Chris Honeycutt of Honeycutt Music
In this episode Richard and Nathan sit down with the strongest man in music retail, Chris Honeycutt - owner of Honeycutt Music. Chris has a great success story and continues to thrive in today's retail environment.
Find Honeycutt Music online:
https://www.honeycuttmusicstore.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/honeycuttmusic/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/honeycuttmusic/
This podcast was produced by MIRC, the nation's largest wholesaler of used guitars. If you need inventory for your music store or online music store check out www.mircweb.com to learn how you can become a dealer today!
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N: Alright, hey! We’re going to do a great episode today. This is going to be, this is a special occasion. It is a special occasion, obviously, Richard, because this is not only our first live show, but it is our first guest…
R: Yes.
N: ...that we have ever had on here. So, we actually don’t know how this is going to go.
R: It is going to go great.
M: It is all uphill from now! What are you talking about? It is straight up hill from now!
R: Hey, we’ve talked over the last couple of weeks, maybe 3, 4 weeks, about guests and getting guests in, and one thing we both agree on, not because he is in the room, but one thing that we agreed on is Mark would probably be one of the best guests for retail.
N: Yes.
R: Somebody that we can bring in that has a wealth of knowledge, that is good explaining things. He has a ton of stuff to talk about, and we’re going to bring some of, not all, some of his ideas out, and we can honestly sit here all day and talk to him, so we’re super excited. So, what I’m going to do is introduce Mark Maxwell. Thank you for being here.
M: Oh, yeah. Thank you.
R: I am going to do something a little different. I am going to try to do something a little different, and that is kind of take a backseat. You work with Mark a lot.
N: We’ll see how it all works out.
(Nate and Mark laugh)
R: Yeah, we’ll see how that works out. I purposely took my questions and threw them away to try to stay out. I unfortunately have a lot of words, but you guys have a great relationship, and I think it is very, very important that we sit back. I’m going to try to concentrate on you guys. Try to keep Mark in line, but we have a lot of questions. Mark has a lot of history, and what we’re, I explained this to a manufacturer the other day is “Yes, we sell guitars but the goal is to be an educator. We want to educate our dealers and everybody involved”. We have an educator right here, and what we want to do is we want to focus on some of the techniques and some of the things that he has learned over several years, and we will dive into that, on how we can make music store’s days easier, better and give them a ton of ideas that will help their business and hopefully let them enjoy the music industry. So, I’m going to sit back a little bit. I’ll throw in a few questions.
N: Yeah, absolutely.
R: We have a couple questions from people here, an audience that we have, and we’ll ask a couple of those, but for the most part I’m going to take a back seat, and again, thanks Mark.
M: Oh yeah, you’re welcome. I appreciate you guys.
N: Yeah, this is a great opportunity because Mark has been a great client and friend. We’ve had lots of conversations. Not only that, met a lot of people. Mark has been a huge cheerleader for MIRC. I wonder how many referrals that we have business that we have.
R: We actually get, do better… See, I’m already jumping in.
N: That is fine.
R: We actually do more business by his referrals than he actually buys.
M: Yeah, probably so. You’re welcome.
(Richard laughs)
R: I’m just kidding.
N: Yeah, but Mark has been awesome over the years. When I came back here, you guys were already buying, so as far as I’m concerned, you’ve been back here with MIRC for over 7 years.
M: Mhm.
N: I think over 8 years, and I’m telling you what, it has been a great ride. We have always referred back to Maxwell’s House of Music, previously Mom’s, as a great example. You’ve come up in tons of business meetings and sales meetings about, just about ideas that have come up, things that you’re doing. Especially as we dive into, you talked about the rebranding of your business, that has come up. We have talked a lot about that. Every time you have always been a part of our events, like right now. You always come in town for NAMM. You send people here to the workshops. You’ve invested a ton of your time and effort and resources into MIRC, and therefore we have always wanted to invest our time and effort and resources back into you as well.
