[LEXIE LEE] The Married Entrepreneurs Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Bomb Mom and Grow A Group Practice, go to www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. [RON] Welcome to the Married Entrepreneurs Podcast. This is Ron Lee. [LEXIE] I am Lexie Lee. [RON] We are professional counselors and serial entrepreneurs who are married. [LEXIE] To each other. [RON] Thank you for joining us as we explore the business of life and the life of business. [LEXIE] Hey guys, I am so glad that you all are here today with this on the podcast. I’d like to start out with you all just telling me a little bit about who you are. [PHOENIX: Sure. So my name’s Phoenix and I’m joined with my wife, Danielle here. We’re two local entrepreneurs in Parker County. Formerly, I was a music teacher and I’ll let Danielle tell you about what she was doing before this. [DANIELLE] So I’ve been a public school teacher for seven years previously, before we stepped away from our public school teaching to do our full-time entrepreneur passions. You want to get into how we started everything? [PHOENIX: Well we’re here, we have two music schools today and we’re, we do a lot of other things besides the music academies, but that’s our bread and butter. [LEXIE] So the way that I first learned about you guys was when you were offering Ukulele lessons I saw a Facebook ad. So tell me a little bit about how that started. [PHOENIX: Sure. So that’s a fun story, but it started by us just being public school teachers trying to make ends meet. I was playing gigs on the weekends, performing at local venues, playing covers and Danielle was coming out to support me at those gigs. I was hoping to get into the recording studio, things like that, but all that stuff cost money so we started brainstorming ideas, what could we do? One of the first ideas we had was to do a summer camp and we rented out a school building and did a Ukulele themed summer camp called You Crazy. [LEXIE] How did you go from a summer camp to having two music academies? [PHOENIX: Whew, that was quite a journey, but I think what we had to do in order to get there and a really important lesson we’ve learned along the way is what got you to point a is not going to be what gets you to point Z. So we had to change our strategy completely. The first 12 months we created this “company,” which was just the two of us and it was called You Crazy. It was really just us teaching Ukulele classes. [DANIELLE] It’s important to know I have no musical background. So I had to learn everything from Phoenix, as we went. So I was always, the first summer camp, he was like, these are the songs we’re going to be teaching the kids. Go learn these. I would practice my Ukulele before camps and come and teach with him. [PHOENIX: Danny brings the educational background. She’s the person that helps get everything organized and the delivery. So what we did from day one, even though we ended up rebranding and we ended up changing from group lessons to private lessons and ended up, instead of us teaching, we hired private lesson teachers, the core concepts didn’t change, which is making music fun and approachable for students and presenting it to them in a way that’s palatable to them, that’s relatable to them. So that’s where Danny’s an expert, is relating to those students, developing a relationship with them and having cut to that pulse of what really engages our students. [DANIELLE] It was really gradual. So we had just our summer camps at first and then we realized just from talking to the parents after summer camps, they were like, can you teach my child private lessons. They wanted to continue, like, do you guys do this during the school year? At that time me and Phoenix were like, no, but, and we were thinking we could but we would have to figure out like when, where, how. So eventually after that first summer camp, we did a few after-school programs at local elementary schools. We did that first. So we would do like six week programs, 12 week programs, rent out elementary music rooms, bring our buckets of Ukuleles, go in there, teach kids, kids from all over could come. It wasn’t just that school. But just being in the county we’re in there, wasn’t tons of creative arts, musical opportunities in our space and parents were just really wanting that outlet for the kids. Eventually we were able to meet another local business owner in town. She happened to have a little space next to her business that had these two little rooms in them. They were probably like, no bigger than this office. probably total, how many square feet, like tiny little rooms. [PHOENIX: It was probably 500, 600 square feet [DANIELLE] We rented out this little space of these two rooms and that’s when we first started offering our first Ukulele private lessons, guitar. Then we slowly started hiring probably two teachers at first that came and did piano for us and some other instruments. [PHOENIX: That’s where we rebranded. You mentioned Facebook ads, so there’s two facets to this one is what did we do in the community in real life? We were going out into community events. We were meeting people whether it was through me being an elementary music teacher and meeting lots of parents and talking with students about their interests in music and telling them about our programs or taking off personal days to go and tour other music schools. I would do what I call music room takeovers. So I’d go to