the screen.

Brian Hood (0:54)

Yeah, they're disgusting.

Christopher Graham (0:55)

There's a hair.

Brian Hood (0:57)

And yeah, I'm so happy that they're still alive, and I've been using them in every episode, because I know you are such a huge headphone fiend that I feel like you've lost respect for me for these headphones.

Christopher Graham (1:06)

The hilarious irony of this is I get to pitch an affiliate link here. This is pretty exciting for me.

Brian Hood (1:13)

Oh, God, no.

Christopher Graham (1:14)

On the flip side of the coin, I'm over here recording this podcast with a $3,000 pair of headphones.

There's this company called Odyssey that makes ridiculously awesome headphones that I now use as a professional audio person. And they have a whole series called the LCD series.

Brian Hood (1:35)

That way when I burp into the microphone, you can feel every aching sound.

Christopher Graham (1:39)

You can, but it's hilarious. So they sent me a bunch of pairs of headphones as part of this. And if you want to get a nice little discount...

Brian Hood (1:47)

This is really... You're going to pitch $3,000... I mean, I'm wearing $19 headphones, and I'm perfectly... I can hear you just fine, Chris.

Christopher Graham (1:56)

I can switch it up. I'll put on these other $1,200 headphones that they make.

What?

Brian Hood (2:01)

You got two pair of headphones. This is why you watch on YouTube, because Chris Graham looks like a big old idiot right now.

You're wearing $5,000 of headphones on your head right now.

Christopher Graham (2:12)

But it sounds great, and I get stereo surround sound when I put them on my forehead like this. But yeah, the LCD series, my God.

Brian Hood (2:20)

If anyone in our audience spends $3,000 on headphones, I'm going to backhand you unless you are using them for some professional thing that is actually making you way more money than that. That's the only excuse you have.

Christopher Graham (2:29)

Case in point, I'm going to take these off, the other pair off.

Brian Hood (2:34)

I'm so disappointed in myself for bringing this up.

Christopher Graham (2:36)

I know, you walked right into it. I was like, we're just talking about headphones. I was like, okay, Brian. But the nice thing about these, and there's actually some businessy content here.

Brian Hood (2:46)

Oh yeah, okay, let's go, yeah.

Christopher Graham (2:48)

Because as a mastering engineer, owning a mastering business, Kyle, my assistant, works with me on that business, or at least did up until today.

Brian Hood (2:59)

He graduated.

Christopher Graham (3:00)

He graduated and he's moving off on his own.

Brian Hood (3:03)

So he finally quit and said, he did the half-baked quit scene where it's like, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, I'm out.

Christopher Graham (3:11)

Yesterday was his last day, and he got on Zoom at like 10 o'clock at night, and we just chatted for three hours into the threshold of him no longer working for me. And it was so nice. But when he was helping me with mastering stuff, he has the same pair of headphones I have. I also have the LCDXs.

And so he would hear exactly the same thing that I would hear and at a high enough resolution that we could actually do our job remotely. It was freaking awesome. It was so cool.

Brian Hood (3:45)

Kyle is actually on episode 167 where we interviewed both of our assistants.

Episode title, How to Hire an Incredible Assistant Who Will Transform Your Business. So Kyle was in that episode, and James, my past and current and hopefully future assistant, was in that episode. I would like to say, I'm to blame for you losing two people now, Chris. Partially to blame, at least. Brian Skill is one of my coaching clients for marketing. And then Kyle is in my bootcamp right now for the Accountability Accelerator Bootcamp for Profitable Producer Corps students.