Fail-Safe Growth Hacks for Creative Entrepreneurs

Fail-Safe Growth Hacks for Creative Entrepreneurs

Sean: And talking about growth, all these books that you were able to read through, how did you know what books you want to read next? And how, what other methods of growth do you have, aside from books? Did you have mentors? Did you pursue them? Do you listen to podcasts? Do you watch YouTube videos? What channels do you watch? Can you share some of that with us?

Chris: I would always go to the bookstore. Yeah. We don’t really have bookstores anymore, but these bookstores are known, go to the business department and grab a stack of books. And just go, you know, you buy a book for $9. I buy five books, go home and read them.

And you started seeing like patterns of like the same people showing up over and over again, know, this guy is writing a book and this guy has a newsletter. So I get a newsletter, Dan Kennedy is one of the guys’ newsletter. Just you’d see names popping up over and over again, like people who are really out there doing it or somebody who has a lot of books. 

You know, some of the leadership guys like John Maxwell, right? That guy has a lot of books, you don’t have to read them all, but you know, you could read a few of his books to learn ideas about leadership. 

Michael Gerber. I’ve actually read all his books. He really wrote the same book over and over again. It’s really the same concept, but they’re really solid.

But I think that is, initially that was something I really did. And then it was things like seminars and conferences you can go to. And there are different ones, you know, like say someone like Tony Robbins has sort of the self-help. How do you get motivated to attend conferences? Well, I’m pretty motivated, so I didn’t really need that, but any kind of business-related stuff, I would look at who’s a great business leader? Who’s going to speak in it? Who’s going to be there?

And so I would go to things like that. At some point. I actually, it’s funny, my business got audited by the IRS. This is a funny story and it was fine, but they wanted, they need to look at your finances. And so my accountant said, “you know, I do your taxes or your finances.

You’re fine. You’re not, there’s nothing to worry about, but you don’t know anything about accounting. So we’re going to go to this meeting and don’t say anything because everything’s fine. So you talking can only make things worse,” right? He’s like, so just go to a meeting and don’t talk. Let me talk. I said, “Okay, great.”

So I sat there and they talked about finance and I had no idea what they’re talking about. I was like, I don’t know anything about accounting. And so after that, I started taking accounting classes and I took about, I don’t know, like three or four years’ worth of accounting classes.

I really became like this a really beautiful funny accounting person. Yeah, I actually, it’s funny because one of my accounting teachers who I see kept in touch with these, she goes, “oh, you know, they have a program at Harvard business school, you should really look into doing it.” And I was like, “I don’t know if I have the time.” But I just learned all about the accounting side of things.

And that was a gap. So I knew marketing. I had learned management and I knew I wasn’t very good at it. I learned all sorts of things, but it was like I didn’t know anything about finance.  So about 10 years ago, I learned as much about small business finances as I could have. And I didn’t do it all at once. 

I took a class in the summer. I took one in the fall. I took basically, you know, four classes a year for like three years. So I took basically all the classes you would need to have a degree in accounting.

Sean: Wow.

Chris: That was just a personal growth thing. And it was weird. I was oddly good at it. Like it was like handwritten exams and I was getting perfect scores and the teachers are like, how are you getting perfect scores on this?

Accounting makes absolute sense to me. I have no idea why – it’s just because it balances, you know, everything else is a wreck, but with accounting, everything balances. So that was just something else I picked up along the way where it’s like, oh, this is kind of worth doing.

Sean: Did you love it though?

Chris: Well, I don’t think I’d want to do it for a living, but it was super interesting to me and I would then be able to go and, you know, I took a class on cost accounting, and said “oh I can go into my own business, take the spreadsheet and costs everything out and figure out like, you know, ‘where’s my maximum profit.’

Are there things that, you know, are, are there some things that I could eliminate. Maybe they aren’t making money, you know, or do I want to keep them? Cause they’re sort of associated with the brand. So I was able to really make a decision based on actual concrete numbers, not just, “ah, you know, cause with marketing, it’s kind of a feeling, I think this one’s going to do better than this other one.” You sort of guess.

And you say, okay, and then you see it happens and maybe it does well, or maybe it kind of steps you go, oh, let’s try this other one and maybe that, so you made the wrong decision. But with numbers, it’s like their numbers either add up or they don’t, if they don’t add up, you have to do them over until you find the right answer.

Sean: For sure, for sure. Talking about accounting. I was wondering when you were going to rent your first office. I’m sure it wasn’t just a matter of, “oh my building doesn’t allow me to run a business here and I have to go ahead and rent a place.” I’m sure you did some accounting. Like how big of a percentage of your revenue did you budget for the rent and did you budget for hiring your one or two first employees?

Chris: When it’s time to actually rent a space, I just calculate it by how many students do I need to cover the rent? And so, I need to make this much money. How many more students do I need to cover this? And so at that point, I was actually, I was teaching at a college. And so that sort of that money that I was making sort of covered the rent.