other music teachers and say, “Hey, you want a day off? Let me come do your job for a day. I’ll take a personal day and I’ll come and I’ll teach Ukulele all day and we’ll promote our classes.” We would do things like that and I learned the hard way, how to run effective ad campaigns on Facebook. I became a marketing expert, studied, now me and Danny both have studied, been to lots of marketing workshops, sales workshops, to be able to get those chops up. Because at the end of the day, there’s a lot of parents that come to us and say, I have an idea to do this program or I’d like to teach this class. All of the ideas are great, but execution is what we had to really learn in order for things to get organized because already you can see there’s all of these different programs. They change from group to private and — [DANIELLE] Because without all of that knowledge, it very easily could have just stayed a summer camp once a year after-school program type thing. But people always ask us, you grew so fast and you have, we got to 500 students relatively quickly in the grand theme of things. But it was because we were able to hone in on those marketing techniques to really take it from just me and Phoenix with our bucket of Ukuleles, to actually having employees now and running an actual school for what we do. [LEXIE] It sounds like the first hurdle you had to overcome was figuring out how to market it and that whole learning curve that comes with that. Then you shifted into, you’re not the only ones providing the service, right? You go from one to one service to now you’re going to one to a few and you have staff. What hard lessons did you have in that switch? [PHOENIX: You want to start on that one or do you want me to? [DANIELLE] You go. I’m still thinking. [PHOENIX: Well, that was a huge shift. That’s where we actually, the first challenge, like you said, challenge one is nobody knows you exist. So you just have to raise your hand and say I’m here. Our way of doing that was our original brand, which was called You Crazy, named that for. That’s a fun little name. It’s catchy. We had a very bright logo and it really stood out. It got a lot of people’s attention, but then we had to realize the limitations of that brand. Like you said, it’s just us. It’s never going to go above 40 or 50 students because we’ll get maxed out. It’s never going to make enough for us to quit our jobs as public school teachers. So we have to figure out a way to make this scalable. We actually went back to the drawing board and the best way to do that is to actually just look down the path, look at other people in your industry that have done something scalable. So in our industry, there’s school of rock, there’s guitar center, there’s other music academies across the nation that have thousands of students. We reached out to some of those fellow owners who have now become friends of ours in the DFW area. We actually went to go see their schools, we got to know some of them, we got involved in programs that gave us a framework and said, okay, this is how you write a job poster. This is how, just the basics. Now you have to go beyond that. I was doing, we were doing a lot of studying on our own. We were going to business conferences, things like that but when it comes to bringing on people, those are lessons we’re still learning today. The first thing I would say is if you want to bring on people, you have to first know how to set a standard. That way the people that come on board will be able to rise to that standard. Otherwise, they’re going to come on with their own standards. So what we’ve always done is we’ve always had standards. The standard is our lessons start on time. The standard is that our students are going to be engaged in their lessons. From the very beginning we had student questionnaires, we had lesson follow up sheets, we got with our instructors to get to know them and their background so we can book them with the appropriate students. So I think that’s a big mistake a lot of businesses will make. They think, oh, I’m going to get employees. They’ll just do, they’ll figure it out for me. No, they’re going to cause more problems for you. You need to anticipate the problems they’re going to cause. [RON] So you see it as setting up strong work boundaries systems in order to make sure that people understand exactly what they’re doing. You went through the efforts of creating the manuals, the logs, all of those things saying here’s and operational. You don’t have to think about it. We created the box for you. Here you go. [PHOENIX: That’s the ideal, yes. We did the best we could at two months and then we refined it at six months and then we go back again and we have to tweak it. We’re still tweaking those operations because that’s also the trick, is a company that has for us 250 clients or students versus 700. Well now our systems have changed. Now, when we used to have a great week, we enrolled 10 students, that was a great week. Well now we just rolled out our summer camps. We’re processing maybe a hundred enrollments in the next 30 days just for that. Then private lessons. Then we have 25 instructors. So there’s different challenges. That’s one of the challenges we’ve had with training new employees now. Our original employees, they started in the complexity, increased with them. So happened over time. Now new employees are coming in and they’re opening Pandora’s box on day one. Like I need to now