Music School Tribe

How to you handle an employee that wants a raise? What do you say? How do you determine how much to give them? Tune in as David talks about this and breaks down a strategy that you can implement into your business today! 

Your competitor is not always who you think they are... Sometimes they aren't even in the same industry. Tune in is as David breaks down different types of competitors. 

Tune in to this short message as David talks about the dangers of running your business out of fear.  How do you run your business when things feel uncertain? 

Often we restrict what we do in our business because we get a mental block about how to do it. Listen in as David talks about how to overcome this common problem. 

Do you struggle with feeling inadequate? Ever feel like an imposter? A fraud? Believe or not, this is really common. Even among high achievers. People you would never imagine. Many people portray confidence outwardly, but inside they are plagued with doubt and fear. Insecure about themselves and their abilities. If you feel this way you are NOT alone... Tune in to this episode and find out some ways to overcome this issue. 

One of the most profound success principles I've ever heard is this… “If you really want to succeed, take a look at what the majority of your competitors are doing, and do the exact opposite.” Earl Nightingale. You will realize how true this really is when you stop trying to follow the crowd and instead follow what works. Because the truth of the matter is, your biggest competitor is in your own mind. 

5-star reviews online are like GOLD and should be aggressively pursued and shamelessly exploited in your marketing. Without reviews your asking your customer to give you a try blind. Amazon has trained us all to check the reviews before we buy… If you don’t take reviews seriously it will significantly impair your ability to grow. A great place to start is to go to your favorite customers first and ask them to leave a review on your google page. Start there and regularly pursue more reviews as you grow. Reviews should be used in all your advertising both online and print.

It is crucial you have a system and a culture of referrals in your business. It should be expected they refer their friends. Also, the person who refers is more likely to stay than the people who doesn’t refer. So reward the ones that do, and keep reminding the ones that don’t. Once someone demonstrates the ability to refer - That’s who can refer more! You MUST make a BIG deal of it when they refer. I think it’s also worth mentioning the bigger the deal you make about referrals, the more you will get. Especially when you consider people are motivated far more by recognition than they are by money. You can and should use this to leverage more referrals. 

The best way to retain customers is through relationship with them. So personal touches is one way, b-day cards, gifts, follow up calls etc… Are you recognizing them for contests you run or for how long they have been with you? Is there a way for them to spend more money with you through upgrades or a more premium membership or service? The quickest way to keep people around is to get them to give you more money. 

Do you send surveys out to your customers regularly to study them? Where do they shop? What do they listen to? Are they primarily men? Women? Do they have kids? What is it keeping them up at night? If you don’t know who your customer is, then how do you know who to market to? And (equally as important) if you don’t know what motivates your customer then you will not know what to say in your sales message to them. 

When a customer calls your business who answers? What do they sound like? Are they happy? Are they trained with scripts? Do you mystery shop your own business? Do you have regular training to focus on 5-star customer service? The truth is, no matter how good your marketing is, it won’t matter if you don’t have awesome customer service. The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos said “Customers are loyal to you up to the moment somebody offers them better customer service.” 

Have a marketing system with at least TEN different lead sources. You cannot expect to get a big response in your marketing if your just in one place. Or worse… No place. You have to be everywhere. Online AND offline. Don’t be fooled into thinking you should only be marketing online. Do YOU still read mail that come in your mail box? Yeah… I do too. And so does your prospect. You need to be there. 

If your website lands on page two, it might as well be on page 812. It’s irrelevant. There’s a reason everyone uses the phrase “just google it”. It’s because EVERYBODY USES GOOGLE. Don’t waste your time and money worrying if your on the other search engines. Nobody cares about Yahoo or Bing… Google is king. Your ability to get yourself to page one of Google as fast as possible will directly reflect in your sales numbers. 

One of the ways to retain your customers and keep them coming back and paying you money is to stay engaged in relationship with them. The bigger you get the less this becomes a possibility. A newsletter that is sent to their mailbox every month is a fantastic way to continue interacting and relating to them. This is a must if you expect them to continue to be committed to you and not forget about you and go with your competitor.   

