The Healthier Home Studio Podcast

WTF is a Business Coach? + Season finale announcement.

• Chris Graham • Season 1 • Episode 14

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Thinking about working with a business coach? Let's talk! Shoot me a text at +1-614-943-9214. Same number on WhatsApp.  



Chris:

The seasoned finale of the Healthier Home Studio podcast. Is coming in two weeks on November the 12th. Next week is November the fifth here in the United States, and that is a Tuesday where we will decide who the next president of the United States of America will be along with. a plethora of additional issues that vary by state and community. So I will be taking next week off to continue to work on the season finale of this podcast. Recently, I had a conversation with my friend, DK a mix engineer out in Los Angeles. he is the host of the very popular Mixing Music podcast, which as far as I can tell, is probably the biggest podcast in the recording studio space right now. the season finale is gonna be. Super special in that it's gonna be the first episode that has video for the Healthier Home Studio podcast. I'm gonna publish it on my YouTube channel as well. I'm making it into basically like a little film. as I've been editing it, I've had to pause and think about some of the things that DK said. it's been really fun. the other thing that makes this episode special is we covered so much stuff that is so useful. To people that work in and around recording studios. frankly, I wish I could go back in time and give this episode to myself from 15 years ago. It, it would've blown my mind in so many ways. And so this season finale is going to be special. It's gonna be on the YouTube channel. It's gonna be on the podcast, and it's kind of an experiment. I'm not really sure. What it would be like to have a video podcast as well as an audio podcast, and frankly, I have some baggage there. In the past when I've tried to add video to podcasting, it's just gotten much more complicated and overwhelming. But this time I have an ASCE up my sleeve. I have ai. I've been using this app called Descrip, and I've been doing all of the podcast edits in Descrip, and it has been extremely useful I think it's the best episode I've ever done, and so I wanna hype you guys up a little bit to look forward to November the 12th when the season finale of the Healthier Home Studio is coming out. In the meantime, I have some news I'm really excited about. I've reopened chris graham mastering.com and I am actively mastering projects. Again, getting back in the studio has been a wild experience for me on the other side of doing a hard thing, you know, going to the State House and coming forward, I've been through a lot in the past couple years, and to come back and to be mastering records again two years after closing up shop to focus on activism, it's given me some pretty big feels The most interesting part of taking two years off is I had a pretty good month this month. I made about$4,200 my first month back It was a blast. what really surprised me as I was mastering records this month was how different it feels on the other side of doing a hard thing and on the other side of doing a lot of healing to jump back into something that I spent most of my adult life doing. So it's been really fun coming back as a mastering engineer and getting to help some people finish their records. I'm really excited about it and the plan is to keep you guys, in the loop as I restart the business that. Turned into the six figure home studio originally. For me, Coming back as a mastering engineer is going to be different for me than it has been in the past. You've heard me preach about niching down over and over and over again on my previous podcast. This idea that you should only do one thing. You should only tell people that you do one thing. there's more to it than I, I understood when I used to preach, the necessity of niching down in order to build a career Things are changing. Niching down is less important now than it was a few years ago. As AI tools get bigger and better, I think we're gonna see a move towards producing where people are coming back to this sort of multiple hat wearing individual that helps people create and finish records. This is something I'm thinking about a lot. is there a possibility that I might even come back to producing records someday? I think probably Not yet. But I think that there's a pretty good chance that I will come back to the job I had before I was a mastering engineer, a producer. as I think about. My life moving forward and all of the change and all the growth that I've experienced, and I try to imagine what my life is gonna look like in 5, 10, 15 years. There's one thing that I know for sure when it comes to my career, I. I'm gonna keep making records for the rest of my life. However, there's I don't want a six-figure home studio. I don't want to spend all day, every day. Mastering music to me, there's a point where the richness of the experience of helping somebody finish a record starts to decline after you're working with too many people. so where I'm at right now is the dream moving forward is to master like five records a month. and if that's something that's interesting to you, check out chris Graham mastering.com. you can upload a project and I can give you a quote on what it would look like to work with me so I'm back, mastering records again and I'm balancing. A number of things in my life professionally. First of all, bounce Butler, studio Time Tracker. There's chris graham mastering.com And then I've got business coaching. This is the main professional focus for me. I consider this podcast part of my business coaching practice if you have been thinking about. Working with a business coach, or you've been wondering what is a business coach? one of the hardest things about working in the recording studio industry or really any small business is that most people who start small businesses. Are people who were really good at a specific thing and they figured, oh, I'm really good at this. Maybe I should start a business. And so they do. to start grow and run a business is a totally different skill. Than mastering records or mixing records or recording bands. There is a whole nother level of skills and mindsets. Growing a business is a unique challenge, and it is a different challenge than keeping your customers happy. And so a business coach is somebody who's good at that somebody who first and foremost asks great questions. A business coach is somebody who can help you navigate your goal, your desire, the