Home Studio Hustle Podcast

his is the Home Studio Hustle Podcast number 8 - Options: The Creativity Killers.   Hello Hustlers and welcome to the show I’m Mike Brown and today we’re going to be talking about how Options kill creativity.   After a long episode last week I’m going to try to keep this one a bit shorter!

Get X-Mouse: https://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/xmousebuttoncontrol.htm   This is the Home Studio Hustle Podcast number 7- 10 Productivity Tips for Use in the Home Studio!   Hello Hustlers and welcome to the show I’m Mike Brown and today we’re going to be talking about productivity tips for use in the home studio.   I realize that the past few weeks have been kind of broad strokes when it comes to Home Studio advice, with several people telling me that it doesn’t really feel focused on the home studio at all.  This week I’m digging in and giving specific advice with tips about how to increase your productivity in your studio workflow.   I’m also going to be trying out a new style with this episode.  In the past I’ve meticulously scripted and recorded and re-recorded things. Today, I’m working off an outline. I’m excited to see how this turns out!    The goal today is to give you some ways to be more productive in your studio and thereby save time- and if you’ll remember: the less time you spend on something, the more money you make doing it.   So let’s dive right into it!   Tip #1: Keep your files organized!   Tip #2: Use Templates   Tip #3: Define your own macros   Tip #4: Learn the Key Commands & Keep them congruent   Tip #5: BATCH   Tip #6: The Little Notebook   Tip #7: Schedule Schedule Schedule   Tip #8: Reach for the Stock Stuff First   Tip #9: Commit to your production moves Tip #10: Approach each task with a purpose   Okay, now I wanted to write 5 tips, but when I was making my outline, I just kept thinking of ones that I wanted to share.    Let me know your own tips!  And I’d love feedback on this different recording style.  I definitely feel like this episode will be more valuable to Home Studio Hustlers than the top-down ones I’ve shared so far. I’d love to hear what you have to say on this topic. If you want to add your voice to the conversation, come to homestudiohustle.com/podcast, find this episode and leave a comment. OR if you’d like to have a more private dialogue, email me at HomeStudioHustle@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave me a 5-star review.   Thank you, and keep hustlin’.

This is the Home Studio Hustle Podcast number 6 - Taking advantage of Moments of Strength.   Hello Hustlers and welcome to the show I’m Mike Brown and today we’re going to be talking about how to take advantage of your moments of strength.  This episode is going to be short and sweet because I don’t want to dilute the message. It’s a message for every hustler out there- not just the ones in the home studio. Everyone has heard of moments of weakness.  Most have experienced them.   That time you cheated on your diet because you drove past a taco bell and nobody would know.  When you decided to cancel on your friends because Netflix and the couch just felt too good.Or what about the time you pushed off doing your podcast until the last minute because there were a ton of other fun things to do this week?   Wait… was that last one just me? Sorry.   Moments of weakness can define your success and failure  - But so can moments of strength.   A moment of strength is when you feel the desire and the drive to get something done, so you either do it, or take steps to make sure it gets done.Here’s a personal story about how I took advantage of a moment of strength recently.I’ve been trying to run 5 times a week. Those who know me know that I’ve struggled with exercise, but running is one that I enjoy… even though I fall off the horse every once in a while.When I sat down to record this podcast, I recorded a few lines- while in the back of my head thinking, “As soon as I’m done recording, I have to go for my run for the day.”Now, I could have kept going, and maybe I would have done for that run- but it’s massively possible that I would have decided it was too late or that I had too much work to do still.So instead of allowing myself to push it off, I stopped recording, drove to the high school, and ran.   In that moment I was feeling strong.   That’s just one way you can take advantage of a moment of strength.  Another way is this:Setting yourself up for success.  We can also look at this as mitigating opportunity for moments of weakness.   I have some friends who smoke cigarettes, and a lot of them want to quit.  I remember a conversation with one of them.   He said, “I’m quitting as soon as I’m done with this pack. I won’t buy any more, but it’s a waste of money if I quit now.”Well… those weren’t his exact words- I believe he said something like “That’s just bad economics.”  But you get my point.   People do this all the time with diets as well.  I’ve been guilty myself. “Starting tomorrow, no snacks- only 3 meals a day.”Tomorrow? How do you know you’re going to have the strength to start tomorrow?  You have it right now- DO IT!   So how can you use moments of strength to fix the scenarios I just talked about?   Well, the smoking one is easy. Throw away the pack right now!  I don’t care if you have one or 19 left. You’re strong now and you don’t know if you will be later.   What about the snacking one? Start right now. Stop snacking right now and toss your junk food in the trash.Now- I know it seems like I’m standing up here on my soapbox, and to a certain extent I am! Nobody is immune to moments of weakness. But I just wanted to share with you the idea of turning around that emotional space in times of strength.  It has served me very well, even though I don’t always see them when they’re in front of me. I’d love to hear what you have to say on this topic. If you want to add your voice to the conversation, come to homestudiohustle.com/podcast, find this episode and leave a comment. OR if you’d like to have a more private dialogue, email me at HomeStudioHustle@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave me a 5-star review.   Thank you, and keep hustlin’.