M: Oh yeah, you guys have been more than supportive. It’s interesting, too, because you guys have really… it has been fun to watch how you guys have grown. This is weird, because on the front side of MIRC and me thinking about even looking at this thing at all, I didn’t quite get it. You know what I’m saying? Then, once I did, I told everybody about it. I really did. I told music stores all around me. When they were struggling, I would say, “Hey, why don’t you just check out what they do? Drive down there and just walk through one time and you’ll go ‘Oh, wow.’” and so, I think you guys are great. I really do.
R: Thank you. We really appreciate that.
M: I don’t like either one of you....
(Nate laughs)
R: We understand that.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
M: ...but you have a great enough product that I don’t have to like you.
N: Yeah, you’re forced to get along.
R: If you’re making money, that is good enough.
M: It is, yes.
N: So, obviously, we’ve enjoyed you over the years.
M: Thanks.
N: So, when we’ve thought about who could we have, like Richard said, who could we have our first guest, we were like, “Oh, we have got to have Mark. Mark would be perfect. '' So, even just the few times that we have talked even just about business, we felt like, “Hey, Mark has probably got a lot to contribute to other businesses”.
R: Yes.
N: You’ve been in business for what, 34 years now?
M: Mhm.
N: 34 years, and you’ve worked for multiple stores. You’ve branched out from your family business. You’ve started your own, so we think you have a lot to contribute to what is going on out there.
M: Yeah, my dad has always... My dad started as a drummer.
R: Smart guy.
M: Yeah.
(Mark laughs)
M: I know you love that.
N: Why didn’t you want to be a musician?
(Nate laughs)
M: Oh, thank you very much. You are so horrible. So, my dad started as a drummer in Louisville and went out on the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars with his band and they were touring everywhere, and you know, had three kids at home and said, “I have 3 kids at home. I have got to do something else”. So, we came back and started working at music stores in Louisville. He started a pretty big store in southern Indiana with another gentleman, then left that and started Mom’s Music more than 35 years ago. So, most of the stuff I know or learned is usually because of my Dad, you know? He was… there was this guy, I don’t know if it was just in Louisville, but there was this TV commercial and they called him Mad Max; “I’d give it away, but my wife won’t let me!”, that was his key phrase. That was my dad, because my dad, I don’t think he really cared much about making money. I think he wanted to make sure that music kept going, and that was his whole thing. It was probably the reason that Mom’s Music survives in Louisville and that Maxwell’s House of Music is in Jeffersonville, and literally most of the stores are gone. Most of them are gone, just because it was… I’m telling you, in anything you do, if it is about who walks in your door or calls you on the phone, if you make it about them, you don’t have to ever make it about you. You make it about them, they will always make it about you. You care about the musician, the kid that walks in the door, whatever it be. That is all you got to do is give, give, give, give, give, and I’m telling you, they are going to tell everybody. You’re going to get all of the business in the world because of it. I think that we think it is about us being in this industry, me, Mark Maxwell, and it is just not. It is about whoever walks in that door or calls me on that phone. I want to help them get to their dream, whether it is learn to play an instrument, whether it is to be in a band, whatever that they decide they want to do and the reason that they are calling me, and I think that came from my dad. He was always so into the musicians of the community, of the town.
N: Yeah.
M: It worked well. So, he is still in business and I am still in business.
N: You’ve obviously been in this business long enough and seen how things have changed.
M: Oh, yeah.
N: Are you saying that that is something that is kind of been lost from the music store industry?
M: Well, I think that we have made it this thing that it is not. I do believe it is not. It is about that guy playing guitar, or that guy playing drums, or that girl playing keys or singing. It is about musicians making music and the tools they need to do so. If you create that relationship of really just caring about what they want to do, it will carry you for life; lifelong friends, lifelong customers. So, I think that is where people have lost it. I think they think it is about selling this, and that, I gotta be honest with you, I want to sell you this. I’ll be glad to sell you this if you want to support this or whatever that widget they used to call it is, but I like at it as more of as this relationship has got to be a relationship.
R: Yes.
