Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#339: Bruce Salyers (Founder of Salyers Percussion) (pt. 1 of 2)
Today we released part one of our interview with Bruce Salyers. He's the founder of Salyers Percussion—a leading manufacturer of quality drum sticks and mallets for drummers and percussionists in all genres of music.
Prior to founding Salyers Percussion, Bruce enjoyed a wide variety of experiences as a musician: he was a middle and high school band director, a percussion instructor at Harding College and had a successful private teaching studio. As a performer he’s played with ensembles such as the Arkansas Symphony and Pine Bluff Orchestras, and has published music compositions.
If you're thinking of building an arts-based business, you'll want to hear Bruce describe his organic approach to significant growth! https://www.salyerspercussion.com/
Hi everyone, nick Petrella here. This episode is sponsored by Steve Weiss Music, percussion specialists since 1961. If you're looking for a rare piece of sheet music, a specialty gong or anything percussion, steve Weiss Music will have it. Please visit steveweissmusiccom or click their link in the show notes. That's S-T-E-V-E-W-E-I-S-S musiccom. Our percussion series sponsor.
Announcer:Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. Any reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and.
Announcer:Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. I'm Andy Heise and I'm Nick Petrella.
Nick Petrella:With us today is Bruce Salyers, the founder of Salyers Percussion, a leading manufacturer of quality drumsticks and mallets for drummers and percussionists in all genres of music. Prior to founding Salyers Percussion, bruce enjoyed a wide variety of experiences as a musician. He was a middle and high school band director. He was a percussion instructor at Harding College and had a successful private teaching studio. As a performer, he's played with ensembles such as the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and the Pine Bluff Orchestra. Bruce has also had his compositions published over the years. We'll have his website in the show notes so you can read more about his company, the products they offer and the artists who use them. Bruce, it's great to have you here.
Bruce Salyers:Hey, nick and Andy, thanks. Thanks so much for having me on, I appreciate it.
Nick Petrella:As people heard the introduction, you've had a portfolio career in quite a few areas of music, but I didn't mention that you have degrees in music education and a doctorate in music performance. What prompted you to leave education and become an entrepreneur?
Bruce Salyers:Oh man. Well, you know I knew I wanted to be a teacher from an early age, just because of the impact teachers had on me and I love music and I saw that as a way that I could stay involved with music and, you know, teach other people the things that have meant so much to me. So I don't think I ever really left education Once I started doing music industry. I have continued to teach privately. I just don't teach at a university any longer. In fact, I supported myself, you know, in addition to, you know, working with my wife, you know, as a private lessons teacher for years when I started Salyer's Percussion, truly enjoyed that and only gave it up when I sort of had to. When this job became so demanding, I really had to focus on it and, you know, let the teaching slow down a little bit.
Nick Petrella:So slow down, but not stop. Do you still teach at all, or no?
Bruce Salyers:Not regularly. I still enjoy, you know, going to schools and visiting, doing some online things, so I stay involved, but but nothing, nothing, daily.
Andy Heise:Yeah, so can you. This is, this is sort of an unscripted question, but can you kind of give us a, give us the background of, of of the story from, uh, you know, teaching full-time to to moving into more of the musical products? Um business?
Bruce Salyers:sure, yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to. Um, it wasn't something that I ever, you know, and said I'm going to make this change it. You know, like a lot of things, it just developed. I'm pretty big on following the paths and the doors that open in front of you and it's worked out pretty well for me. I don't like to force anything, you know, not saying that hard work and persistence won't pay off. It's just sometimes, you know, when those doors open, you got to recognize them and walk through and through.
Bruce Salyers:Almost everything that has come my way in life has been through, uh, networking through another person and, you know, through the uh, percussive PASIC, meeting lots of people in the industry. I was in school, working on DMA at University of Memphis and doing a lot of marimba, playing and wrapping my own mallets, and meeting someone at PASIC that had a wrapping machine really intrigued me. I thought, wow, if I had a machine to wrap my mallets, think of the things I could do. So the guy that had the machine, his name's Wally Mulhern. He's a guy who lives around Houston. Airline pilot, he had a business. Airline pilot um, he had a business. He would run out of a, basically out of a closet in his house wrapping some marimba mallets um, because he was, you know, a percussionist, who happened to also be a pilot.