 This is the Home Studio Hustle Podcast number 5- how to price your services in the home studio.   Hello Hustlers and welcome to the show I’m Mike Brown and today we’re going to be talking about how to price your services in your home studio.   When I first started out, this was one of the things I was most curious about. What should I charge for a mix? What about for tracking? Should I charge by the hour, or by the job?   What was worse is my industry colleagues were exceptionally cagey with their own pricing packages.  Most wouldn't even give you a ballpark until you sent them a sample with a production guideline.   To be honest it was infuriating! It seemed to me like they were trying to shut out up-and-coming producers in the genre. (Some conversations with other industry leaders later in my career would actually confirm that they were actively trying to stifle “the little guy”)   So I went on to google and google. Eventually, I gave up trying to fit myself into the pricing models of the industry and just set a random hourly rate.   It was… way too low.  Like… WAY too low.   Unfortunately, I had nobody to go to at the time and the answer didn’t seem to be anywhere on the internet.   I had no idea how simple the answer would be once I worked it out.   If I’m running my own business, I get to set my rates.   Period.   SO in order to find the best rates for your work, grab a pen and some paper and let’s do this super simple math equation.   Write down how much you want to make this year out of your studio.  I’m going to use $10,000 since that’s kind of my benchmark with Home Studio Hustle.   Below that, write down how many hours per week you want to work.  Again, using the benchmark- I’m going to write down 6.   Now’s where you’ll need that calculator or phone. This is also where things are going to start to feel really doable.   Take your top number, and divide it by your bottom number.   In my case, 10,000 / 6 = 1,666.6. To keep the math clean, I’m going to round that off to 1,667.   Now, divide that number by 52. This is just taking the number you have and spreading it out over the course of the weeks in a year.   In my case, I got 32.058. I’ll round that off to $32.06.   So- using my numbers (which shouldn’t be the same as yours,) if I charge an hourly rate of $32.06 and work for 6 hours a week, I’ll make $10,000 in my home studio this year. Now, if you’re like I was, you’ll realize that $32/hr is VERY reasonable for such a specialized skill.   So you may be wondering how I track time and bill for the work I do.   The short answer is that I don’t track time.   “... but Mike, you just told us what our hourly rate needs to be.”   Yes I did.  But I didn’t say you should bill hourly. In my opinion, billing hourly just leads to all sorts of other stuff gumming up your system.  Now you’ve got to worry about time tracking and more advanced billing techniques that will just take up valuable time and brain power.   Instead, try this-   Assess the project. Try to determine how long it will take you.   Think the edit will take 4 hours? Take your hourly rate and multiply it by four, then quote that number as your price for the project.   So using my above numbers, $32/hr x 4 hours = $128.   Now, here’s where the fun comes in.   As soon as you start, you’re officially in a race.   You’re racing against the theoretical version of yourself who finished the project in four hours. If you can get it done in less time, guess what- you made more than your hourly rate!   If it takes you longer, then it’s just a lesson learned for the next project quote you send out. For some jobs, revisions may be necessary. These can be handled in a few different ways.  You can include 1 or 2 revisions in your quote (making sure the client understands this) and then charge by the hour or a flat rate for any revisions past those. So here’s another benefit to using this method.  It’ll keep you happy! Because you’re setting your rates based on your desired income, you basically take the second-guessing out of the equation completely! You’ll always know that you’re working based on a goal you set yourself!   I really hope this advice helps you wade through the process of pricing and that you are able to come to a conclusion that makes you happy and gets you excited to work! I’d love to hear what you have to say on this topic. If you want to add your voice to the conversation, come to homestudiohustle.com/podcast, find this episode and leave a comment. OR if you’d like to have a more private dialogue, email me at HomeStudioHustle@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave me a 5-star review.   Thank you, and keep hustlin’.