M: It is, you know, for all the things, you care about those people. You invest in those people. You find out “Is this just something they want to do sitting by the campfire?”, “Is this something they want to go to college and become?”, a teacher or whatever it is, and then you have got to help those people. If we will get back to that… well, now I can’t tell…
N: And there are some that are doing that.
M: Are you kidding me? Heck yeah, there are! I mean, they are obviously surviving well because of it, you know, or barely surviving but they are still okay with the fact that they know they are doing their part. There is nothing like a kid who is now a grown up man that comes into my store and goes, “Man, you did this. You gave me advice. '' I mean, a kid called me from the Tonight Show and said, “Hey, I just want to say thanks. My band is playing on Tonight. I hope you watch it”.
R: Wow. Wow.
N: That is killer.
M: I’m like “What a call”, you know? It is just because I said, “Dude, you can do this”. Was he great at what he does? No, I just said to be determined. He only had to learn these 12 songs to play in this band, so go learn those 12 songs the best you can, go do the audition, keep your head up, have a lot of fun, and he did and got the gig, went on tour, and called me. The first week he was on tour with Kid Rock, you know?
R: Wow, that is crazy.
M: So, this band did well and did its thing. Then, that Tonight Show call was just really special to me. I just thought, “Wow, that is ridiculous”, you know?
N: A lot of what you are saying is, man, it is an investment. It is a long investment in… you just talked about somebody who was young, now they are a grown adult calling and saying “Thank you”...
M: Absolutely.
N: ...where you know you are right. People go, “Hey, I’ve got to sell a bunch of these”. So, just real quickly, how can we help people connect the dots from, “Yes, I’ve got to sell this product, but I’ve also got to invest in people’s lives too”. Maybe a lot of times there can be a disconnect, because we realize life sets in. People have bills to pay, a lot of employees to pay, people have employees to fire that aren’t doing a good job, but somehow they are supposed to all come back around and go, “Hey, I invest in these people and invest in their lives. I want to make relationships”.
M: I think it’s important, one, if you’re a store owner that you surround yourself into the store with people you like. Right? That you think are going to carry on the vision of whatever you’re setting your vision as.
N: Have you found that hard to do?
R: No, he’s had a hard time finding employees that like him.
(Nate laughs)
M: I think that is probably best said right there. No, I haven’t. I learned to do this years ago, I think. I’ve had a few things that I just realized, I, uh, I hired somebody to work for me that wasn’t what I thought they were.
N: Yeah.
M: I’m pretty frank about this stuff, but I like good, nice people and if I have to spend 8 hours in a building with somebody, I want to like them.
R: Sure.
M: I want to know… I really do, I want to like them, and I want them to see the vision, and I want them to understand it and push for it. So, that’s my first thing, but then the second thing is that when the door opens and there’s somebody that walks into the door, my view of every person is, “I have no idea what kind of day she had today. I have no idea what this guy is going through”. This guy may have lost his house this week. His kid is sick. He is sick. His wife just died. Whatever, I think about people as humans. I love Jesus, so I think about it as if Jesus was standing there and that is me, I think, “Would He want to love on this person?” So, that has been my whole kind of step, so a person walks in the door and I’m thinking, “That guy has had a rough day. I just know it, his job sucks”. This is his moment to walk in this door, whether he’s taking a lesson or whether he’s just coming to peruse the place. They think at first, when they first meet me, that I’m a salesman because I’ll ask them questions. I’ll qualify them as a human, and I’ll say, “Hey, so you play?” and they’ll say, “No, but I want to”, so, “Tell me your dream. Do you want to sit by a campfire? Do you want to play for your girlfriend? Do you want to play in a band? You want to go on tour? Tell me what it is you dream about, and we’ll talk about how we get you there”. So, eventually, I get to that conversation. I just think who is in front of you is what matters right there, but then the secondary thing is that person that calls. So, if a phone calls in the middle of it, I’ll say, “Hey, listen. I’m with somebody, but I promise I’ll call you back”, and boom, get their number and soon as I have that moment, I’ll call that person back and I’ll say, “Hey” because they are important to me too. My dad always said to me that you don’t get a job from somebody by calling them on the phone, you go to their place of business and you shake their hand. So, my first person, anybody that comes in the store is who is going to get my time.
