Winning The Sustainability Wars: Three Crucial Ingredients For A Sustainable, Long-Term Career

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast, Episode 77

SPEAKER_3 (0:07)

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

Brian Hood (0:19)

Welcome back to another episode of the 6 Figure Home Studio Podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood, and I'm here with my bald and beautiful and purple-shaded co-host, Chris Graham. How are you doing, Chris?

Chris Graham (0:29)

My purple-shirted? Is that what you just said?

Brian Hood (0:31)

Yeah, I mean, you always wear a purple shirt, so I just call you my bald and beautiful purple-shirted co-host now.

Chris Graham (0:36)

Gotcha. You want to spread those words out. Purple-shirted.

Brian Hood (0:39)

Yeah, I realized I slurred, and I was like, should I go back and re-record that? Nah, I'm good.

Chris Graham (0:43)

It sounded like I made a mess in my pants. My purple-shirted.

Yeah, man, I'm good. How are you, Brian?

Brian Hood (0:52)

I'm fine, dude. Just trying to, I don't know.

Chris Graham (0:55)

Come up with some good pre-episode banter?

Brian Hood (0:57)

Yeah, no. I'm just trying to get through this intro so we can get to what this episode is actually about.

Chris Graham (1:02)

I'm with you.

Brian Hood (1:03)

Chris, what is new in your life?

Chris Graham (1:04)

Well, I accidentally went vegetarian a couple weeks ago.

Brian Hood (1:08)

How do you accidentally go vegetarian and why?

Chris Graham (1:10)

Well, I had not had meat in like two days, and I just kind of kept it up.

And it's been great. I feel amazing. I've lost a bunch of weight.

Brian Hood (1:19)

Well, if it works for you, man, go for it. I personally love eating at vegetarian restaurants, but I don't want to be vegetarian because I enjoy eating meat.

Chris Graham (1:26)

I was the same. And I really, really like eating vegetarian food. And it just sort of happened.

It's been really good.

Brian Hood (1:36)

Well, welcome back to another episode of the Vegetarian Podcast, where we talk about animal cruelty and how bad it is.

Chris Graham (1:42)

Yeah. All right, guys, let's go.

Brian Hood (1:43)

What are we talking about this week, Chris?

Chris Graham (1:47)

Well, I had a thought that I think would be good for us to talk about. You guys have heard of the Loudness Wars.

It's this idea that, you know, for a period of time, everyone was like, oh, make our song louder, make our song louder. And all the bands were coming up with records that were a little bit louder than the last record and so on and so forth until it all sounded like garbage. And it's interesting. I think there are a couple wars that have begun as the Loudness Wars have ended. And one of the things we talk about in this podcast that I think is fascinating is bigger studios, as we all know, many of them have gone out of business. There's been a transition to more of a home studio business model, or at least a more sustainable business model. And I think what's happening amongst us as a community of audio engineers is there's a new war that I'm going to call the Sustainability Wars.

And essentially what that means is that all of us are trying to work with awesome bands, and those of us that are able to create sustainable businesses and stay in business for the long haul have the best shot at two things. One, mastery, becoming absolutely incredible at our craft, and two, having an opportunity to work with a life-changing artist.

So the Sustainability Wars is what I want to call this, and that's what we're going to talk about in the episode today. How do you win in the Sustainability Wars?

Brian Hood (3:12)

Yeah, and I've talked about this on Facebook in regards to artists, and the example I've used before is the band Bring Me the Horizon. They were just like a local metalcore band in the UK. They weren't very good, in my opinion. They had gained a little bit of traction, but nothing major commercial.

But then they slowly evolved their sound until they finally landed on this unique style of rock that seems to have caught on. And if you're not into this genre, you probably haven't heard of them before. They're kind of like in the mainstream rock world. But they are an order of magnitude, 10, 20, 30 times larger than they ever were in their metal days.

And if they would not have stayed around long enough to reach that sound, they would have never experienced the explosive growth they've experienced as an artist. And I've seen this also in the studio world. People who show a lot of promise, they have a lot of early signs of success, but they end up burning out and just moving completely out of the industry before they've ever had a chance to really catch on and blow up as a producer or a mixer or a mastering engineer. And so really, this whole episode is just hopefully food for thought on how you can stay around long enough to start gaining traction and hopefully doing this full time for hopefully the rest of your life, if that's what you're into. But the last thing I want to see is people who have every single box ticked. They have every single thing they need to be successful, but they can't run the race long enough to make it.