Bruce Salyers:And uh, I asked him about purchasing his machine. And uh, he's like nah, you know, let's, that's my little side job, my hobby. But a few, a few days later he called and asked me like are you serious? You want to buy my business? And I thought, well, that's a step further than I really wanted. I didn't want a business, but if I have to buy your business to get that wrapping machine, I'll do it. So that got me started. It was like business in a box. You know, I moved the fax line to my garage and moved a truckload of materials from Texas to Arkansas. I was living in Arkansas at the time and I started making mallets. I mean, he already had a web page. The business was called Percussion Construction. That was the brand it was very you know that one.
Bruce Salyers:Yeah, yeah, I remember that it was like economy mallets they were very inexpensive and very limited in scope, but Wally had been doing that and had customers and had an online shop and I took that over and it sort of grew from there. It was already there and in place. I don't know that I would have started it had it not already been there.
Announcer:That's not what I was looking to do.
Bruce Salyers:I just wanted to wrap some mallets for myself. We added some mallets and changed some things. I think I was able to pay more attention to it than Wally could. He was a full-time pilot. I was teaching at a university and I had a little more time on my hands. It grew Before I knew it. I had a little more time on my hands and so it grew, and before I knew it I had, you know, other brands asking me to help them and eventually I had to make the decision to either stay in teaching or move into making sticks and mallets full time. I had an offer from another company to buy my business and at that time I wasn't ready to sell. So I tossed out this incredibly high number Like, ok, everybody has their price, this is mine, it's huge. Of course, they had enough sense to say no, thanks, man.
Bruce Salyers:So I continued working at the university and performing and having a family and making all these mallets and sticks. And then we had another baby and that, you know, pushed me into. I've got to make a decision. I don't have to make the move, and that's what really took me from being an educator full time to being in music industry full time. I just had that opportunity.
Bruce Salyers:It was intriguing. I was liking what I was doing, I was still being able to be very creative. That's always been important to me and still involved with teachers and still involved with students. So it was great and that moved me to Houston and my family, you know, of course, came with me and we've just loved it here and had a great time during those early years working at Proark and kind of learning. That's where I learned a lot about business was once I finally got in the business and around people you know that I look to as mentors people I really learned a lot from Pat Brown, maury Brockstein, steve Beck, stacey Stokes, stacey Waits you know all great people and I just saw that as an opportunity to be a sponge and learn.
Nick Petrella:Did that change the way? Because after you left there then you started Salyer's Percussion. Did you change the way, your standard operating procedures, things like that, from when you yeah, your approach, so from when you bought that company, from the pilot right?
Bruce Salyers:Yeah, well, when I first started, the scale was so small, you know it was something I could easily do on the weekends, and then, getting to ProMark, it became a full-time job. Sure, you know, I learned a lot about dealing with suppliers and working with bigger quantities and working with artists and marketing and budgeting and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, you know your processes develop along the way and it has a lot to do with scale and how much you're trying to produce and um and and really just the environment you're in and you have to adapt to it and so was there was um, so the promark, and then you moved on to your own to sell your percussion.
Andy Heise:So what was that? What was that? What was that?
Bruce Salyers:yes, yes you know, eventually that ran its course, um, uh, that, what was that?
Bruce Salyers:What was that? Yes, yes, you know, eventually that ran its course. That company was bought by another brand, the Dario bought ProMark. So it changed a lot. I was glad to be there through that transition. I learned a lot from that, both things that that I think helped me, um and well, or things that I wanted to continue doing, and things that I saw that I don't want to do it that way.
Bruce Salyers:And uh, uh, you know, when I started in my garage, it was definitely had a in the garage feeling to it. You know, it was just just bruce just making some mallets and his wife, jenny, who still wouldn't have Seller's Percussion without Jenny. I was trying to get her to come on the podcast. This morning she says no, no, no, no, that would have been great. Yeah, yeah, she is here every day, so she is just as much a part of Seller's Percussion as I am. People see me as the face of it. I think you know I'm the drummer, I'm the guy that's been in the industry, but speed keeps us running.
Bruce Salyers:But yeah, I just decided that I needed a change. I wanted to not do the whole everybody's a number on a spreadsheet thing that you have to do when you have 3,000 artists. And so I went back to the beginning. I left there and once again I found myself in a garage. I had a year non-compete agreement and I needed all of that year to just prepare, you know, just to raise money to start to buy materials and machines.