This is Home Studio Hustle Podcast #4 - The 4 Jobs You Can Take in Your Home Studio - Part 2 - The Money/Work Relationship   Hello Hustlers and welcome to the show I’m Mike Brown and today we’re going to be talking about The 4 Jobs You Can Take in Your Home Studio. This one is a two-parter and part 1 is already up on the blog, so head on over to homestudiohustle.com and check it out or find a link in the show notes at homestudiohustle.com/podcast.   Part one of this series focused primarily on the frequency of the gigs you’re taking. In this part, I’m going to focus on the money/work relationship.   This is exactly what it sounds like- it’s the relationship of how much money you get for a given amount of work.  This episode isn’t going to talk about HOW to price your services just yet. We’ve got that coming down the pipeline, though. (Spoiler: It’s SO much easier than you think and doesn’t require any research at all)   Because I am not a huge fan of ambiguity with this stuff, I’m going to ignore the middle of the road. We won’t be talking about medium amounts of work or medium amounts of money because they’re so subjective. Today we’ll be talking in “extremes.”   If you’re sitting down at a desk or table, I have a little bit of extra work for you to do. If you’re not, don’t worry- I’ve got you covered in the show notes.  For now do this exercise in your mind.   Take out a piece of paper and grab a pen. Go ahead and draw a square on it. Use as much space as you need. We’ll be dividing this square up and writing inside it.   Now, draw two lines in the square. One splitting it in half vertically, and one splitting it in half horizontally.   What you should have now should look like every window I ever drew on every house I ever drew.   There should be four smaller squares now. I’ll refer to them as quadrants.   Above the top left quadrant, write low, and on the right one write high.   Then do the same along the left side- low on top and high on the bottom.   The top is going to represent the payment you receive, or the “money” and the side is going to represent the amount of work it takes to complete a project.   We’re going to be talking about the pros and cons of each of these squares as well as a few types of jobs that could go in each.   The first one here is the low-low.  A low-low gig is low work and low money.  Maybe it’s a small one-off gig that you bang out in 15 mins and get $10 bucks for.   The pros of this type of job is that they’re so quick! You can fill up your schedule with them and earn a reasonable amount even though they aren’t necessarily as lucrative as other options.   Another pro to this is that if you’re constantly shifting gears, you’re less likely to get bored or burn out during your pre-scheduled studio time!  (You’re pre-scheduling your studio time, right?)   Some of the cons are that if you can’t load up on them, they don’t really make enough to support you just on their own.   Also, if you’re doing a different type of job every 15-30 minutes, it eliminates the ability to use one of the best productivity practices out there- batching.   A few examples of low-lows are: Cutting up audio for a wedding dance. Doing a sound-effect for a YouTube video Doing a few lines of voice acting for a small video game.   These are all gigs I’ve taken that take me around 15 minutes, but range from $20-$50 a pop. They’re simple and don’t require a ton of nitty-gritty work. That 80-200 dollars if I fill up an hour with 4 of them!   I’m going to reiterate here, though, that you should create your own pricing plans for your products and services. Mine work for me because I’ve figured them out. We’re going to go down a square to the High-Work/Low-Money square.   Now, at a first glance you may just assume I’m going to tell that you these gigs are all downside and just not to take them. Unfortunately, however, there are a few pros that may even outweigh the cons.   We’ll still START with the cons for this one though.   There’s one major one and it’s right in the name. You’re going to be doing a high amount of work for low pay.  It’s hard to get excited about things like this because who gets excited about making less money??? They can often leave you feeling like you didn’t get paid enough or you worked too hard.   Even for High-Work/Low-Money gigs, make sure you deliver on time and match your standard of quality! No cutting corners!   You’re probably wondering what could POSSIBLY be a pro for this sort of gig.   Off the top of my head I can think of two.   The first is that any gig that requires you to learn a new skill is almost by default put into this box.  This vastly increases the amount of work you need to do to deliver, BUT creates an opportunity for you to learn!   Let’s face it- learning is one of the most important things you can do while you’re working in your home studio as it increases your ability and efficiency for all future projects! Man if you factor that into the payment, the “money” aspect doesn’t seem so bad anymore!   Another pro to this kind of gig is that it can also be in this category if you had to buy something new in order to do the gig. Maybe the pay for the gig is just fine until you deduct the money you had to spend on Melodyne or Superior Drummer.   