learn the frameworks of a much larger enterprise and the expectations are much higher. So it goes hand in hand and it’s a seesaw. [RON] But there’s a beauty with the new employees. They don’t know the old system so they’re not bucking it all the time. They just walk in the door going, oh, this is the way we’re supposed to do it. They don’t ask questions. The people that we had in the beginning go, well, what do you mean we’re going to do it different? I don’t want to do it different. No, you have to roll with the flow buddy. You have to roll. [PHOENIX: You hit the nail on the head. I think that’s what Danny and I have had to learn is the easy part is, the exciting part is when somebody’s coming on board, everybody’s excited. Then they’re excited to get the job and we’re excited to get to know them and what they’re going to do for our company. Well over time is when we learn whether we’re actually aligned and that’s the reason we’ve been really focusing on how do we build that alignment? Well, what we have discovered is this, especially in husband, wife, but this applies to partnerships of any kind business partnerships, but we have to be aligned as the owners first. What we’ve realized is we have been able to scale our company up quite a bit, but until we get aligned, we can’t get to the next level. [LEXIE] Well, and we always say that marriages and businesses can fail for the same reasons. So that wants me to circle around and find out how did the two of you meet? [DANIELLE] Let me take that one. Like I said, was a public-school teacher and I had summers off, obviously and I was teaching here in Texas and me and some of my other teacher friends wanted to take a vacation that summer. So we booked a cruise out of Galveston and we were getting on the boat that first day, this guy was playing the music for the ship. He used to work on Carnival Cruise Line. He was playing his guitar, singing his country music right there in center of the ship first thing I saw when I walked on and he walked up and talked to me, invited me to the rest of his shows for the cruise and the rest is history. We got to talk in and became really good friends and kept in touch afterwards. There was a whole long story after that, but we eventually both settled down in Texas. He got a teaching job here in Texas and I was teaching close-by as well and we got married a few years after that. [LEXIE] So what did you think when you first met Phoenix? [DANIELLE] I don’t know. I mean, I think there was a lot of things, actually people, when I tell people I met somebody on a cruise ship it’s just like, oh, it was just like you all were partying. It was just nothing serious, but we actually had really great conversations. I remember the first day he asked me to coffee. Phoenix has always been so goal-oriented and he had his notebook and he was like, can I read you my goals for the next five years? I was like, yes, sure. He run me his goals and I was telling him what I was working on. That’s why not that business by any means has been easy for us but from the moment we’ve met, we’ve always been talking about building something and wanting to be entrepreneurs and wanting to build something. Eventually when we started dating and we’re engaged, we wanted to build something together. I always say, I mean, we had our first summer camp when we were just dating. We weren’t even married yet. So I always say like, we just don’t know any different. We did that from day one. So when I met him, I was like, wow, this guy’s really passionate. He has so many goals. It was really exciting for me, [LEXIE] Such a fun story. Phoenix, what did you think when you first met Danny? [PHOENIX: Well, I shared my goals with her, but her response to that was what really caught my attention because she was just as goal-oriented. I mean, so Danny, by age 25, she had been a public school teacher for five years and then she was on track to finish her master’s degree by the end of that calendar year. So she was somebody that was driven and that was a rarity for me. As you can imagine, I’m working on cruise ships, so I probably was on ships for about two years off and on. So you go on for about four months and then you get off for four to six weeks and you get back on, you do another contract. And I had been going through this routine and you don’t really form a lot of long lasting relationships. I was trying to, I was trying to market my music and build an email list and it’s funny and I’m always telling business owners to be marketing. It’s exactly why because I got her signed up for my email list [DANIELLE] That’s how he contacted me after the cruise. He’s like, well I have her email. [PHOENIX: So we were able to stay in touch. We were able to become Facebook friends, but I mean, I was inspired by her from the first day that we spoke and I mean, I was captivated by her before that. Then once she left the ship, we had, it was a four-day cruise and then she left. I was still on the ship. That next four months after that, when we started building our relationship long distance, it was a very difficult time period but the first impression that I had was one of the things that formed that foundation. Even I was just telling her a couple of days ago. I still think about when we first met and it’s a beautiful memory. [LEXIE] You both strike me as such driven, goal-oriented people. Sometimes that can be great when you’re married to each other and sometimes