Bruce Salyers:Now, what I had going for me and and why I think a lot of people that try to do what we've done, um, why they have problems is I didn't start sawyer's percussion from ground level. I had that experience of, uh, you know, starting in the garage once before having some success, moving on to a much bigger company. Learning from that, I had this great network of industry contacts educator contacts, drum set players, retailers, retailers. Man, that is it Right. The retailers are so important. We don't sell direct to customers, so everything goes through a retailer and I tried to set up our business model to where that was. The only way it's going to work is we set our pricing to go through dealers. Of course, going through dealers, you're sharing profit with them, but you're also sharing work and responsibility with them. So well, well worth it.
Bruce Salyers:But I think having having all those years of experience and contacts under my belt made Sire's Percussion so much easier to start. In fact, the day that I became independent and was going to start working for myself, you know news kind of trickles around, you know your circle of people and uh, like immediately my phone rang with people saying, hey, can you? I'm unhappy with my supplier, will you make some stuff for me? So that's great. On day one, you know we business, so like nobody knew who Salyer's Percussion was, but we had work to do and we had, you know, checks coming in, which is important. I mean, I'm an artist and an educator and like to think. You know money's not what it's all about. But once you decide to pursue it as a career, you know, as a way to support your family, that you have to think about the dollars. So that's a balancing act Balance your art and your integrity with your need to make a profit. But if you're smart about it, it's easy.
Andy Heise:So a question I was going to ask is was there a point when you knew Salyer's percussion would take off and would be a sustainable business venture? But it kind of sounds like maybe that you kind of had early validation once you hit the launch button and, like you said, the checks and customers started coming in.
Bruce Salyers:Yeah, yeah, I knew going into it that, uh, it had to be successful. It had to be I had.
Nick Petrella:No, there isn't an option.
Bruce Salyers:Yeah no, I, I did. Um, I think we did it in a way that maybe somebody within you know a master's degree in business might have another idea of how to do it. We, we took no financing. We took no partners.
Bruce Salyers:You know, I financed it all, my wife and I, in the year prior to me leaving my safe corporate job. We both took on a lot of extra students and put a lot of money in to invest in this and then continued that even after the business launched and we had cash flow, we, for probably two years, I had to put, you know, a few thousand bucks a month of my own money into the business. So I set up myself to not need to be successful because, you know, I was living off of other income. Yeah, I could focus on doing what I needed to do and not necessarily what you have to do. You know, I didn't have to cut corners. I didn't have to do anything because I was. I didn't rely on it as a means of support and I think that's why it was successful.
Bruce Salyers:One of the reasons and still to this day, we don't have financing, we don't have bank loans or anything. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah, yeah, it's because I mean, as we've seen in just recent months and years. You don't know what's going to happen to the economy or anything like that, and you know after going through the economic downturn of 2008,. Seeing how that affected our businesses, I really wanted to take the safe path with this way.
Nick Petrella:So you gave yourself a long runway. Yeah, just the inherent in how you had done it. And then this is great because it segues to the next question. So when you started the company, you were a disruptor. You could be nimble, meaning you didn't have any responsibility to shareholders or your board. It's just you and your wife. What were some challenges as you got off the ground and then later, as you began to scale?
Bruce Salyers:Well, I think there are some challenges that are consistent. I don't know whether you're small, just starting out, or you're a big company, but I would say just starting out. The biggest challenges for our brand, for our identity as a brand, were just people. They're skeptical of anything new that they don't know, you know. So getting the word out that was pretty difficult. I remember showing up at our first PASIC 2013. I consider that our launch PASIC 2013. I consider that our our launch PASIC 2013. And, um, you know, everybody's really supportive. You know in our community for the most part, but people walk by with a uh, uh, a sort of look on their face. You know, like what? What is this? You know, sometimes they're interested, sometimes they're not. In fact, I believe it was our first trade show we attended. A percussionist that is fairly well known actually said to me why are you doing this? What are you even going to bring In? A very condescending way, like we don't need another brand of mallets and sticks, and I did not say what I wanted to say at that time.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, that's probably prudent. I tried to put on my.
Bruce Salyers:I call it my Bill Clinton face. You know that dude can like stab you and smile and make you like it. So you know, I tried to do that a little bit. But over the years it's been really neat to watch that change of people, not knowing who we were and being skeptical to like, oh, wow, they're still around, oh, they've got some good ideas. Look at the sun print on this stick, you know to, hey, these guys have good quality and and now, you know, at a trade show that's drum specific, like basic, it's great to see the doors open and and students just flock over kind of excited to check things out. So that that was something I think we've overcome.