This expands your horizons to more and different gigs in the future.  Just like the fact that learning a new skill should be considered in the payment, so does the opportunity to add a new product to your collection!Disclaimer here:  I’m talking about buying a product for a specific gig you have. Not going out and dropping hundreds on pieces of software you will THEORETICALLY need in the future.   So what specific gigs could these be?   A few examples of High-Work/Low-Money gigs are: A Hip-Hop artist wants to track with you but you’ve never dealt with rap vocals before An A Cappella group needs you to tune up their vocals, but you don’t own melodyne yet An up-and-coming 3-piece band wants to live-track with you but your interface only has 2 inputs.   All of these have intrinsic payment in the form of knowledge! Now, knowledge doesn’t pay the bills, so don’t accept ONLY knowledge, but keep it in mind when taking or rejecting opportunities like these. Moving to the right, we’re going to talk about the High-Highs.   These are gigs that are High-Work/High-Money. Much like in part one of this series- this is what most people think of when they think about making money in a recording setting.   And I understand why! High-Work/High-Money gigs are usually fun, high-profile, and glamorous. They’re the gigs you post about on instagram so people can fawn over how cool you are.   Because of this, it’s basically all you see when people share what they’re doing with the world. These gigs are not as hard to come by as you’d think.  They just take a little bit of work to find and close.   So let’s look at the Pros and Cons of High-High Gigs!   Some pros: Uh DUH! They pay a lot!  They’re a great boon to your ability to sustain a home studio business.   They’re also usually fun! Barring a difficult client, projects like these are probably the reason you got into home studio recording in the first place!   As far as cons- they can take up more time than you’d like. They also take a little bit of work just to find the gig.   I have a tip here, though. Do you know who usually has a bunch of money to record and often no idea where to spend it?College A Cappella Groups.   This is no joke. As someone who was once deep in this world, I can tell you that my group once received $10k from our Student Government to record an album.   Now, maybe I’m lucky because Connecticut has one of the largest number of colleges per square mile in the country.  Still, even if you need to buy a laptop, a portable interface, and drive 200 miles to your nearest college or university, you can make your money back tenfold.   There are, of course, innumerable ways to get the High-High gigs so head over to the comment section of the show notes at homestudiohustle.com/podcast and let me know your way!I just wanted to share what, in my opinion, is one of the BEST ways to get High-High gigs.   Lastly, we move to the only square left- the High-Money/Low-Work.   These are obviously the Holy Grail of Studio work. If you can find them, jump at them! To be honest, I think the pros and cons are obvious for this one, so I’m not going to tediously lay them out for you. Instead let’s talk about how to find these elusive opportunities.   The first and best way to find High-Money/Low-Work jobs is going to sound like a no-brainer: If you take a bunch of High-High gigs and streamline your productivity enough, the work investment will drop so that you’re still getting paid the same, but the job is getting easier because you’ve honed your skills and abilities.   If you do ten albums for the same band, obviously the tenth will be WAY less work than the first! You know how they like their snare. You have a template saved in your DAW for their tracking sessions. You already have the mic matched to the lead singer from the last album you did for them.   This principal works for all aspects of the home studio. The more you practice the more money you make without even raising your prices!   I will also say this, though. Another, more advanced, way to get High-Money/Low-Work gigs is to utilize the principle of pricing your CLIENT rather than your SERVICES.     Since this episode is dealing less with pricing and more with broad money concepts, we’ll save this for another time- but keep it in mind. It can be a powerful tool to help you increase your profits!   So that’s it. Between part one and part two of this series, I’ve illustrated 8 total types of jobs you can take in the home studio as well as explained positive and negative aspects of each. Your homework is to go on and book a few of your own!   If you’d like to see MY hand-drawn version of the square head on over to the show notes at homestudiohustle.com/podcast. Also be sure to check out part one of this series if you haven’t yet. I’d love to hear what you have to say on this topic. If you want to add your voice to the conversation, come to homestudiohustle.com/podcast, find this episode and leave a comment. OR if you’d like to have a more private dialogue, email me at HomeStudioHustle@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave me a 5-star review.   Thank you, and keep hustlin’.