Your friends opinion doesn’t matter, your colleagues opinion doesn’t matter, your competitors opinion DEFINITELY doesn’t matter… Only RESULTS matter. At the end of the day, no matter how much you like an ad you might have written, if it doesn’t get results, it’s gotta go. If you have a product that is not selling, no matter how much your employees like it, no matter how pretty it might be… It’s gotta go! If you want your business to survive for any length of time you MUST extract your personal opinion and bias and just follow the money… The ONLY thing that matters is results. Period.

What you do is just a deliverable… Ultimately, it’s just a commodity if there are others offering it too. So you don’t want to be in the commodities business because you’ll be just another one of the thing you're offering. You’re REALLY in the business of getting and keeping customers. A lot of business owners take great pride in the deliverable. Which is fine. But no matter how good you are at what you do, it will be irrelevant if you have NO CUSTOMERS. So whether you like it or not, you are really in the marketing business. 

We are not in the perfection business. Highly productive people know when the project is good enough to produce results. And that’s when they move on to the next thing… It can ALWAYS be better. But at a certain point it won’t be any more profitable. So you MUST know your "good enough" spot. 

Every prospect that calls or emails in to inquire about your product or service is put into a sales funnel. This is a regimented system where they will be dripped on through a series of emails, newsletters, special coupons, phone calls etc… This will continue forever or until you quantify they are no longer a viable prospect. If you're NOT doing this, you are walking away from a huge amount of money and giving it to your competitor.

Are you good at what you do? If so, then it’s time to make sure everyone knows you are good at it. Make yourself known by: Writing books, Writing articles & advertorials, become active in industry and community affairs, feature yourself in advertising, feature yourself in videos, webinars, and social media, Get interviewed on radio and TV and then post on your website, use media to publicize your brand which is YOU.

Create differentiation and stop chasing after bottom feeders. Do NOT try to be the low price leader. You’ll LOSE… Don’t try to compete with your competitors… You’ll be frustrated. By positioning yourself as the expert and authority in your industry you will create demand because you will be in a category of one. You should broadcast your awards and your client testimonials. Let EVERYONE know about your accomplishments and awards. This will create a sense of celebrity status in your town. People will flock to you because celebrity is one the most powerful forces in marketing. Our culture is obsessed with celebrities. Once you have done all this, you can demand high prices and people will gladly jump over barbed wire fence, swim through shark infested waters, and BRAG about it just for the opportunity to pay for your services.

Saying everyone is your customer is the same thing as saying no one is your customer. No one has the budget to market effectively to the whole world… You're better off creating a specific niche and JUST focusing on them. If you think you're leaving money on the table by doing this you're not thinking correctly… Specialists in most any industry always demand higher prices. And they are almost ALWAYS in very high demand.

Sometimes growing does not mean more profit. It means more employees, more costs, more headaches… The point is PROFIT. How much is left over after all the bills are paid… You should spend your time trying to figure out what are the most profitable areas of your business. How you can create more profit centers like that. How you can lower your cost of goods and maximize profit. When did you last raise your rates? Are you over staffed? What unprofitable services are you offering customers you can eliminate without sacrificing the integrity of your product offering? Are you over paying in rent for your facility? What in your business is lying around being unproductive that you can put to work and monetize?

Of course, it is equally true that if you're going to spend real money on marketing you had BETTER know what the heck you're doing. So start studying! Either that or find someone that can help you. But the reality is, until you start spending REAL money on your marketing, you growth will be long and painful. Don’t be fooled by people who say, “My business is 100% word of mouth…” That may be true, but I guarantee you it took them a lot longer to accomplish this than if they had started with a strategic, aggressive marketing system. Don’t focus on how much the ad costs, focus rather on the ROI. If you gave me $5 and in return I gave you $50, would you feel reluctant to spend another $5?? The amount spent is irrelevant, the ROI is all that matters. Besides, as you develop your business marketing strategy, you should be looking for ways to spend MORE not less. This is how you will establish market domination over your competitors which gives you a significant advantage by discouraging competition.