So I was kinda like, I wasn’t, that was originally the money I used to kind of go party and have fun with, but, so that money was now covering the rent. So I was like, okay. I was able to stay afloat financially. And then grow it to where I was then, back to where I was at. And so there was that sort of one-year period where I got somebody in there working for me.

And when he worked a few hours a week and then pretty soon his money was covering the rent. And so it was, I did some basic accounting, but knowing that I could afford it, you know, if I retain my clients and things like that, it became more complicated as the space got bigger, we had to do a lot more of it.

And I have, just actually from the accounting classes, like what we call flexible budgets, you have your actual budget, you have I guess your budget, your actual spending, and then in between, you can calculate the variances. You know, like, okay, where you’re over and under. And why are we all over-under? Was the labor cost higher? Were the labor costs longer when materials, what were your actual costs?

And so you might go back and go “I’m over budget. Oh, but I gave him the couple of guys – got a raise. Okay. Well, that’s not overbudget, you just give them a raise.” So there are spreadsheets and things you do for that, and so I do that too for every department. And even we have my theater production show, so we’ll get a flexible budget down to, “okay, you have this many hours a week for people working.”

And if you sell this many tickets so, and I actually still do that because ultimately I needed your cause if the budget is wrong, that I’m the person who has to write the checks. The money is the one that – you never outsourced the money. That’s what, yeah. Yeah.

Sean: Yeah. So you’re doing your own accounting now. You don’t have an outsource.

Chris: I definitely look at the books every day. Okay. And what are the deposits? How much money came in? What department – is somebody’s lagging behind? Because Covid is weird right now, so you don’t necessary – especially because right now, we have the Delta variant.

Because it affects kids, and we’re like “okay private classes are doing well. Certain group classes are doing well, certain other group classes aren’t doing well. You know, what is it about them that we could do? Is there something we could do about that? And so we know those because we run the numbers. If we didn’t run the numbers and we’d be just sort of going, “Well, everything’s kinda okay, this is a winner, this is a winner. This is okay and this is the loser.”

And you actually know that from doing the numbers, versus just kind of saying, oh, everything kind of seems okay, or you’re not sure why it’s not working.

Sean: And you mentioned that now with the Delta. And the COVID. And what happened during the first lockdowns? What did you do? How did you pivot? You mentioned earlier that there was panic. How did you douse the panic?

Chris: Yeah, it was, it’s interesting because in January of 2021, 1 of my teachers she’s from China and I have another teacher from India. And they came to me in January and said, “oh, there’s this Pandemic – COVID” and I go, “oh, I think I heard some about it. Yeah. They said it’s just going to go away.”

Right. Because they’re telling us on the news, “it’s like, no, it’s really serious in China.” This is what she told me – “it’s completely out of control and they’re going to shut down China and they’re not putting in the news.” And I was thinking, like in my mind, I’m like, ‘wow, you’re crazy.” Like, there’s no way. And I was like “oh wow, sure, oh great.”

I was like, kind of want to go to the office, but I’m thinking like, “They’re going to shut down the country? What do you, because of what – cause of cold? Because we didn’t know. And so in February and they came, both of them came back to me and said, “Hey, look, it’s really getting worse. We’re going to have to like start working remotely.” And I was like, “what, what are you – again, I was like in denial or whatever, or just didn’t know, wasn’t informed.

They said, “oh, there’s this thing called Zoom. And we could do stuff over zoom or from Skype.” So I knew what Skype was, but I didn’t know what Zoom was. And so I started looking into Zoom cause they started talking more, you know, it became more and more in the news. And then one day we were saying, I was with my office manager in the office and it was a Monday and it was like, “wow, we have to close like today,” this was in March.

And it was like, we’re going to, do we even open today? Because there was this idea of like, the COVID was everywhere. Like it was on your phone and it was on your light switch. It was on your shoes. Right. People freaked, at least in the United States, it was like panic.

And so we had to close. And so then we called everybody up and said, “Hey, we’re going to pause. I think I probably still have the post up on our face- we had no sign of Facebook, Instagram. Yeah. We had a staff meeting and I said, “Okay, we’re going to Zoom, and here’s how it works.” And probably 60% of the staff, 70% of the staff were like, “okay, sure, like we’re with you.”

Cause it’s not like – “it’s just going to be for two, weeks, it’s just two weeks go with it.” And some of the other staff members were just like, I can’t understand this. I can’t wrap my head around this. I’m going to take a step back. And so there were a lot of people who, probably 30% of the staff, just couldn’t do it.

And so then someone else took their hours, that type of, we had to kind of, we didn’t fire them, but it was like, okay, you can come back after the pandemic. But it was like, yeah, they just didn’t see how it was possible to teach a class over the internet. And of course, everything is done over, I know people are still doing everything online, but yeah, so we pivoted and went to Zoom, like basically immediately.

Like I was lucky that my employees had come to me and told me this, and so I had done some study, you know, some investigations into working remotely. And so we went to Zoom right away. And you know, we just figured it out, cause like Spotify integrates into zoom so I can play a song for you over Spotify.