Home Studio Hustle Podcast #3 - The Number One Reason You’re Not Making Money in Your Home Studio   Hello Hustlers and welcome to the show I’m Mike Brown and today we’re going to be talking about the #1 reason you’re not making money in your home studio.  I’m going to keep this one short today.   Now, this is not a silver bullet. You may get mad or not even believe what I’m going to tell you but I’ll do my best to break it down for you.   What I’m about to tell you is nothing more than food for though that you can use to mentally flip a switch that will open the floodgates to all sorts of incremental income. If I were a more dramatic person I’d edit in a drum roll here but anyway here it is. You’re Scared. This may be a little painful to hear and guess what. If your knee-jerk reaction to hearing this was to get a little angry and try to dispute it immediately, then you are just proving to yourself that this is true. Modern humans are ANGRY at fear.   As long as Humanity has existed, fear has served one primary purpose: To prevent us from taking risks.   To prevent us from taking risks, and historically that has been VITAL to the survival of the human race.   Today, however, fear is more like a flashlight that can show you where you need to go next.  Fear wants to maintain the comfort of the status quo in your life because that’s measurable and known.  Fear is often a fear of success because it’s uncharted territory.   Basically what I’m saying is: If you are feeling fear, that’s a good thing, because it means you’re on the brink of something big. Let me break down a few of the ways fear manifests itself in the Home Studio.  I’ll tackle them through some of the most common excuses I hear.   You’re a perfectionist. You sit down and work on something day-in and day-out. Always doing something but never doing much. You’re waiting for it to be perfect.   Well I have some news for you- perfect doesn’t exist and pursuit of perfection is just a cop-out that enables scared people to justify not releasing their projects.   They’re afraid that people won’t like it or that they made a mistake and while both of those things are possible, you won’t know either of those things until you release it.   You need to think like a kindergartener for this one. They erase and draw the same line over and over on their picture to make it “perfect!” They draw a big ol’ uneven circle, slap three dots and a line inside and hand you your portrait! Now I’m not saying be SLOPPY. But I’m saying release things before they’re perfect.   How does perfectionism keep you from making money? If you can’t even get your own projects to be perfect how are you going to make someone else’s?  You worry that they’ll be disappointed no matter HOW well you do.   In reality (and I can speak from experience here) you are almost CERTAINLY the only person who notices the ‘imperfections’ in your work.   So perfectionists- your homework is to release something before it’s perfect. Not before it’s done, just before it’s PERFECT. You don’t have the gear yet.  You know that you’ve got the skills and the drive, but you don’t have that C414 or your monitors are too cheap or you need that new Waves plugin or… or… or…Guess what, friend. Before you didn’t have the C414, you didn’t have the NT-1, so you bought it and still haven’t made anything.   Before you didn’t have the Neumann 5” monitors, you didn't have the Alesis set that cost $150/pair, so you bought them and still haven’t made anything.   Before you didn’t have the new Fabfilter Reverb Plugin, you didn’t have the Waves Renaissance Reverb plugin, so you bought it. And guess what. You still haven’t made anything.   It’s time to admit it’s not about the gear. It’s about the FEAR!  Oh man that’s going to be on my first T-Shirt.   If this is you, YOUR homework is going to be to go buy every last piece of gear you think you need.  What? You can’t? Isn’t that convenient. Then go create something with what you HAVE! Everyone is tired of waiting.   For a LOT of the work I talk about, you need next to nothing- a computer. An audio interface of some sort, and some headphones.That’s it! You can use apple earbuds for all I care!  It doesn’t. Matter. You don’t know how. Either you don’t know how to use the tools at your disposal or you don’t know how to find paying clients.   Guys. This one is the LAZIEST excuse by far when it comes to justifying your fear.   We live in a time where you can learn everything. For free. Online.  I mean- you’re here listening to this podcast for free trying to pick up some tips on how to make money in your home studio.  What’s stopping you from heading over to youtube and devouring a few tutorials on how to do what you want?   Nothing.So go. Learn. And then do you know what you need to do? Practice.  If your targeted skill is editing podcasts, either find some unedited podcasts or record your own to edit. Then DO IT.   If this is you, I have a special piece of homework for you. Head on over to homestudiohustle.com/podcast and find this episode. It should be labeled episode 003. In the show notes, I’m going to include the raw unedited voice over file from this episode so you can practice your editing chops on it. If editing podcasts isn’t your target right now (though I’d greatly encourage you to consider it) then think of one skill you “don’t know” and learn it. Today. For Free. On Youtube. So there it is. If you’re not making any money in your home studio and any of those things are your excuse, then you’re either going to have to get hustling or think of new excuses because those aren’t going to fly anymore.   I’d love to hear what you have to say on this topic. If you want to add your voice to the conversation, come to homestudiohustle.com/podcast, find this episode and leave a comment. OR if you’d like to have a more private dialogue, email me at HomeStudioHustle@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave me a 5-star review.   Thank you, and keep hustlin’.