N: Yes.
R: Yes, I agree.
M: Again, there is people that are going to latch on and they are going to spin. I know there is people out there, naysayers, who say, “These people just waste my time”, and I’m like, “Yeah, man, but they won’t so much if you’ll really kind of like help focus them in a direction”. Now, if they… and I think that’s what I’ve learned to do is just care. I like people, I want them to do well in their life, and I’ll give them all the advice they want or they can tell me to go to Hell.
N: Yeah, well, I’m telling you, I’ve been walking in music stores for a long time and I’ll tell you, back when the guitar was extremely popular, you know, there is a lot of other music that has come along, but man, it was almost like the owners had this attitude like, “Hey, thanks for coming into my store. You’re here for me. You’re here to come into this” and it was never about this. I’ve never felt like people wanted to serve the customers, found out what your dreamers are, what do you wanna do? Then, all of the sudden Kurt Cobain comes along and pounds out three chords and two guitar solos and people go, “Aw, the guitar died”. You almost kind of wonder, well, maybe that atmosphere didn’t die. Maybe it was going to die anyways. It just needed a catalyst to kind of push it forward because what you’re talking about right now, in my opinion, I have not seen a lot of.
M: Absolutely.
R: It is a lost art.
N: It is a lost art that is not in a lot of music stores that I’ve seen. I’m not discrediting all the people out there that run great music stores. That’s awesome.
M: Hey, but I get my heart broken, too. I get my heart broken because I’ve spent a lot of time with somebody and advice them a lot, and I think I’m doing the best job. Then, they walk in the door and open their case and go, “Man, check this out”.
N: Yeah, I bought this on Amazon!
M: I had it right there on my wall, and I look at them and go… and I do, I’ll say to them, “Hey, you know something. I have spent a lot of time with you. I have because I care about you and I want you to do well, but man, I would love to have your support of your music business too, because if you don’t support me, I’m not here to invest in you”. So, you can’t just let it go. You do have to say, “Hey, I’m going to care about you and I hope you do the same for me. The way I can do it is I can invest in you and help you figure out your dream and how you get there. At the same time, you can help me if you do buy a guitar, you give me first shot or something, you know, even if I don’t have it”. There is lots of times I’ll say, “I just don’t do this product. I can’t get it for you, so I understand you have this desire for it. Go get it. Be happy about that”. I have lots of people who come to me with that. They want to buy it from me, and they’ll pay even more money. I’ve have customers who’ll say, “Look, I know it is $300 online. I’ll give you $350. Why don’t you just buy it online, bring it to your store. I want to give you the money”. Swear to you, I have people. I have a customer I’m thinking of right now. He;s bought 2 or 3 things to me that I don’t even carry the line. Literally I had to buy it from musicians friend and bring it in my store and he paid me $50 more to do it.
N: Really?
R: Wow. Wow.
M: Because he would not buy it from anybody else.
R: Good for him.
M: So, that is the kind of human I want. I want that kind of human being to hang out with me. I want him to be my friend because I think he knows that I need to be taken care of too. I have a music store that propels your dream, you know? It does. So, I want everybody to be happy and do their thing.
N: I can only imagine sitting there and going… and somebody walks in and they open that case like, “Hey, look what I just bought” while it’s hanging on the wall. Man, I would love to get that whole scenario on video because you’re probably like, “What?”. That was a bad idea to bring this in.
(Nate and Mark laugh)
M: Now, there was one guy who… I was in a ripe mood, and I just looked at him and said, “Are you kidding me?”. I said, “Are you kidding me right now?”
N: There were probably crickets.
M: Oh yeah, he was just sitting there and looked at me. Like, you bought that from somebody else because you saved $30? I mean, seriously, how much time have I spent with you? I showed you that product in the first place. I showed somebody a product that had never seen the product before and a few months later he came in to ask a specific question that I knew he wouldn’t have been able to ask unless he had one.
R: Unless he had it, yeah.
M: And I just said…
R: You probably spent $50 the labor.
