Why Freelancers Are Vulnerable To "The Inbred Business Trap" (And What That Means For You)

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, Episode 273

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.

Hello, and welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Hood. And if this is the first time listening to the podcast, first of all, welcome, so glad to have you here. This podcast is for you if you are a creative, you offer freelance services, and you want to earn more money from your creative skills without selling your soul. If that sounds like you, you're in the right spot. If you're a returning listener or a returning viewer on YouTube, so glad to have you back. It means a lot to me that you keep coming back. I don't know why you do, but I'm happy that you do it. So anyways, the topic of the show today is gonna be something that I'm probably gonna get a little sassy about, and I apologize in advance. I just get this way when I'm really passionate about something, and sometimes I yell. My wife will joke, she'll say something like, my husband will never yell at me unless he is passionately trying to change my mind about something that is like a limiting belief or whatever. Like all the time, my wife won't have confidence in something she's doing, and I'm like yelling at her that she's amazing or whatever. This is me yelling at you that you are an amazing person, and I don't want you to fall into this trap. So take anything that I say today from the place of love and care for you, not the place of condemnation and finger wagging. I promise that's not the angle I'm trying to come at. I'm trying to come at this from the angle of, you were better than this and you deserve more. So the topic today is something that sounds a little counterintuitive. It's the subject of why you can't look to the top 1% of people in your industry for how you should run your business, which sounds utterly insane.

But I see this again and again and again and again, and it hurts so many freelancers, especially freelancers in the creative space. And here's what I mean. When you look at the top 1% of people in your industry for how you should run a business, there's certain things that those people do exceptionally well, which is obviously why they're the top 1% in the industry. The industries that I serve are photographers, videographers, graphic designers, illustrators, music producers, audio engineers, mixing engineers, master engineers, like all people in that vein of the world. And I've seen it in every single one of those, every single one of those, without fail. Even within those industries, there's even sub niches where everyone falls into this exact same trap. They look to that one to two huge names in their industry, and they say, I'm gonna do it how they do it. And then anytime something comes up that is something you should do in your business that is proven to be a thing that is great for your business, you'll look at me straight in the eyes, and you will say, well, that's just not how we do it in our industry.

This is how we get what I call inbred businesses.

Maybe I'll eventually retire that phrase. I've used it a few times. And as an Alabama native, maybe I'm allowed to make that joke, I don't know. But an inbred business is basically when you just look to your immediate gene pool for how to run your business, and you get no outside input for diversifying those genetics, right? So I'm gonna show some actual examples today. I'll even screen share for our YouTube viewers, and I'll just describe what I'm showing you if you're listening on audio. You'll be able to still follow along today. But you'll see how everyone looks the same. Everyone is homogenous, generic, and then it ultimately leads to horrible results for that person who's trying to mimic the top 1%. And the reason the top 1% can't be looked to for how to run a successful business is because the top 1% are successful despite their best efforts of fucking things up. Let me explain, because this is counterintuitive. It shouldn't make sense, but the top 1% are masters at something. They are masters at getting the perfect photograph, masters at getting that amazing performance out of the band, masters at videography, cinematography, whatever. But they are not masters at digital marketing. They are not masters at lead generation. They are not masters at systemization, delegation, automation. But the industry as a whole still looks to those people for how they should do all of these things. And what that leads to is terrible results for you and your business.