Helping a Music School Expand Across the Country

0:00Unternehmer/Gast Um, I own a music school, and we've been open for just about 20 years. Next year's our 20-year anniversary. And with music schools struggling or not having programs at all, we'd like to take our music school and basically offer it across the country um, into communities to provide what we've been able to do and generate tremendous impact for thousands of students and families.

0:26What would you suggest we do or um, proceed forward with achieving this kind of a goal? >> Are you brick-and-mortar now? >> Yes. >> Okay, and you have one location? >> Yes. >> Okay. And so, um, this is an order of magnitude change. This is an entirely new business. And so, I just I I say this is just like kind of like the forewarning for everyone is that like it's not like, oh, it's music, it's kind of the same thing.

0:54It's basically everything is different about that business. The only thing in common that you have will be that there's music tangentially related to the product. But fundamentally, you're going from a service business, which is what you have now. I'm assuming you do like one-on-one, you know, small group or and is that around what you >> Yeah, we have groups, ensembles, one-on-one, a whole bunch of different stuff. >> It's a It's just a gym for music, but it works the same way. One-on-one, summer private, same deal. Um, you go from being a service business to entering the media business.

1:27And so, it's very different. And so, is the model that you were thinking about doing like Zoom call one-on-ones and like like that? Or are you just want to like kind of just like give lessons online and people can watch them? >> Um, we'd like to have brick-and-mortar locations throughout the US, but also have online communities where people can connect. Um, we have a lot of online videos we've created already for for example, preschool teachers to use from the classroom. There's a lot of different online resources we can utilize.

2:00>> Sure. >> But also being able to connect with community people in >> have experience running like tons of paid traffic and things like that? >> Um >> I'll say no based on your answer. Um that not that that's not as a slide. I'm just like you would know immediately if you're like, "Oh, I came from this background and all I did was tons of media buying and then I got into this cuz my husband's into music, but I think we can go bigger." That would be a different situation. If you've been doing this brick-and-mortar model, um I want to be really clear.

2:31Alex That version of what you explained is something that could work. It's just what's the skill deficiency between what you currently know how to do and what is required to make that business work. And so if I were to say the problem that we're solving is I would like to make more Do you want to make more money? Or like what what do you Like do you want to make more money? Is that what it Like what do you want to do? >> Well, of course. I think everybody wants to make more money. Sure. But um I also want to make an impact in communities, too. >> Well, you make an impact now. So I I would say that box is relatively checked. Um so I if I were to advise you, which I guess this is supposed to be what I'm doing.

3:06Alex Um I I would I would make the argument that you take what has worked and do more of it. And just say, "How do we open two locations? How do we open three locations?" Cuz I think the risks and the unknowns there are going to be more controllable for you given your existing skill set than trying to enter the media business, which is a totally different game. Like you'll have to learn organic content, you'll have to learn branding, you'll have to learn direct response.

3:32You'll have like a membership, you'll have to learn all the tech associated with membership communities. You'll like you're probably not going to be able to sell high ticket in that type of business if you want to sell massive volume of people, so it's going to be a low ticket business. So it's going to really just be an arbitrage business of media, finding influencers through music influencers, getting them to make content about your stuff, like and unless you have like absolute gangbanger, like um I don't know if that's the right term. [laughter] Uh like uh just awesome uh kind of cred.

4:05Alex Like if you're like, "I won a Grammy." or I have You know what I mean? Some sort of thing that other influencers would say, "Oh, these people are better than I am." Uh which I don't know if you have. I'm just This is me just talking aloud. Um I would make the bet to reinvest resources into opening a second location and then continuing to expand corporate that way. That's what I would do. >> Okay. Thank you very much. >> It's probably not what you wanted to hear. >> No, actually I think that's exactly what I needed to do. So, thank you for

4:32>> putting that seal on there. >> Two wins. Two wins in a row. I'm rocking. All right, yes, sir. >> I'm the CEO of a company that's uh been around for 18 years. We're growing fast. We We're decent-size. So, I'm so incredibly um envious of how you use your maker time. Um if I woke up in the morning and sat down at 5:00 a.m. and worked until noon, I literally wouldn't know what to work on because I feel like the rest of my executive team and the rest of my people do all the real work. Like I can do a little bit of maker uh maker work per year, but otherwise, I feel like I'm running important meetings, making key strategic decisions. However, that's not how you operate. Is it because Leila exists? Yes. Cuz I I feel like each day Each day I think, "Well, I wouldn't know what to work on for 5 hours alone." Do you think I'm not providing enough value to the organization from a maker standpoint? And how focused you are on maker, do you create key man risk because you're so maker-heavy?

5:26>> Um one, I absolutely represent key man risk. Acquisition.com. Um again, it's also what the objective is. Like I have no intentions of selling acquisition.com. Um and so this is like Elon is key man risk for Tesla and he's built a very big business. And so again, the objective of the chat we had chat the talk we did yesterday um is transforming something into a sellable or completely exitable asset. Some of you want that or many of you want at least when you when you pull you guys that a lot of you guys want that.

5:54Uh, some of you guys don't in which case awesome, don't worry about key man. With regards to the original question, um, I can only maintain my time that way because Leila exists. Yes. Um, and when I had gym launch, uh, it was the same thing except we duplicated ourselves in Kayla and Maggie. They were a married couple. They basically just she sat in under Leila, Kayla sat in under me and they basically just like duplicated we just duplicated that way within the business. So, a question I have for you and I'll explain time breakdowns between Leila and I that are different is you do you have a So, you're the CEO.

6:24Alex Are you you're not the founder? >> I'm the founder and CEO. >> Oh, you are the founder. Okay. Well, then who's kind of like the visionary role within your business? >> I'm definitely the visionary role, but if I think about constraints, I'm obsessed with theory of constraints have been forever. I would sit down and work on that constraint. I'd work on it for 5 minutes and realize, "Ooh, Hannah needs to be running with this constraint." And I can connect with her, but she needs to run with it. I feel like you almost can take on every constraint and you enjoy taking on every constraint regardless of the functional area.

6:53Alex If I did that, I'd feel like I'm not empowering really good senior leaders to run with the most important they should be running with. >> Sure. Um, where did you like where are you Where's your magic or is your magic just in team building and >> I would say I would say I would I would I like to fancy myself Alan Mulally. Truly a mix of visionary, but truly someone that can execute as well. Not as strong a visionary as Elon Musk or Steve Jobs clearly. >> Me neither.

7:19>> But but but I like to be a little bit of both and I want to hold on to both. >> Well, I want to I'll drill into the Let me ask the question one level one level deeper. Where is your functional expertise? Like is your background in product? Is your background in marketing? Is your background in sales? Like >> Background is purely in fitness, but as I as as I was just in fitness, I realized, "Okay, I got to go to Stanford Business School. I got to learn from great leaders and executives." So, now I think I know how to run a business pretty well is probably the strength.

7:44>> If you are a owner and you are not growing as fast as you like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so, we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.