M: Yeah, I did. I spent a lot of time with the guy, but you know something? He either walked away from the situation after I said “Really? I mean, really, is this where we’re at?” because yeah, that $30 would have helped me through the situation, sure it would have. I’m a music store. I have to sell things. I have… people have to sign up for lessons. I think people have to think about what they’re doing. I mean, I find myself
R: Yes.
N: ...that we have ever had on here. So, we actually don’t know how this is going to go.
R: It is going to go great.
M: It is all uphill from now! What are you talking about? It is straight up hill from now!
R: Hey, we’ve talked over the last couple of weeks, maybe 3, 4 weeks, about guests and getting guests in, and one thing we both agree on, not because he is in the room, but one thing that we agreed on is Mark would probably be one of the best guests for retail.
N: Yes.
R: Somebody that we can bring in that has a wealth of knowledge, that is good explaining things. He has a ton of stuff to talk about, and we’re going to bring some of, not all, some of his ideas out, and we can honestly sit here all day and talk to him, so we’re super excited. So, what I’m going to do is introduce Mark Maxwell. Thank you for being here.
M: Oh, yeah. Thank you.
R: I am going to do something a little different. I am going to try to do something a little different, and that is kind of take a backseat. You work with Mark a lot.
N: We’ll see how it all works out.
(Nate and Mark laugh)
R: Yeah, we’ll see how that works out. I purposely took my questions and threw them away to try to stay out. I unfortunately have a lot of words, but you guys have a great relationship, and I think it is very, very important that we sit back. I’m going to try to concentrate on you guys. Try to keep Mark in line, but we have a lot of questions. Mark has a lot of history, and what we’re, I explained this to a manufacturer the other day is “Yes, we sell guitars but the goal is to be an educator. We want to educate our dealers and everybody involved”. We have an educator right here, and what we want to do is we want to focus on some of the techniques and some of the things that he has learned over several years, and we will dive into that, on how we can make music store’s days easier, better and give them a ton of ideas that will help their business and hopefully let them enjoy the music industry. So, I’m going to sit back a little bit. I’ll throw in a few questions.
N: Yeah, absolutely.
R: We have a couple questions from people here, an audience that we have, and we’ll ask a couple of those, but for the most part I’m going to take a back seat, and again, thanks Mark.
M: Oh yeah, you’re welcome. I appreciate you guys.
N: Yeah, this is a great opportunity because Mark has been a great client and friend. We’ve had lots of conversations. Not only that, met a lot of people. Mark has been a huge cheerleader for MIRC. I wonder how many referrals that we have business that we have.
R: We actually get, do better… See, I’m already jumping in.
N: That is fine.
R: We actually do more business by his referrals than he actually buys.
M: Yeah, probably so. You’re welcome.
(Richard laughs)
R: I’m just kidding.
N: Yeah, but Mark has been awesome over the years. When I came back here, you guys were already buying, so as far as I’m concerned, you’ve been back here with MIRC for over 7 years.
M: Mhm.
N: I think over 8 years, and I’m telling you what, it has been a great ride. We have always referred back to Maxwell’s House of Music, previously Mom’s, as a great example. You’ve come up in tons of business meetings and sales meetings about, just about ideas that have come up, things that you’re doing. Especially as we dive into, you talked about the rebranding of your business, that has come up. We have talked a lot about that. Every time you have always been a part of our events, like right now. You always come in town for NAMM. You send people here to the workshops. You’ve invested a ton of your time and effort and resources into MIRC, and therefore we have always wanted to invest our time and effort and resources back into you as well.
M: Oh yeah, you guys have been more than supportive. It’s interesting, too, because you guys have really… it has been fun to watch how you guys have grown. This is weird, because on the front side of MIRC and me thinking about even looking at this thing at all, I didn’t quite get it. You know what I’m saying? Then, once I did, I told everybody about it. I really did. I told music stores all around me. When they were struggling, I would say, “Hey, why don’t you just check out what they do? Drive down there and just walk through one time and you’ll go ‘Oh, wow.’” and so, I think you guys are great. I really do.