Bruce Salyers:But uh, the other challenge it was space. Just man, space is expensive. You know, making, making a little, uh, some mallets and sticks, you know, doesn't take a lot of room at first, but uh, we've moved. Um, I think we're in our fourth location now just because you, you, you can only afford so much space. You know, especially where we're located in, in a nice area suburb of houston. Um, it's very expensive.
Bruce Salyers:So we started in the garage and then the garage and the bedroom, and then the garage and the bedroom and the dining room, and then we added a storage building and then we were able to move into our first, you know, out of the house location. That was a big day. I had dreamed of that moment getting out of the garage, uh, and it was. It was horrible. It was wonderful and horrible because all we could afford was a dump beside a railroad track that constantly smelled like dead animals. Um, there was no. It was. It was a metal building, no insulation, uh, you know, metal roof, so hot. We had to start work at six in the morning and quit by 1 because the temperatures would be 116 in there. But we needed the space and that's what we could afford.
Bruce Salyers:As soon as we could afford something better, we moved. As soon as we could afford something better and needed the room, we moved better and needed the room, we moved. And in fact now we have our facility here in Sugar Land and we've. It's just sort of an emergency stopgap situation, for now we've been at another location. So we're working out of two spots right now, which isn't ideal, but it's working. You know, I think that's a challenge. That's there, no matter where you are. It's working. You know, I think that's a challenge, that's there, no matter where you are.
Nick Petrella:If you need inspiration, do you ever go back to that first? You know, building outside the house, the one where it's 112? Do you ever go back there?
Bruce Salyers:I have driven past that and thought, wow, look at this and, in fact, the room. I'm still in the same house where we started the business and the room. There's more room now the room upstairs that we originally had used for we had a wrapping machine set up in the middle of the room. It's a bedroom, small bedroom, and under the window we had a small tabletop, laser engraver. And then around the perimeters of the walls of that bedroom I had some garage shelving put up to add my little bit of stock that we had, and that room is now my game room, my arcade.
Bruce Salyers:So sometimes I'm in there and I think I cannot believe we used to work in this little room, but you know, you just make do.
Andy Heise:And just get started. I love that, yes, and I think my next question was you've sort of already covered it, but it has to do with looking back at the patience that you had in building the company. How do you think about that growth today versus when you started? I mean, I think we've already kind of covered that. You talked about starting slow and taking sort of taking. Maybe we could talk about it this way is thinking about it in terms of calculated risks, thinking about what can I afford to put into the business now versus to your point, the mindset of an MBA would say, well, what's the growth potential and what's our five-year revenue projection and what's you know how would? It's just two different approaches to building the business, and it sounds like that sort of slow, incremental growth was important to the success of the business today.
Bruce Salyers:Yeah, I think so. I knew I needed it to be successful. So, you know, sometimes there's things we want to do and things we have to do, and back then I had to be successful with each product. I couldn't afford to have a flop. So, every just like thinking of product design, I didn't want to take any big risks, I didn't want to reinvent the wheel, which is sort of a what do they call it double-edged sword. I guess In one way that was safe.
Bruce Salyers:You know, I did products that I thought most people would like, products that I thought most people would like. But then, at the same time, it was hard to point out any uniqueness because you know there's 40,000 medium hard marimba mallets on the market, right, exactly, yeah, but if you want to, you know, have products that are going to support your business, you have to have things that are going to move quantity and that's what people need. I mean, there's a reason there's 40,000 medium-hard marimba mallets. That's what you use every day, exactly the 5A drumstick and the 17-inches-long diameter marching stick with a round bead, you know, because those are the vanilla ice cream, those are what you know form the basis of every brand.
Bruce Salyers:So we had to do that kind of thing and to differentiate ourselves. I think what I focused on was our personal relationships with people and, product-wise, I tried to make sure that, even though hey, this is a line of you know Marimba Mallets, medium hard, you know that they were very well built. Quality I felt like just to be considered equal to some of the other brands that have been around for 50 years. I would tell myself our quality has to be better. Even if we're just as good, then we won't be considered just as good because we don't have that reputation and history behind us.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, you know I was going to ask this, this question later, but it's just a perfect setup and the listeners who aren't in this business may not understand how skews and turns and things work. So let's continue to talk about your catalog. Musicians love a wide variety of products because each produces a different sound, right, that's why they're 40,000 types of mallets. On the other hand, retailers, which are the lifeblood of your business, they prefer to just have a few units or a few items and sell millions of units. How do you balance that in your catalog?
