[00:00:00] Sean: So you have this beautiful engine of marketing for you, that's just driving in leads, just driving in the sales for you. And the other guitar teachers didn't have it, as you mentioned earlier. When was the time that you finally realized that “I have so much going on and I can't just throw these leads out the window, I got to hire people?”

Chris: I think that was the point where I had done my own space and I was still sort of doing the networking, but I was advertising in the yellow pages. If you know what the phone book is - I know the younger people will not remember. They're used as a book before Google, which everybody used. And once I started and I was the only guitar teacher who bought like a yellow pages ad.

So you'd go on yellow pages. It'd be like, you know, little listings of every person. And there was a big ad that said guitar lessons, all ages, all levels, expert, you know. It's like a thing about it - I read a book on how to write a yellow pages ad, designed the ad and the phone was ringing and I was like, well, I could have a waiting list and make people wait six months.

Or I could hire a guy to come in on Saturdays and Fridays when I'm not there. And so it was just that. And so then after that was full, I said, okay, I'm going to get two offices. "Hey, the office next to me, is open enough. Okay well, I'm going to hire another guy. And at that point, I had added two more guys, actually.

So it went from me to four people, almost like, "Okay, now there's an office of fire." And so then I, you know, you need to hire a secretary, basically, someone to handle the scheduling and someone to help you keep track of the billing. And so then it just sort of kept going like that. And this was - this was then what I just compressed was like 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, like another four year period work, like it just kept growing.

Sean: Got it. And when you were hiring your first people, what were some of the challenges that came up? Because I know when I was a first-time leader. Yeah. We were both business owners, but we were solo flights back then. But being a first-time leader, what were the first difficulties that cropped up for you?

Chris: Yeah, I knew right away. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Like I knew a lot about marketing. I knew a lot about the front end of the business, like teaching guitar. And then I was very good with talking to people and I liked the client. I understand marketing. You know I was never a manager.

I had no management experience. I mean, even as a kid, the jobs I had. I delivered papers, there was nothing to manage. You know, and in the restaurant job that I had, I worked in a kitchen, I was making pizza. So I had no management experience. I didn't know - there were no software. There were not, you know. We got it, at some point I had a computer and got an Excel spreadsheet and that became, you know, keeping track of the finances and I have to pay these people all the time.

And what I did that it got a lot easier. You know, it started like explaining stuff to people and writing like an employment agreement and then not, you know, I guess they would say, okay, so if you start at two o'clock, you need to be on time. And if you can't make work, here's what you can do. And just spelling out all the different things about the job, what the expectations were.

 A lot of stuff I took for granted. You know, if I had a client at 2:30, I didn't show up at 2:45. You show up on time, things like that, or just how we teach the classes. So we started, you realize these people need some training, and then we're looking to you to explain how to do things and set the borders and the parameters. And it took me about a year to figure that out.

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