that can be some challenges. So what has it been like trying to merge these different ideas and make sure that you’re both accomplishing what those goals are? [PHOENIX: That’s something we’ve actually realized recently is it’s our greatest strength. What we realized is exactly that same framework, you know how assets can become liabilities. For us, we’re both super goal-oriented. I can bring an idea or Danny can bring an idea. I think a lot of people, their struggle is maybe their spouse doesn’t get on board with their ideas. We’re pretty good about telling each other, helping each other stay on track but if we feel like the other person has a good idea, then we want to take it to the moon. That could be great but that also, like for example, could create, in our workplace for some of our employees, we have one great idea on Monday that takes a lot of time and energy and resources. Then on Wednesday, there’s another idea. It’s equally great but it’s going to take considerable time and energy and resources. What we’ve had to realize is the resources, not only in our company are limited, but our own resources are limited. Our energy is limited and we have to respect those boundaries and take that time to recharge together, to rest, to get centered and that will help us to be focused for the future. Yes. [LEXIE] Any tips for anyone who may be struggling with the, exactly the same thing of, we have all these ideas, but limited resources? [DANIELLE] I don’t know. I mean, because I stand by, like anytime Phoenix tells me he wants to do something, I’m just like, yes, I know you can do that. It’s about choosing the right thing at the right time. I mean, it’s almost, sometimes we have to find the humor in it because there’ll be days where Phoenix is like, my passion is film producing. I want to produce films. Then he is like, I want to revolutionize education and there’s so many and I’m like, I believe you can do all of those things, but let’s think about setting the goals and being super intentional about — [PHOENIX: Maybe we could revolutionize education by producing films. [DANIELLE] By producing film. There’s lots of things and you only need one idea that really, that’s where Phoenix is like, that’s why I never tell him he can’t do something because he struck gold when he had this idea. I was like, I know you can do it and I’m going to be by your side. There have been ideas that have come and we’ve tried and failed miserably at. Sometimes such is just the lessons. Like we have to try it. We’ve had so many losses. We have tried to do so many different things before the music academy, we tried to start different businesses or wanted to do different things. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying it and failing and learning from it but once you get to that point where there’s so many ideas, just creating that intention behind it, like how could me and you realistically get behind this together? Do we want to even be doing this in five years? Because there are businesses me and Phoenix have almost recently just started that we had to be like, actually, I don’t even know if I want to do this in five years. It sounds really great now and we have the resources right now, but I don’t know if I want to be involved in that in the next five years and just taking a step back, seeing what the intention is seeing, if you guys can stay aligned on that for the future years to come. [PHOENIX: You got to have systems and frameworks, even for the way that you present new ideas. Now for us, we can’t just say I have an idea. We have to also follow it up with what’s the action plan behind it and is it aligned with where we want to take our company? Because if it’s not, if it’s going to be something totally random — [DANIELLE] He knows, the other day he walked out and I was looking up how to start a dog boarding business because I love dogs and he was like, love you, but not the time. We need to move on from that. You’re in your head. But that’s just how we both are. I’ll come in and he’s researching something else like crypto. It’s just always something. I think that comes with being an entrepreneur. You know there’s so many opportunities out there and you just want to grab onto all of it, but that can be like that. Our motto lately has been, our assets can become our liabilities. I think our thinking big, we realized that we can experience great loss in that as well, but we’ve also experienced great wins. So it’s just finding the balance [PHOENIX: Most people don’t ever get to the great wins, because they’re not willing to go through the great losses and consider all of the bad ideas and face the failure. Because it does suck to fail. It is embarrassing to make a bad decision, a bad business move. But if you don’t have a spouse or partner that is going to be able to say, “Hey, I know that that wasn’t the greatest move, but what can we learn and how can we move forward,” that support system is the only reason why we have been able, I have been able to have success, and I would say both of us together because we both have that. [DANIELLE] We always say, if we fail and we lost everything, we’re always willing to do that because we know we could build something back together and we’re always like whenever we get into something new. I’m like, are we willing just to lose it all and have to start over? That’s where we have to be like, yes, because you don’t want to hold resentment. Like if this