Bruce Salyers:That is something I think about. In fact, we've been in business what now? Almost 12 years and we had our first products that we discontinued recently because I didn't want to cut anything prematurely. 10 years down the line might seem like a long time, but yeah, that is a really good point. There are too many products out there for general consumers to even comprehend, but they're there because that variety to experienced artists is needed and appreciated.
Bruce Salyers:So us and all the other brands out there have a pretty deep catalog and most retailers don't like that at all. They can't afford to stock all that. They don't want to, especially if you're a local music store. If you're, say, a music store focused on the band, world band and orchestra, they're not selling all these exotic solo marimba mallets. They want some stuff for beginning band, some stuff for marching band, yep. So what I found is it works itself out. The music stores figure out what they need to stock and that's what they stock, and we have some online retailers that we're all, fortunate enough, will stock everything and make it available. So it's there when people need it. And even those people don't stock. They may stock all the SKUs, but not very deeply.
Nick Petrella:Not deep, yeah.
Bruce Salyers:And then there's even the process of drop shipping. You know, if something's not in stock anywhere, a retailer will take that order and we can ship it directly to the customer. But yeah, we recently bought another brand of mallets Encore mallets and that doubled the amount of products that we had to keep in stock. You know, it worked out because it fit within what we were doing really well. That's why we did it. But uh, yeah, that's a concern that there's a difference between what, what, uh, what the artists need and what retailers can reasonably do well, I would hear, I would hear it all the time, right when I was in the music products industry.
Nick Petrella:yeah, I would hear that all the time from retailers, especially in the in the uh, and it really ran the gamut from the biggest players to people just starting and then, well, which, what should I carry? Right, right, right. And so you have to have the conversation with them. Who are your customers? Where do you want to go? Yeah, and there are ways around it.
Bruce Salyers:but to your point, it takes time, it does, and even with our catalog being as big as it is now, and even with our catalog being as big as it is now, there's probably 12 products that make up the great majority of our sales and revenue Yep. So those are the ones you make sure are never out of stock.
Nick Petrella:They're always available, they're always in production.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah, right. So, as we've been discussing the mallet industry, the music products industry in general, and then we dig down specifically to things like mallets and sticks, it's highly competitive and has some long established you know dominant players in the industry. So what are some? Again, you've kind of already touched on some of this, but what's your approach to competing, not just on quality, necessarily, of the product, but you've also mentioned things like brand and customer loyalty loyalty, right, yeah, and there are some great brands in the industry that we're involved in that have been there for a long time.
Bruce Salyers:We're definitely the even at 12 years old we're, I think, the newest kid on the block how we compete. In the early days it was impossible not to compare ourselves and really that's when I should have been comparing the least, because we were running a totally different ballgame than the old guys. But you have to look to what they're doing and what's successful, because that's an indicator of what people want, even though I have my own ideas from my experience. I still looked at what the other brands were doing. But the more we got into our business, the more successful we became. The more we had to offer, the less I tried to compete with anybody if that makes sense.
Bruce Salyers:It sounds like some cliche or something, but we only compete with ourselves. You know, we're just trying to be better quality than we were, more efficient than we were, sell more than we did. We're more efficient than we were, sell more than we did. And you know, I kind of that's one of the things I wish I could do better is when someone asks me what do you have that's similar to you know so-and-so's model, this, and I pay so little attention I oftentimes don't know I'll have to reach into my you know bags of. You know I do have some old stock of things that people you know competitors have made, but I don't buy or look at any of their new stuff really. So yeah, we compete with them, but we don't. I mean, I think those brands you're talking about, their social media teams are larger than my entire company.
Bruce Salyers:Totally we are, depending on the season of the year, 8 to 12 people work here, and you know, I've seen in the parking lot at DCI more people with cameras for the other brands than I have total staff.
Nick Petrella:Right For sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's the one event. There are other events. Yeah, bruce, we've known each other for about 25 years and it's been fun for me to see your business grow. Where and how are you investing your marketing dollars and maybe talk about marketing budget as a percentage of your revenue to help propel your growth?