R: Thank you. We really appreciate that.
M: I don’t like either one of you....
(Nate laughs)
R: We understand that.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
M: ...but you have a great enough product that I don’t have to like you.
N: Yeah, you’re forced to get along.
R: If you’re making money, that is good enough.
M: It is, yes.
N: So, obviously, we’ve enjoyed you over the years.
M: Thanks.
N: So, when we’ve thought about who could we have, like Richard said, who could we have our first guest, we were like, “Oh, we have got to have Mark. Mark would be perfect. '' So, even just the few times that we have talked even just about business, we felt like, “Hey, Mark has probably got a lot to contribute to other businesses”.
R: Yes.
N: You’ve been in business for what, 34 years now?
M: Mhm.
N: 34 years, and you’ve worked for multiple stores. You’ve branched out from your family business. You’ve started your own, so we think you have a lot to contribute to what is going on out there.
M: Yeah, my dad has always... My dad started as a drummer.
R: Smart guy.
M: Yeah.
(Mark laughs)
M: I know you love that.
N: Why didn’t you want to be a musician?
(Nate laughs)
M: Oh, thank you very much. You are so horrible. So, my dad started as a drummer in Louisville and went out on the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars with his band and they were touring everywhere, and you know, had three kids at home and said, “I have 3 kids at home. I have got to do something else”. So, we came back and started working at music stores in Louisville. He started a pretty big store in southern Indiana with another gentleman, then left that and started Mom’s Music more than 35 years ago. So, most of the stuff I know or learned is usually because of my Dad, you know? He was… there was this guy, I don’t know if it was just in Louisville, but there was this TV commercial and they called him Mad Max; “I’d give it away, but my wife won’t let me!”, that was his key phrase. That was my dad, because my dad, I don’t think he really cared much about making money. I think he wanted to make sure that music kept going, and that was his whole thing. It was probably the reason that Mom’s Music survives in Louisville and that Maxwell’s House of Music is in Jeffersonville, and literally most of the stores are gone. Most of them are gone, just because it was… I’m telling you, in anything you do, if it is about who walks in your door or calls you on the phone, if you make it about them, you don’t have to ever make it about you. You make it about them, they will always make it about you. You care about the musician, the kid that walks in the door, whatever it be. That is all you got to do is give, give, give, give, give, and I’m telling you, they are going to tell everybody. You’re going to get all of the business in the world because of it. I think that we think it is about us being in this industry, me, Mark Maxwell, and it is just not. It is about whoever walks in that door or calls me on that phone. I want to help them get to their dream, whether it is learn to play an instrument, whether it is to be in a band, whatever that they decide they want to do and the reason that they are calling me, and I think that came from my dad. He was always so into the musicians of the community, of the town.
N: Yeah.
M: It worked well. So, he is still in business and I am still in business.
N: You’ve obviously been in this business long enough and seen how things have changed.
M: Oh, yeah.
N: Are you saying that that is something that is kind of been lost from the music store industry?
M: Well, I think that we have made it this thing that it is not. I do believe it is not. It is about that guy playing guitar, or that guy playing drums, or that girl playing keys or singing. It is about musicians making music and the tools they need to do so. If you create that relationship of really just caring about what they want to do, it will carry you for life; lifelong friends, lifelong customers. So, I think that is where people have lost it. I think they think it is about selling this, and that, I gotta be honest with you, I want to sell you this. I’ll be glad to sell you this if you want to support this or whatever that widget they used to call it is, but I like at it as more of as this relationship has got to be a relationship.
R: Yes.
M: It is, you know, for all the things, you care about those people. You invest in those people. You find out “Is this just something they want to do sitting by the campfire?”, “Is this something they want to go to college and become?”, a teacher or whatever it is, and then you have got to help those people. If we will get back to that… well, now I can’t tell…
N: And there are some that are doing that.
