The Three Awkward Client Conversations You Cannot Skip If You Want To Enjoy Your Career In Audio

Chris Graham (0:30)

right now, so I've been riding my bike a lot. How are you, sir?

Brian Hood (0:34)

Aw, you've remembered. I'm actually great. My little niece was born a couple days ago, so I got to spend some time with her. I'm officially an uncle now. Little Ella Rose Logan, that's my sister's baby.

Chris Graham (0:44)

That's a beautiful name. Yeah. I love it.

Brian Hood (0:46)

I'm extremely stoked to be an uncle now. But anyways, on to the episode, which is what people actually care about. This is a very important episode for you guys. And if you are listening and you're thinking, just based off the title, I don't know if I should listen to this episode, this is one of those, I'd say non-smorgasbord of advice episodes. This is one where every single one of these things is gonna apply to almost every person.

Chris Graham (1:08)

Yeah, that's true.

Brian Hood (1:09)

And it's that kind of episode. And so this is basically the three hard conversations you have to have with your clients in some way, shape, or form. It may have to adapt it a little bit, depending on what little niche you're in or what service you're offering. But these are really important things to cover with every one of your clients. And if you don't, it is going to be at your own peril. So this is kind of like a follow up, a part three of our Find More Clients series. That was episode 42, where we talked about lead generation, generating more leads for your studio. That's the first part of finding more clients.

Episode 43, where we talked about conversions, where we're talking about converting those leads into paying customers. And now we're on episode 44 This is basically about how you keep your customers.

Once you get a customer, how do you keep them for life? And part of it is having these three very important conversations with your client that really a lot of us may avoid, especially this first one here today.

Chris Graham (1:58)

Yeah, and not only is this about keeping those clients, it's also about keeping your sanity. It's also about not being successful and miserable. That's an important thing to think about.

You can be successful and miserable.

Brian Hood (2:11)

So true.

Chris Graham (2:12)

And not just in our industry. I mean, like this is a really common theme, kind of the funny illustration that a lot of people, a lot of business books use is when you climb to the top of the ladder and realize the ladder was leaning up against the wrong wall. These are things that you want to think about. Honestly, this is an 80-20 thing that we're doing.

As a studio owner, 20% of the causes of your frustration are going to create 80% of your frustration and misery of being a studio owner.

Brian Hood (2:39)

And not just misery and frustration, but conflict with your artists, with your clients, because this conflict can stem from the lack of having these conversations, the lack of things being communicated correctly, just because of that little 20% you missed, you lose out on a lot of clients coming back to you.

Chris Graham (2:55)

Yeah, totally. I would say if you run a home studio, if you record people for a living, you need to keep this in mind.

The producer's role is to keep things from getting in the way of making great art.

Brian Hood (3:07)

Wanna argue with that a little bit.

Chris Graham (3:09)

Do it.

Brian Hood (3:09)

I do not disagree with the producer's role being to keep things from getting in the way of making great art, but I think that's every person's role, whether you are a songwriter, or you're a mixing engineer, or a mastering engineer, every one of us has this responsibility, not just the producer's.

Chris Graham (3:25)

Yeah, a creator's role is to keep things from getting in the way of great art. I love that, I completely agree.

One tiny little asterisk that you need to keep in mind here is the idea of letting the market do the dirty work. These are hard conversations, but if you don't have any other clients and your client knows that, these conversations get exponentially harder.

Brian Hood (3:48)

Why is that?

Chris Graham (3:49)

Well, it gets easier when the client knows, hey, you're late, and the client's like, I don't care, because you have nothing else going on in your life.

Brian Hood (3:57)

What you're saying basically is they don't respect you in this scenario. Exactly. If there's no respect there, it is very much more difficult to have these conversations. So it's kind of one of those like chicken before the egg. You gain respect from having these hard conversations, but it's also hard to have these conversations if you don't have respect. So hopefully you can muster the courage to have these conversations if you are not respected by your artists.