Bruce Salyers:Yeah, marketing dollars, that's a tough one. You need them, you got to market, you got to get yourself out there. But man, in my position anyway, where there's not a lot of extra cash laying around, we've really got to pay attention to where we spend our money. We've been very fortunate to each of the past 12 years. Our business grows by double digit percentages every year and that's compounding. You know how hard that is. To double $10 to $20 is pretty easy. To double sales of $500,000, that's a bigger deal. So with fast growth comes a lot of expense because you always have to finance that growth. So a lot of our budget, marketing budget and that kind of thing. I kind of quickly learned that I need my money to finance my growth and to me, marketing dollars are to increase your growth or sustain it, sustain where you are and we're just growing so much.
Bruce Salyers:Naturally I don't even keep marketing as a line item in my budget other than trade shows. We don't spend anything on print advertising. We don't print brochures. I don't even print business cards anymore. I probably will because people keep asking me for them. I guess people still like that little piece of cardboard. But we spend very little on online advertising. At the most maybe our you know our social media, you know promoting some things there. But the real money that we spend on marketing is to put ourselves in people's hands. So in-person events, basic educator shows that kind of thing. That's where we spend all of our money, because nobody wants to order a stick or a mallet that they've never tried. What's the point if you don't know how it feels, if you don't know how it sounds?
Bruce Salyers:I'm not going to pay $50 for a pair of mallets. I don't know what they are, so we just try to get there and sampling. I give away a what they are, so we just try to get there and sampling. I give away a lot of stuff. My wife's like dude, why are you giving all this away? It is marketing.
Nick Petrella:Well, it's a marketing function.
Bruce Salyers:You're buying market share through Our marketing dollars are in giving people stuff to try and going places where we know we'll encounter people that want to put our sticks in their hands and try them out.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, that's great. So still, from inception to now, it's organic growth.
Bruce Salyers:Pretty much. I mean, I think we owe man. We have such a dedicated group of teachers that use our stuff and I could never, ever, ever express my gratitude to these people. They have been such a source of inspiration and support. The growth of everything we do is because another person felt it in their heart to tell somebody else that it was good. You know, try these sticks out, man, for whatever reason, whether they like the price point or the quality or some feature on the product, a feel it has really been man, this amazing group of teachers. We call them the education team.
Bruce Salyers:Every brand in our business has this group of supporters. And, man, are they loyal? You try to steal somebody's endorser and it's hard. It is hard to do. There's two things I don't try to do. I don't try to take an endorser from another brand and I do not try to get a retailer to sell something. I do not do that. I get the customer to ask the retailer to sell it and that works. And I develop relationships with teachers, artists, performers that want to work with us. You know, I don't go out trying to convince somebody to want to work with us and with our education team. I remember the first person on that team. His name's Kyle Dortch, teacher in North Carolina. He had tried our sticks and we had launched on Facebook. Hey, we're looking for some teachers to work with us and, side note, I think we work with our teachers better than any brand that I've seen. You know, I've been involved with several brands and they've named products for us.
Bruce Salyers:They alert us if they notice any quality problem or what they think needs to be done next. I wish I could fulfill all their requests at once, especially in those early years when we had holes to fill. But man, our growth has been mainly due to great people telling their friends. I remember showing up the first time I went to Alabama for their music educator show and we had a few drum teachers there, percussion teachers, band directors that had picked up our stuff and started using it and liked it and they just became like this I don't know, like this marketing team for me at that show they brought every teacher in Alabama to my booth and told them why they needed to switch to this stuff. So we really owe everything to those people.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, that's awesome.
Bruce Salyers:Yeah, they're the stuff man and I've become. I saw this little trend I think it was on TikTok or something, this little sound everybody was using years ago. Let's see how did it go. A client can become a friend a lot faster than a friend can become a client, and I have found that to be so true. I have friends from my college days that will not use my brand, For whatever reason they do not. Um, we're still friends, some of them. I hooked up with such a good deal at other brands that you know I can't match it now, so they're staying there yeah, yeah, yeah, that might be well, sometimes it is sometimes it is others it it is, others it's not.
Bruce Salyers:But then on the flip side of that, there are people I have met. You might call them clients, customers, but man, they've become friends. I've never met them in person a lot of times, but I've talked to them on the phone and through email and our ed team Facebook groups so often that I feel like they're my buddies. Now, when I see their name on the caller ID, I'm like oh yeah, that's one of the best parts of my job still is talking to people.
Bruce Salyers:It doesn't matter if they're teaching middle school out in the middle of nowhere or at a conservatory or wherever. We treat everybody the same and I just have a blast talking to you know, to the people we've gotten to know over the years.
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