Welcome to the Home Studio Hustle Podcast. This is episode 2. In this episode, I give you some background on myself, as well as clarify who Home Studio Hustle is for. I want to respect your time, so it’s only right to be up front and clear about who I want to help with Home Studio Hustle.   But first, let’s start with me:   (Always a good sign, right?)   No, I believe that if I expect you to give your time to me, you should at least know some things about who I am and where I come from.   My name is Michael Brown and I’m from Connecticut. I work with Special Education Kindergarteners as my day job and I LOVE IT.  I leave work every single day feeling full and fulfilled.I hope your day job makes you feel the same way. Maybe it doesn’t, but that isn’t terribly relevant to what we’re talking about here.   Growing up I was constantly around music.  I sang in chorus and joined band as soon as I could. I knew immediately that music was something I wanted to do forever.   Now, I could go on and on about school and my experiences in each grade, but I’m just going to do some fast-forwarding here to High School.   Does anyone here remember LimeWire?  It was kind of like Nappster. It was an illegal file sharing program and community that hosted a crazy amount of music for free.   Hey, I told you I was going to be honest. That’s a part of my story. I was young and irreverent at the time and that’s not something I would participate in today. In fact, I have a whole future episode of the podcast coming out about how piracy kills creativity!   Anyway, my friend Colin and I were looking around in the files, there, and we discovered a new, budding, genre of music: A Cappella.Yes you heard me correctly. This is WAY before The Sing-Off or Pitch Perfect or even a general knowledge of the style was around.   It blew my mind. I needed in.  I researched colleges based on A Cappella groups rather than graduation rates and student life.   Fast forward some more and I’m in the group I eventually joined- Divisi from Central Connecticut State University.  My freshman year, we got the budget to record our first album.   When we walked into the recording studio for the first time, I was awestruck.   “This is it,” I thought. “This is what I need to do forever.”   Leaving the space, though, I felt heartbroken by the amount of equipment I THOUGHT I needed in order to make enough money to be comfortable as a recording engineer.   I wish someone pulled me aside and told me what I actually needed in order to make an income doing what I so clearly loved.   Fast forward again and the album wasn’t even really that good. Here’s another pain point. If this guy had all of this equipment, he must be doing something wrong with it.  I KNEW that if I was working with his gear, I could record a KILLER collection of music.   But still, nobody told me just how small an investment I’d have to make in order to create a quality product- so I moved on. In 2014, out of a desire to create more, I joined an online challenge called FAWM. That’s F A W M, which is an acronym for February Album Writing Month. The point is it’s a creativity and productivity hack designed to get your juices flowing and force you to churn out projects.  The challenge is to write and record 14 songs in the month of February- a full album.   Since I had no way to record the music I was writing, I went online and searched for a solution.   What I found was a product called an AudioBox from Presonus. It even came with a free copy of their DAW, Studio One 2. (We don’t need to go into how confusing that name is right now)I want to pause here for a moment, because this is one of the most pivotal moments in my life. This small purchase of around $100 changed my path forever.   I devoured tutorials. I recorded relentlessly. I read books and talked to experts.   I heavily invested in myself so that I could give value to others.   During that month, I wrote good songs, and I wrote bad songs, but most importantly I began the journey of improving my skills through practice.   If this part of my life was in a montage, it would cut quickly between my practicing, failing, practicing more, succeeding a little, and practicing even more.   Now, I understand that this is getting a little tedious, so let me speed it up for you.   Over the next 5 years I began producing A Cappella albums and made some strong connections with members of the community.   I partied with the top names in the niche, and curated important relationships with the professionals.   The professional group I was in after college, Connect, won 3rd place in a national competition called the Harmony Sweepstakes.  I recorded them and we made killer music and people are still streaming our music today!   Perhaps one of the next most important points in my audio journey was joining a Mastermind.  