reason that you're in business, like what you hope to accomplish. And what that looks like when the rubber hits the road, A business coach is kind of like a therapist. There's somebody that you sit down with regularly, and they ask you questions. They ask you how you feel about that last project that turned out really great, or that last project that didn't turn out so great. A business coach is somebody who helps you navigate your business feelings. It's like therapy, but for your business I remember the first time I hired a business coach. His name was Graham Cochran. Graham Cochran was very expensive. It was the most money I have ever paid an individual. it is still the most money I have ever paid somebody, and I am so glad that I did it. Graham was so helpful in helping me take a step back from my career and look at it with fresh eyes. Business coaching is kind of like having a producer for your business. It's somebody that challenges you to think about what you really stand for, and what you really wanna spend your time doing. A great business coach is somebody who supports you and helps you feel seen without feeling ashamed about failures in your career or in your business. Shame. Is not a good fuel to run a business on. It will give you fast growth and then an implosion I know this because I tried it So if you are in a spot where you've got big business feelings and you're trying to figure out how do I get better at getting more customers? How do I get better at raising my rates? How do I differentiate myself from all of the other businesses out there that might provide a similar service to what I do. These are all questions that are great to go through with a business coach, and I offer two forms of business coaching. I offer one-on-one business coaching, and I offer small group coaching, which I call masterminds. A mastermind is a group of people from around the recording industry. Whose customer bases don't overlap. we meet regularly every other week for 90 minutes, and talk about what, what kinds of wins we're having, about what kind of struggles we're facing. And one of the ways that we do that is every mastermind that I host has something called a happy. Crappy hacky. each person in the group gets two minutes to talk about what they're happy about in their business what has been crappy in their business and Hacky means ways that you are working smarter, not harder. possibly a new system or a new process, or to find a way to accomplish their job, a little bit more easily. the way that I do this when I'm hosting a mastermind is I have a tool that I use called The Horn of Gondor. And it's, uh, a, it's this horn from the Lord of the Rings movies. And what will happen during a mastermind group is when we're doing our happy, crappy hacky. you'll see a timer behind me in our video call, and it counts down from two minutes. And when it hits two minutes, you hear it's the horn of gum and that's to let you know, hey, your time is up. bring your thoughts to a close and it's the next person's turn to do a happy, crappy hacky. Having a mechanism like that keeps the Mastermind, uh, balanced. It keeps it even, and it keeps everybody on a similar footing, which is essential to build a community of business owners who are mutually encouraging each other. I think a mastermind is actually, if it's done well. A little bit better than actually having a business coach. But the combination of having a one-on-one business coach and being a part of a mastermind hosted by that business coach, you are truly at Chris Graham. that's the absolute creme dela creme right there. And so if you are interested in not only being part of a mastermind with me, but also doing one-on-one coaching with me. Let me know, and here's how I'd like you to do that. I'm not gonna ask you to fill out a form, text me. My actual cell phone number is 1(614) 943-9214. That goes right to my iPhone. That's the phone that's in my pocket. And if you use WhatsApp, that is also my phone number, 1 614) 943-9214. Shoot me a text if you are thinking, man, I feel like Chris could help me grow my business. In the healthiest way possible, Let's talk about you being a part of a mastermind and possibly doing some One-on-one coaching as well. I feel like my mission is simple. Help the most people I can. The most I can. I believe that the way to do that is to help people in the recording industry. Our industry is really special, and our industry kept me afloat when my shit was fucked up as a kid. There was really nothing in my life that was positive for a good long stretch there, other than putting on a pair of headphones and listening to a record. Our industry is so important it creates a human connection where none exists, and that's exciting to me. I feel like the way that I can help the most people the most is to help people that are in our industry thrive. that's why I started this podcast. That's why I do the business coaching, the mastering I do because I love it, but also because it keeps me grounded in our industry. I am not niching down. if you've been thinking about hiring a business coach and you want to have a conversation, shoot me a text. I'll ask you a couple questions. We'll set up a time to talk. There's no AI trickery here. you're literally texting Chris the human. That's our episode for today. Stay tuned. We're taking next week off there will be no podcast, but November 12th is the season finale of the Healthier Home Studio With DK Waddell from the Mixing Music Podcast. I think it's the best episode I've ever done. I can't wait to share it with you guys. DK just crossed a million downloads on his podcast and making this episode with him and having a conversation about what that success felt like for him was actually really cathartic for me. starting a podcast and having it go viral like the six figure studio did. Was emotionally complicated to say the least. It brought out my best. It brought out my worst and, eh, not, maybe not my worst. It brought out my medium worst. So stay tuned guys. We've got the season finale coming on November 12th. Thank you guys so much for listening to this podcast. If there is any part of you that has ever thought about reaching out to me and exploring the possibility of having me coach you. Shoot me a text. Let's have that conversation. I'm a human. I know it's weird. I'm a disembodied podcast voice that sometimes, uh, whispers sweet. Nothings in your ear, So if business coaching sounds interesting, shoot me that text. We'll have a conversation. Stay tuned for the season finale of the Healthier Home Studio coming November 12th.