your idea doesn’t work out, I’m not going to be like, well you messed this up. I didn’t mess this up. No, we have to be all in hundred percent together and we can start over if we need to. [RON] So Phoenix, I want to give you a nugget. You spent a lot of time developing this great email website email list. Use that to find out what the next step is instead of using your own money to develop an idea that may not go anywhere. So now I got $3,000 invested in this idea and it didn’t go anywhere. That’s a bummer. Instead of that, use your email list, contacts people you already have and go, what do you want next? So as soon as I develop this, I already have a market because these 15 people said, “Hey, this is what we want to see.” Awesome. I can make that happen. You make it happen. Then you reach back out to these 15 and go here it is. Are you ready? Instant clients. You’re not wasting time. There you go. There’s a nugget. [LEXIE] Several times as we’ve been chatting, you’ve used the word aligned or alignment. I feel like that word has some special meaning for you all. Can you tell me about that? [PHOENIX: Well, sure. So we’ve been talking a lot about alignment and it’s the working title for our book and the book is actually going to go deeper. So we got a little bit into the story of how we met. Well, I actually did a podcast on that story just on going from how me and Danny met to how we ended up in Weatherford and starting the academy and talked about it for 90 minutes. So I glossed over it here, because I wanted to focus more on the business lessons, but that story, as well as some of the specific challenges that we’ve had in business, this is going to be our tell all of everything that we’ve been through from the greatest victories to the most gut wrenching hardships that we’ve had in business. The thing about business in alignment that I’ve learned is what business is not at all what I thought that it was. I thought it was this ruthless place where there’s no space for emotion and feelings don’t matter only results do. It’s just not. I’m so thankful that I was able to start a company with my wife. So I was able to have that feedback system to let me know when I’m out of alignment, out of alignment with my own personal values, out of alignment with the values of what the company stands for. And the alignment works on so many different levels and that’s why we have been really obsessing about it lately. [LEXIE] I am so excited that you’re working on that book. It definitely sounds like something that I want to read. Can we have you come back when you’re done with the book and we can talk about it further? [PHOENIX: Yes, yes, yes, yes. We would love to come back and talk about it more. It’s in the very, we’re actually meeting with our writers today, our writing team, that’s helping us take all of this information and put it on paper. We’re really excited about that process because it’s going to unfold a lot of the different internal struggles that happen with the external struggles and how we got over some of those hurdles, but we’re anticipating the book being completed towards the end of this summer, so summer 2022. [LEXIE] Great. I have just one thing that I want to end on. You all mentioned it a little bit when you first met how you had some great conversations and we think that that is a key element that’s so important for keeping your relationship, keeping that spark. So we like to offer questions that people can ask their partner to have an interesting conversation where you’re not talking about work, you’re not talking about kids, that it’s just an interesting conversation. But we also like it to be fun. So my question for you all is if you had a song that played when you walked into the room, what would that song be? [PHOENIX: I already, I know mine instantly. [DANIELLE] Oh man. See, he’s a musician so I knew he would have his instantly. You go first. [PHOENIX: Well, mine would be, I believe in — [DANIELLE] Ok, that’s what I was thinking. [PHOENIX: Because we played it at our wedding by the darkness. [DANIELLE] And we sing it to each other all the time and I can’t sing, but do the first, do the live? [PHOENIX: Well, we go I believe in everything for love. [DANIELLE] We would rhythm [PHOENIX: We do it call back across the house [DANIELLE] If I need him to go get me something, I’ll just, that’s my call for him and then he’ll come do it. [PHOENIX: But it’s so perfect [DANIELLE] It’s like our jam [PHOENIX: We do believe in a thing called love. So it’s appropriate. [DANIELLE] What is the band that plays that? [PHOENIX] The Darkness. Okay, it’s not a super popular song, but it’s been our theme song. If we had a reality show, that’s what would play at the ending scenes. [LEXIE] That is so great. Hey guys, thank you so much for coming on with us today. I loved the conversation, love what you all are doing and look forward to having you back on to talk about your book. [DANIELLE] We look forward to that too. Thank you all so much. [PHOENIX: Thanks so much guys. [DANIELLE] Yes, you too. [RON] You too. [LEXIE] Thank you for listening. Time is our most valuable resource and we appreciate that you shared your time listening to us. If you enjoyed our show, please rate us or give us a review. You can share this episode with someone that you think may benefit. You can find more from us at marriedentrepreneurspodcast.com. [RON] This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.