The Journey From His Parent's Basement, To Depression, To A Six Figure Home Studio - Brian Hood

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Home Studio Podcast, Episode 3

SPEAKER_2 (0:03)

You're listening to the 6 Figure Home Studio Podcast, the number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio. Now your hosts, Brian Hood and Chris Graham.

Chris Graham (0:19)

Hello and welcome to the 6 Figure Home Studio. I am Chris Graham, and today, I get the honor of interviewing Mr. 6 Figure Home Studio himself, Brian Hood.

Now, Brian is a super interesting guy, and the reason I accepted when he offered, hey, do you want to co-host this podcast with me, was because I knew first and foremost it'd be fun. Secondly, it'd be interesting. And third and most importantly, I knew I would learn a ton from Brian. And here's the thing I already have. Just working on this podcast, it's been incredible as he's offered me advice for my mastering business on how I can do better, serve more people, have better customer satisfaction, and just generally be a badass like Brian Hood. So anyways, welcome to the 6 Figure Home Studio Podcast. Without further ado, my interview with Brian Hood.

Well, hey man, I am really excited to hear your story and to hear more about how Brian Hood, how you became the 6 Figure Home Studio guy, and what that journey looked like. What's your studio story? Where does it start as far as you getting into audio?

Brian Hood (1:25)

Yeah, so my story is, basically starts in high school, my 11th grade year when I thought, what am I gonna do for the rest of my life? What is it that I'm gonna do in the future? I had no direction, no purpose that I was going towards. And then I was thinking, I like music. Okay, cool, awesome. What am I gonna do?

Studio sounds cool. I think I might like to run a studio one day. So I kind of had a vision for it early on in my life, in high school of all places.

And it was to the point where I wasn't even gonna go to college. I didn't apply for college. I didn't get good grades in high school. I think I had a 2.8, 2.9 GPA. For those of you who are familiar with the ACT, I got a 19 out of 36 on my ACT. So just below average in everything.

And instead of that, I started touring. So that was where I kind of developed my ear for music. And from there, it was a lot of learning the basics of running a business in a band.

A lot of people, they start bands, they wonder why they can't get traction, and they don't realize that it's actually a business. Very much like a studio, it's very much a business. So if your band just wants to do the creative fun parts of being in a band, you're not gonna make it, period. And I've seen people complaining about this recently about how they couldn't get a leg up.

I think this, if you're gonna be in a band that's successful, you need at least one person in that band that can run it like a business. I was that person in my band, so I learned a lot about turning a creative act, something that was a hobby at once, and turn it into a profitable endeavor. So the band was never that profitable. We did make money, and I was able to save up some money in that band. But then I rolled that money into, from years and years of tour, putting out, we got signed, we toured 44 states and eight countries, and I managed to save $6,000 at the end of the band to start my studio. And that's how I kind of rolled all of that into stepping up into a new world of audio.

Chris Graham (3:17)

Well, one of the things I like about you, man, is you are a passionate self-educator.

And you've mentioned this before. Tell us a little bit about how you got into that band, how you went from just a dude to suddenly a musician to suddenly in a band.

Brian Hood (3:33)

Yeah, that's actually a really good question. I get obsessive about things. So like if I find what I consider like my calling in life, or at least at that season of my life, I get obsessive about learning as much as I can about that. We talked about that in early episodes. I'm not gonna dwell on that too much.

But when it came to drums, I actually wasn't a drummer when I bought my drum set. I was playing bass in a band. I didn't have any bass gear.