M: Are you kidding me? Heck yeah, there are! I mean, they are obviously surviving well because of it, you know, or barely surviving but they are still okay with the fact that they know they are doing their part. There is nothing like a kid who is now a grown up man that comes into my store and goes, “Man, you did this. You gave me advice. '' I mean, a kid called me from the Tonight Show and said, “Hey, I just want to say thanks. My band is playing on Tonight. I hope you watch it”.
R: Wow. Wow.
N: That is killer.
M: I’m like “What a call”, you know? It is just because I said, “Dude, you can do this”. Was he great at what he does? No, I just said to be determined. He only had to learn these 12 songs to play in this band, so go learn those 12 songs the best you can, go do the audition, keep your head up, have a lot of fun, and he did and got the gig, went on tour, and called me. The first week he was on tour with Kid Rock, you know?
R: Wow, that is crazy.
M: So, this band did well and did its thing. Then, that Tonight Show call was just really special to me. I just thought, “Wow, that is ridiculous”, you know?
N: A lot of what you are saying is, man, it is an investment. It is a long investment in… you just talked about somebody who was young, now they are a grown adult calling and saying “Thank you”...
M: Absolutely.
N: ...where you know you are right. People go, “Hey, I’ve got to sell a bunch of these”. So, just real quickly, how can we help people connect the dots from, “Yes, I’ve got to sell this product, but I’ve also got to invest in people’s lives too”. Maybe a lot of times there can be a disconnect, because we realize life sets in. People have bills to pay, a lot of employees to pay, people have employees to fire that aren’t doing a good job, but somehow they are supposed to all come back around and go, “Hey, I invest in these people and invest in their lives. I want to make relationships”.
M: I think it’s important, one, if you’re a store owner that you surround yourself into the store with people you like. Right? That you think are going to carry on the vision of whatever you’re setting your vision as.
N: Have you found that hard to do?
R: No, he’s had a hard time finding employees that like him.
(Nate laughs)
M: I think that is probably best said right there. No, I haven’t. I learned to do this years ago, I think. I’ve had a few things that I just realized, I, uh, I hired somebody to work for me that wasn’t what I thought they were.
N: Yeah.
M: I’m pretty frank about this stuff, but I like good, nice people and if I have to spend 8 hours in a building with somebody, I want to like them.
R: Sure.
M: I want to know… I really do, I want to like them, and I want them to see the vision, and I want them to understand it and push for it. So, that’s my first thing, but then the second thing is that when the door opens and there’s somebody that walks into the door, my view of every person is, “I have no idea what kind of day she had today. I have no idea what this guy is going through”. This guy may have lost his house this week. His kid is sick. He is sick. His wife just died. Whatever, I think about people as humans. I love Jesus, so I think about it as if Jesus was standing there and that is me, I think, “Would He want to love on this person?” So, that has been my whole kind of step, so a person walks in the door and I’m thinking, “That guy has had a rough day. I just know it, his job sucks”. This is his moment to walk in this door, whether he’s taking a lesson or whether he’s just coming to peruse the place. They think at first, when they first meet me, that I’m a salesman because I’ll ask them questions. I’ll qualify them as a human, and I’ll say, “Hey, so you play?” and they’ll say, “No, but I want to”, so, “Tell me your dream. Do you want to sit by a campfire? Do you want to play for your girlfriend? Do you want to play in a band? You want to go on tour? Tell me what it is you dream about, and we’ll talk about how we get you there”. So, eventually, I get to that conversation. I just think who is in front of you is what matters right there, but then the secondary thing is that person that calls. So, if a phone calls in the middle of it, I’ll say, “Hey, listen. I’m with somebody, but I promise I’ll call you back”, and boom, get their number and soon as I have that moment, I’ll call that person back and I’ll say, “Hey” because they are important to me too. My dad always said to me that you don’t get a job from somebody by calling them on the phone, you go to their place of business and you shake their hand. So, my first person, anybody that comes in the store is who is going to get my time.
N: Yes.
R: Yes, I agree.
M: Again, there is people that are going to latch on and they are going to spin. I know there is people out there, naysayers, who say, “These people just waste my time”, and I’m like, “Yeah, man, but they won’t so much if you’ll really kind of like help focus them in a direction”. Now, if they… and I think that’s what I’ve learned to do is just care. I like people, I want them to do well in their life, and I’ll give them all the advice they want or they can tell me to go to Hell.
