I just posted about re-discovering this old blog. Now I want to give an update on the business.
We celebrated our 5th year in business this past Summer. We made it past the dreaded "BIG PERCENTAGE NUMBER of businesses fail within 5 years" pitfall. Have you seen stats on businesses that cease to exist between 5-10 years? Kinda scary too.
We own our Google rankings for our market, all organic search rankings, no paid ads.
We have competition, and are doing well.
We won two awards this year in a local "Best of Little Rock" poll for music studio and birthday party location.
We have 10 teachers, 1 employee, a instrument repair shops and my wife is in the process of leaving her part time job (kept for health benefits) to help run the business full time. (Now that's scary!)
We incorporated this year (self employment taxes ate our lunch for 2010) and hope to see tax benefits from that.
I still clean the bathrooms and am amazed how clean the women's room stays day after day while us filthy beasts (men) are able to destroy the bathroom day after day. (goal for 2012 - hire a cleaning service).
I still love what I do, play guitar a lot and am able to spend quality time with the family.
Life is good!
That's all I've got right now. Bounce a few ideas off me for articles and I'll see what I can do.
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Monday, September 26, 2011
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Times is tough, yes they are...
I really believe many businesses are in "hunker down" mode right now, and rightfully so.
Holding on to cash and maintaining what little credit lines you have is essential as this economy heads south.
However, I believe you can also fall off the map by being too cautious. If you cut out all advertising, how will new customers find you? If you do not have a flexible service offering with regard to price and availability, how will you capture your market that is cutting back on spending?
We do great word of mouth advertising, and that is a direct result from our love of teaching and what we have to offer that other studios do not. We have great internet presence with top google ranking for our city in all guitar/bass/drum/teacher/lessons categories.
From that, you would think we could pull ad money back, right? I don't know. Or, let's say, I don't know enough to trust doing it. I've got a few targeted ads scheduled to run DEC/JAN to capture what Christmas spending we can. From past experience with this medium, I think we'll recover cost and make a profit, which is what it is all about right?
So, unless you're squeezing every nickle just to make rent, let loose will a little coin to get some ads going, no matter how small.
Holding on to cash and maintaining what little credit lines you have is essential as this economy heads south.
However, I believe you can also fall off the map by being too cautious. If you cut out all advertising, how will new customers find you? If you do not have a flexible service offering with regard to price and availability, how will you capture your market that is cutting back on spending?
We do great word of mouth advertising, and that is a direct result from our love of teaching and what we have to offer that other studios do not. We have great internet presence with top google ranking for our city in all guitar/bass/drum/teacher/lessons categories.
From that, you would think we could pull ad money back, right? I don't know. Or, let's say, I don't know enough to trust doing it. I've got a few targeted ads scheduled to run DEC/JAN to capture what Christmas spending we can. From past experience with this medium, I think we'll recover cost and make a profit, which is what it is all about right?
So, unless you're squeezing every nickle just to make rent, let loose will a little coin to get some ads going, no matter how small.
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