230: My Experience Opening and Operating a Brick and Mortar Podcast Studio for 3 Years

I discuss my experience opening and operating a brick and mortar podcast studio for 3 years, including:

Discovering podcasting in late 2011

Starting my own show in my apartment solely for the experience of starting a podcast – The Chris Curran Show!

Why I decided to open a physical podcast studio in June 2012

Economics:

• I had no idea if this kind of business could be profitable, but I was so energized to do it that I took the leap.
• I’ll talk more later about the monetary success or failure of the studio ;)

History:

• Before Serial hit in the fall of 2014 the podcasting space was still relatively small and unknown.
• I don’t know anyone who ran a physical podcast studio back when I did, but I’m sure at least a few people must have.

What were my competitive advantages?

• My audio experience
• My local networking experience

I was fortunate that:

• I found a space very close to my apartment.
• I had previously been a member of the largest Chamber of Commerce in that area, so I knew a bunch of people already.

i signed a 3 year lease, but it wasn’t overly expensive because it was in an older building and the space was unique (perhaps difficult to sell to most average businesses).

Fractal Recording was born in June 2012.

Equipment setup:

• 4 mics (Sennheiser e835’s)
• 4 Heil boom arms
• 4 channels of dbx 166xs
• Headphone amp
• Digital hybrid to take actual phone calls
• iPad for playing music and sound clips
• Bought my first Mac for the studio
• Focusrite interface (stereo!)
• Bought a couch, chairs, and a round table

Started several shows to jumpstart the content coming out of my studio. I did this to generate as much buzz as possible around my studio.

Attending Chamber of Commerce networking events to promote my studio and invite local business people to be interviewed on my local business podcast. *Back then most people didn’t even know what podcasts were!

I met Barry the maintenance guy and got to know him.

Trying to partner with 2 different people – both were going to be in charge of marketing and sales (obviously because I wanted to focus on the audio production!) – and both ended up in tragedy.

The studio not being soundproof… UGH.

THE END: Deciding to NOT sign up for another 3 years, which happened to coincide with my move to Colorado (where I would start doing all client recordings virtually).

To sum up my experience having the studio for 3 years:

• Overall, I absolutely loved it.
• I learned so much and had so much fun.
• Got tons of experience hosting shows.
• Made some good friends.
• I paid my dues for what was to come next.
• The painful aspects of that experience have completely dissolved into nothingness.

Was the studio profitable? Barely. It took a lot of effort and technically the studio was profitable but not by much. If I had a good salesperson it could have been more profitable.

The Universe is funny – as soon as we moved to Colorado I got a call from a NJ business (who lived close to my old studio) who wanted to hire me to produce their podcast, but they did NOT want to come into my studio, and I said GREAT that works out nicely!

I started on-boarding additional remote production clients and within 5 months I got a huge contract with Forbes to produce their podcast network remotely.

What Did I Learn:

• When you know you can be successful at something, you just have to be bold and keep working hard and adapt when you need to. Eventually you will arrive in a place where you are making a good living doing something you love, though that place will definitely NOT be the place you originally had in mind.

Hope you enjoyed that.

Other Notes:

• If you ever have questions please reach out!
• The start date for the next PES semester is April 19, 2022!
• If you’d like to share this show with any of your podcaster friends, feel free to send them a message saying, “Btw, here’s a show about podcast audio production you may find helpful” with this link: https://podcastengineeringschool.com/subscribe/)

Let me know if you have any questions or need any help with anything,
~Chris