I was surrounded by like-minded up-and-coming producers and engineers who wanted to up their A Cappella game.   More than any individual tip or skill I learned in that group (It was a paid mastermind) I found myself in some solid relationships with those people. Fast forward again to the present day. I’m making impactful, supplemental income out of my home studio. Now, did I tell you all of that because I’m in love with myself and just want to sit people down and shove my story down their throat?No.   I have shared my story because I want to highlight the most important parts of it:   That I felt like I couldn’t do it That I took advantage of a moment of strength and jumped into recording That I invested in MYSELF instead of gear in order to get the job done That I curated and leveraged RELATIONSHIPS And that when I had nobody else to work with, I created my OWN projects and EXECUTED on them   So, did you hear me say ANYWHERE that I was the best at something?   No   In fact, I have a personal rule never to be the best in the room. With that said- I want to help as many people as I can with Home Studio Hustle, but I’m sure it won’t be for everyone.   (Ad lib a little on these points) I’m not going to make you rich overnight I can’t fix lazy I can’t help you if you’re headstrong in the WAYS you want to go about this. Who is Home Studio Hustle for? Let’s get specific.   If you’re sitting down at your workstation several times a week and playing around with the same project file but not making any real progress, HSH IFY If you’ve tweaked the EQ and compression settings on your acoustic guitar every night this week, but it’s still not perfect. HSH IFY If you’ve ever rejected a paid opportunity because you’re nervous that you don’t have what it takes to deliver. HSH IFY If you’re pumping out good beats and putting them on soundcloud where they sit and collect dust. HSH IFY If you have a strong desire to create meaningful and impactful art or education using your skills. HSH IFY If you know that you need to invest in YOURSELF in order to improve your work. HSH IFY And if you want to transition your hobby into a reliable supplemental paycheck. HSH IFY If any of those sound like you, join me at homestudiohustle.com/podcast and Subscribe to this podcast. I’ll be here every week to share tips, tricks, hacks, and actionable techniques to get you closer to your goals.   Thank you, and keep hustlin.

How much money did you make out of your home recording and mixing studio this year?   A hundred dollars? Five hundred? Two thousand? Zero dollars? My name is Mike Brown and I’m here to help you turn your home studio hobby into a small, but profitable, business in your spare time.   Welcome to Home Studio Hustle!   I’m here to show you how to take the tools you already have and use the power of Incremental Income to monetize your home studio.   What would you do with an extra $10,000 a year?   You could save it for a rainy day. You could have a trans-global adventure! You could buy another fancy toy for your recording passion.   You don’t need to decide now- just start brainstorming.   The purpose of Home Studio Hustle is to help you transition your home studio hobby into a profitable small business using time and resources that you are already expending on it. I want to be really honest with you about this-   It’s not called Home Studio Hustle for nothing!  What I am going to show you is simple and it’s easy but it’s still work. If you don’t put in the time, you won’t see the results.Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m going to help you turn your studio work into your main source of income. I will tell you, however, that in 5-6 hours a week you can make $10,000 in your studio this year.   5-6 hours a week?? You spend that just tweaking presets and watching YouTube tutorials!   I can share this because I’m doing it!  I go home after my day job (THAT’s a conversation for another time) sit down at my studio desk, and make meaningful supplemental income doing things that are fun and fulfilling.What do you need to get started?  I’m glad you asked!   You need...   ✅ A love for audio production and all things home studio   ✅ A desire to monetize your hobby and supplement your primary income   ✅ A bare-bones suite of recording and editing tools But don’t I need…   ❌ An audio degree?   ❌ Thousands of dollars worth of equipment?   ❌ A dedicated studio space?   NO!   I don’t have any of those things, and you don’t need to either!  You just need to know HOW to leverage your skills. I’m going to show you how to:   Be more productive with your time Leverage your skills to find paying clients Create clients out of thin air Unlock the full potential of your tools Find Tax Exemptions you didn’t know about AND MUCH MORE!!!   And it will all be here, at homestudiohustle.com