Why You MIGHT Need To Advertise Your Studio

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast, episode 23

You're listening to the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast. The number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio.

Chris Graham (0:19)

Hey, welcome back to the 6 Figure Home Studio Podcast. I'm here with Brian Hood, Mr. 6 Figure Podcast Home Studio. What am I even talking about? I'm here with Brian Hood, Mr. 6 Figure Home Studio. And we were just talking, we had a guy that we know say something the other day, and it was, you don't need paid advertising.

I know this is an intense question. It's something I know a lot of you guys are thinking about.

Success, paid advertising, how do you get more clients, etc. And Brian had some pretty cool things to say. Brian, do I need paid advertising?

Brian Hood (0:56)

Okay, this question I think has two different camps. You'll have the camp of people that believes that word of mouth and word of mouth alone is the only legitimate way to run your studio or any service-based business at all. And then you have the other camps that believe wholeheartedly in paid advertising. And the majority of those people may rely heavily, if not fully, on paid advertising to fill up their pipeline of clients. And so, if you are not in either camp and you're not sure what that is, or if you're in one camp or the other, which one's right, which one's wrong? And I have an opinion.

This is not the gospel of business here, but I have opinion on this. And you and I were talking through text, and we started getting into such good conversation that we were just like, we just need to stop talking about this and just record it. And the opinion that I have on paid advertising for service-based businesses, specifically recording studios, is this.

Yes, it is fantastic if you can have a sustainable career solely off word-of-mouth advertising. That's how my career's been my entire life. However, does that mean you should not ever advertise your studio? And this is where I think that type of advice is potentially detrimental to studio owners. And here's why I think that.

Most home studio owners struggle with two different things. They struggle, one, with finding clients, which is the vast majority of any 6 Figure Home Studio subscriber or podcast listener. The vast majority of them struggle to keep their schedules full with paid work. And two, those who are already full time struggle to free up their schedule in order to have any sort of life.

And so what you'll tend to see is, in any service-based businesses, whether it's a dentist or whether it's a chiropractor or a doctor or a lawyer, anything where you're trading dollars for hours, and in the studio, that's the majority of the work that you take on is some sort of direct or indirect trading time for money. In those types of businesses, you're going to hit a ceiling if you have any sort of success. And so what you'll see is, these people like doctors, lawyers, dentists, recording studios, if they can get to that level where they're fully sustainable on word-of-mouth advertisements, it's because they've hit a ceiling in their businesses. They've hit a ceiling in their earnings, and they think that is it. They think, I can't take on any more work because I'm too busy. And if you go back and listen to the second episode of this podcast where I interview Chris Graham, this is where he hit his own wall, his own ceiling in his business. How many years ago, Chris? Five, 10 years ago?

Chris Graham (3:21)

10 years ago.

Brian Hood (3:22)

10 years ago. Yeah, listen to that episode for more details. But he hit the ceiling in his own business, and this is what the response is for most service-based businesses when they hit the ceiling. The response is, I'm going to just raise prices so I can earn more. And even that, while a smart move and something I would recommend anyone do when they hit that ceiling in their business, most people, when they start raising their prices, they're gonna hit a ceiling on their rates as well. There's only so much of a price that the market can bear, is what they say. What can your customers afford? And that number has a limited amount on it. There's a ceiling on what you can charge. So if there's a ceiling on your time, which there typically is, and there's a ceiling on what you can charge, then there's theoretically a ceiling on any service-based business, right?

And this is where we get to the conversation of should you do paid advertising or not. Because if you have a successful word of mouth business and you've hit that ceiling on both what you can charge and the time you can spend at your business, then of course you don't need paid advertising, right? Because you've already got more work than you can handle. And this is where we hit this pivotal moment of answering this question of do you need paid advertising?