I can go to the white screen and write those screens, write music out for you on the white screen, I can plug my guitar directly into my computer, like all this, you know? And then all of a sudden, after a while, everyone kind of liked it because, “well, I don’t have to get in my car. I don’t have to drive anywhere. You know, my commute is five steps. Right?”

“All my guitars, all my stuff’s already here, you know, I’m not spending any money on gas. I’m not commuting.” I mean, all that stuff is gone. So you’ve captured a couple hours a day, they didn’t have before. I mean, it was a pandemic, it was terrible, but it was like all of a sudden you had time and a different way of doing the business.

You know, we had clients who were like, instead of taking, you know, they’d go to Wisconsin for the summer. And so we would take lessons with them. Well, now they’re staying and they’re just coming in over Zoom, you know you’re teaching someone from Arizona. It doesn’t matter where they’re at. You know, I was giving lessons. I was down in, where was I at?

I was in Michigan. I was in Wisconsin, down in national, like – you know, have to give a lesson and I just, yeah. You know, you could be anywhere. And that was very liberating to think, “Wow, I’m no longer tied to an office. I could really do this anywhere in the world, you know.

Sean: That’s amazing. And Hey it, and you know, a lot of business owners, they’re just not open to that.

There’s, it’s amazing you made it work. I mean, get to, I couldn’t fathom how you could do guitar lessons over Zoom. Right. So it – kudos to you. I mean, that’s amazing how you pivoted everything online with your business.

And Hey, if there is something that you could relay to people who are probably in the same boat right now, because now we have the Delta variant here and we’re locking down again in Metro Manila.

What will be your one big piece of advice for business owners who are also panicking right now? Because it’s happening again, just when we were about to do all of this marketing, we spend for advertising thinking that things are going to open up. Now we’re going to be locked down again.

Chris: Yeah, well, and I think one was like being open to doing something, whatever it was.

I didn’t know that the answer was Zoom, but it became Zoom, but being open to it. Because I remember having it right when COVID hit, we had like a department leader meeting on Zoom. We’re all on zoom. And I said, “Hey, look, we’re shut down. It’s going to, it’s going to be more than two weeks. It looks like it’s gonna be through the end of June.

Right. This is 2020. It’s going to be at least eight weeks. So I’m going to go around and we’re going to talk as a group and I’m going to ask each one of you. What’s something we can do?” And so I’ll go, okay, person, number one. What do you, what’s something you think we can do? She goes, “nothing. Can’t think of anything.”

Like boom, she wasn’t like, “oh, let me think about it.” And so there were people that were just like nothing, nothing, nothing. And then one person jumps in “You know, we could do an online recital. We could do something online and here, I think it would work.”And so she presents the story. It’s like, boom, you’re my superstar.

Okay, good. You’re in. All right. So there were people who wouldn’t do it and there are people who would do it. So I think if you’re in a business in Manila, or anywhere watching this, you will find the people who will go with it. They might not have the answer, but they’re going to go with your possibility. So you’re going to say, can we try this? And instead of them saying, “No,” you want the people who are going to say, “Yes!”

So if you’re a technology business, so I guess you’re more online, but if you’re like seeing a retail store, like what do you do? Well, can you deliver, can you have some kind of like, can you start doing contactless delivery, you know, where restaurants were leaving the food at your door.

You know, and, and everybody was delivering, not just, it used to be just, there were takeaway Chinese restaurants and things like that. Now McDonald’s delivers, you know, you can get McDonald’s delivered over to your house. I mean, so there becomes a – as a business, you might have to find a way to pivot and it might be delivering.

It might be scheduling people by appointment. If people can come certain times to your business for something. So a lot of this is can you deliver your service over the internet? You know, something, you know, I was surprised you can do doctor’s visits over the internet now, you know, obviously, they’re not gonna be able to listen to your heart, but you are able to talk to them about your symptoms and have like a meeting and things like that and get updates that you, you know, you don’t need to go into the office for.

So there’s always something you can do. And the answer might not be easy, and it might not be obvious, but I think it’s possible if you put in, if you team up with the people on your team who are willing to try.

Sean: Thanks so much Chris, and if people want to get in touch with you, what’s the best place to do?

Chris: A good place would be, if you’re on Facebook, you can find me either through, if you want to talk about music stuff through the Academy of Music and Art, you can find Chris Wilson coaching, where I talk about business stuff.

chriswilsoncoaching.net – You can contact me through that. There’s a little box. You could write me messages and you can get a copy of my book through there. You can also just find me on Facebook, you can find me Chris Wilson Coaching, or just, there’s a lot of Chris Wilson’s, but there’s only one Chris Wilson Coaching, but you can message me through that.

I get those messages all the time.

Sean: Awesome, and we’ll have those in the show notes. Just look for leadershipstack.com, go there, and look for the episode with Chris Wilson. And you will find all of the links to Chris’s stuff on the show notes, his PDF, his website, his Facebook page. We’ll have it all there.

Hey, Chris, thanks so much for your time. I know it’s very late where you are – its sleeping time.

Chris: I was really excited to be doing, speaking to an international audience. Really exciting.

Sean: We we’ve learned a lot from you and we are better for it. Thank you very much.