What happens at the end of the rainbow? Or have you ever thought about that? Are you going to run your business until you die? Are you going to have your kids take over your business? Or do you have a plan to exit your business once certain financial goals are met? Do you know what those goals are?

Giving your employees a vision for where the company is headed so everyone is paddling the boat in the SAME direction is the key here. If we don’t take the time to inspire our staff and shine the light as to where the company is headed, you will have a rudderless ship. So this might look like holding regular meetings to articulate where the company is and where it is going. It could look like setting bonuses company wide for meeting certain targets as a company… This will garner more ownership from your employees.

How much extra time do you have during the day? Do you feel like there are never enough hours? Do you feel like you do things in your business someone else could do just as well (or maybe even better) than you? At some point you need to get OUT from working IN your business and start working ON your business. It’s very difficult to grow a business from the inside looking out. It’s a LOT easier to grow it from the outside looking in.

When most people think of marketing they think of coming up with an ad, putting it out there and waiting for a response. It’s usually a one and done. Next, they think up another ad and do it all over again. A marketing asset is an ad that can be used over and over again. This is great for your marketing system because you can set it and forget it. Over time these marketing assets become incredibly valuable because you can predict and even plan on the response it will generate. Building these marketing assets into your marketing system should be a high priority.

What are your daily bank deposits? How much money is going out and coming in? What is your most profitable customer? What is the life time value of your customer? What’s your customer retention rate? What is your profit margin? You MUST pay attention to the math! Separate your reactions to the emotional and focus on the math. You MAKE money with math. You LOSE money with emotion. So ask yourself, “Is this a math reaction or an emotional reaction?”

What is the big, fat, glaring problem staring you back in the face every day in your business you are not wanting or willing to deal with or face? Is it an employee that is a cancer to your business, a customer you need to fire because they are taking up all your time? Are you not paying yourself and just working for free? Do you have any idea what your P&L (or any of your numbers) looks like?

If your policy says “no” then you have to say “no”. Don’t let your customers manipulate you because they are nice, friendly, pretty, sexy, handsome, or whatever… If they see they can get you to change your systems and processes for them once, they will ask you again and again to bend over and fold yourself into a pretzel to accommodate their needs. The worst part is, it rarely will it equal you getting more business from them. And all it will do is frustrate you and take your focus off of what it should be on… Which is profit. It would be better for you to “fire” customers that don’t want to do business YOUR way. There should be no other way. The customer is NOT always right… That is unless they do things YOUR way… It’s your business after all… right??

Do you have a marketing system? Or does your marketing consist of random and sporadic acts, inspired by fear and panic? Or just ignorance…. What most business owners do is wake up one day and see sales are down. So they frantically scramble to put an ad in the newspaper, do a video shoot or radio ad. Then nervously cross their fingers waiting for the phone to ring. When it doesn’t produce the results they need, they throw up their hands and claim marketing is a sham and doesn’t work. What’s interesting about this is how much time and energy is put into the product development or service. Think about how meticulous you are with your systems of running your business… So what do you think would happen if you put just as much energy into your marketing? What if your marketing was a systematic process that ran on auto pilot to produce consistent and reliable results? This is how you MUST approach marketing. It’s NOT an event inspired by emotion. It’s a system that relies on measured results.

Hear the incredible story of how David and his wife overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to build the largest private music school in the Northwest.

Learn about a new program put together by Dave Simon called the virtual music school.

This is a special episode where share with you how you can pivot your business so that you can survive this crisis. I also talk about a strategy that we have used to generate over 200 new prospects.

Tune in as David talks about the beginning of phase three and how he hit a breaking point.

Tune in as David talks about something unexpected that happened in phase 2.

Tune is as David talks about the BIG mistake he made with his first rate increase

Tune in as David talks about what we all experience as music school owners when we first hire teachers.

Tune in as David talks about the 80% cap and how it can slow down growth.

Tune in as David talks about a discovery he made after hiring his first music teacher...

Tune in as David talks about the challenges of hiring his first teacher

Tune in as David talks about one thing he did that helped him grow his school.

Listen in while David talks about 3 big mistakes he made when he first started out with his music school.