Using Instagram Marketing To Build Recurring Income As A Music Producer - With Mark Eckert

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Home Studio Podcast, episode 68

SPEAKER_3 (0:07)

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.

Brian Hood (0:19)

Welcome back to another episode of the 6 Figure Home Studio Podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood. I'm here with my co-host, Chris Graham. Chris, how you doing today, buddy?

Chris Graham (0:27)

Oh, hey, guys. It's good to be here.

Brian Hood (0:30)

And I'm here with our guest today, Mr. Mark Eckert.

Mark Eckert (0:34)

How's it going?

Brian Hood (0:34)

Well, it's going great now because we have you on the podcast. Mark is an accomplished producer out of Charlotte, North Carolina. He's a dear friend of mine. I've known him for I don't even know how long I've known you now, Mark, but it seems like my whole life.

Mark Eckert (0:45)

Yeah, it's felt like a eternity for sure.

Brian Hood (0:48)

Too damn long.

Mark Eckert (0:49)

Too long.

Brian Hood (0:49)

Yeah. Yeah. And so we wanted to get you on the podcast today to talk about a few things that I think will be extraordinarily interesting to our audience.

It has to do with recurring income and it has to do with Instagram marketing. Mark has managed to build himself a recurring revenue studio, making thousands of dollars a month consistently with over two dozen people paying him recurring income every single month. These are pop artists that are paying him every single month to produce their music. And you find all these clients on Instagram. So I think this is going to be something very relevant to everyone listening today. But before we get into that today, I want to ask you sort of how you got your start in audio. I know that you started your musical career out basically. You went to Berkeley, right?

Your story with how you attended Berkeley is actually really interesting. Why don't you share with our audience how you attended Berkeley for, was it very cheap or free or something like that? You did something really scrappy that I think our listeners might enjoy listening to.

Mark Eckert (1:43)

When I was applying to schools, I didn't really give a shit about graduating or anything like that. My mom was in the music industry and her whole thing was just like building that work, building that work. So while everyone else was like, I'm going to go for four years, I was like, I'm going to get everybody's phone number. Like while everyone was drinking and doing drugs, you know, first couple of weeks, I was like, I'm going to go to every fucking room and meet every single person, get their phone number, become their best friend, become homies. So after about a year, my dad actually lost his job and where most people would, you know, times up, I'm screwed, blah, blah, blah. I was like, fuck it, I'm going to scrap it. And kind of just figured out that all of these teachers were essentially contractors of the school.

And I realized, like I ran the numbers of what my tuition was. My tuition for lessons, it turned out to be like $250 an hour, which is crazy. So I really just e-mailed all of them when I was back home in Charlotte. And I was like, hey, what's your hourly rate for teaching?

And they all messaged me back and it was like, you know, 50 to 70 or something like that.

And, you know, I would travel up like every other month or something. And it was funny because the way that Berkeley works, a lot of like conservatories is that you kind of work your way up to the more prominent teachers. So at Berkeley, you know, you had like incredible like household names of drummers or engineers or producers, and you couldn't get in the door with them until you were, you know, in your eighth semester or whatever. So when I was home and I messaged these guys and figured out their hourly rate, I was like, oh shit, I could actually get a better education by, you know, reaching out to these guys. Every other month, I'd fly up there, book a bunch of lessons. I would be self aware enough to know exactly what my problems were, and I would get lessons for those specific things. I'd go back to Charlotte, hustle for like the next two months. You know, I would be teaching drums or producing some random artists or playing musicals, whatever.

And then I would study everything that they were doing, and then I'd go back up for more lessons. And so, you know, whereas tuition now is like 70k or something, mine, it was like a thousand dollars every two months. It was great.