N: Yeah, well, I’m telling you, I’ve been walking in music stores for a long time and I’ll tell you, back when the guitar was extremely popular, you know, there is a lot of other music that has come along, but man, it was almost like the owners had this attitude like, “Hey, thanks for coming into my store. You’re here for me. You’re here to come into this” and it was never about this. I’ve never felt like people wanted to serve the customers, found out what your dreamers are, what do you wanna do? Then, all of the sudden Kurt Cobain comes along and pounds out three chords and two guitar solos and people go, “Aw, the guitar died”. You almost kind of wonder, well, maybe that atmosphere didn’t die. Maybe it was going to die anyways. It just needed a catalyst to kind of push it forward because what you’re talking about right now, in my opinion, I have not seen a lot of.
M: Absolutely.
R: It is a lost art.
N: It is a lost art that is not in a lot of music stores that I’ve seen. I’m not discrediting all the people out there that run great music stores. That’s awesome.
M: Hey, but I get my heart broken, too. I get my heart broken because I’ve spent a lot of time with somebody and advice them a lot, and I think I’m doing the best job. Then, they walk in the door and open their case and go, “Man, check this out”.
N: Yeah, I bought this on Amazon!
M: I had it right there on my wall, and I look at them and go… and I do, I’ll say to them, “Hey, you know something. I have spent a lot of time with you. I have because I care about you and I want you to do well, but man, I would love to have your support of your music business too, because if you don’t support me, I’m not here to invest in you”. So, you can’t just let it go. You do have to say, “Hey, I’m going to care about you and I hope you do the same for me. The way I can do it is I can invest in you and help you figure out your dream and how you get there. At the same time, you can help me if you do buy a guitar, you give me first shot or something, you know, even if I don’t have it”. There is lots of times I’ll say, “I just don’t do this product. I can’t get it for you, so I understand you have this desire for it. Go get it. Be happy about that”. I have lots of people who come to me with that. They want to buy it from me, and they’ll pay even more money. I’ve have customers who’ll say, “Look, I know it is $300 online. I’ll give you $350. Why don’t you just buy it online, bring it to your store. I want to give you the money”. Swear to you, I have people. I have a customer I’m thinking of right now. He;s bought 2 or 3 things to me that I don’t even carry the line. Literally I had to buy it from musicians friend and bring it in my store and he paid me $50 more to do it.
N: Really?
R: Wow. Wow.
M: Because he would not buy it from anybody else.
R: Good for him.
M: So, that is the kind of human I want. I want that kind of human being to hang out with me. I want him to be my friend because I think he knows that I need to be taken care of too. I have a music store that propels your dream, you know? It does. So, I want everybody to be happy and do their thing.
N: I can only imagine sitting there and going… and somebody walks in and they open that case like, “Hey, look what I just bought” while it’s hanging on the wall. Man, I would love to get that whole scenario on video because you’re probably like, “What?”. That was a bad idea to bring this in.
(Nate and Mark laugh)
M: Now, there was one guy who… I was in a ripe mood, and I just looked at him and said, “Are you kidding me?”. I said, “Are you kidding me right now?”
N: There were probably crickets.
M: Oh yeah, he was just sitting there and looked at me. Like, you bought that from somebody else because you saved $30? I mean, seriously, how much time have I spent with you? I showed you that product in the first place. I showed somebody a product that had never seen the product before and a few months later he came in to ask a specific question that I knew he wouldn’t have been able to ask unless he had one.
R: Unless he had it, yeah.
M: And I just said…
R: You probably spent $50 the labor.
M: Yeah, I did. I spent a lot of time with the guy, but you know something? He either walked away from the situation after I said “Really? I mean, really, is this where we’re at?” because yeah, that $30 would have helped me through the situation, sure it would have. I’m a music store. I have to sell things. I have… people have to sign up for lessons. I think people have to think about what they’re doing. I mean, I find myself