Welcome And Big Question

Tom DuFore 0:01

Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I'm wondering, have you thought about how you integrate a passion into a profitable enterprise? Or maybe something fun that you do and how to earn a living from it? Well, our guest today is Brian Gross, who's the president of the national franchise system called Bach to Rock that does just that. He's the president and architect of the rapidly growing franchise system of music schools, redefining how students learn, perform, and connect through music. You're going to love this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it.

Brian Gross 0:46

Thanks, Tom. I'm glad to be here. My name is Brian Gross, and I am the president of Bach to Rock, a music school franchise throughout the United States. Wonderful.

Tom DuFore 0:57

Wonderful. Well, I am always a big fan of music education and enrichment and all of the fun things that come along with that. I'm a lifelong musician myself. I always like hearing people's story and franchising, kind of how you got to here. So I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about your journey.

Brian Gross 1:14

Sure.

How Bach To Rock Began

Brian Gross 1:15

So Bakh to Rock was actually founded by a middle school music teacher. And like many um school teachers, they needed to find additional income streams. So in the summer, he started a rock band camp, basically. It became wildly successful, quit his job teaching middle school music, and opened the first, what is now, you know, Bakh to Rock. Back then it was East Coast Music Production Camp. So not a brander, but definitely an educator. I was working, I worked for a family office. We discovered it because it was right adjacent to our headquarters. One of our professionals was a professional musician, in addition to what he did for the family, brought it back and said, hey, this is something that we really need to buy and expand across the United States. It's a really unique take on music education. Our tagline is learning to play music should be fun. It's called play for a reason. So a lot of what we do is to help primarily children enjoy and find success quickly so that they're motivated to continue to learn. And it's really based on a handful of pillars. In addition, private lessons, putting kids into groups because it enhances your musicianship, but it also brings real life skills in. Learning to be part of a team, learning to negotiate for what songs we're going to sing, who's going to be what parts, holding yourself accountable to practice and things of that nature. And then lastly, public performance. So all of our kids go out and play in public. We view it as like a big game. If you want to use a sports analogy, you can do all the practice you want, but this is your chance to really get out and shine and think about what that does for kids in terms of building confidence, you know, really sort of helping them find themselves. So at the end of the day, what I really love about what we do is we're really helping build life skills in kids beyond just music education. I think that sounds really, really interesting.

Do Franchisees Need Music Skills

Tom DuFore 3:13

One thing that I'm sure you get asked a lot, but it makes me wonder for someone coming in as a franchisee, someone who might be interested in owning a franchise, do they have to have a background in music? Is that a requirement? Is it something you just kind of people naturally gravitate toward anyway?

Brian Gross 3:33

Just curious about that. Absolutely not. In fact, I'm not a musician. I'm a failed musician. I'm one of the people that should have gone to Bak to Rock. Like a lot of families, families believe music education is part of a well-balanced upbringing and really sort of creating the whole self. So my mom, I was more of an athlete. My mom wanted me to take music lessons. It's the 80s. I was in middle school and I was into hair metal. So Judas Priest, ACDC, Molly Crewe. So I'm thinking electric guitars, pedals, effects, all this fun stuff. I got a John Denver songbook, an acoustic guitar, and an older woman who came to my house. You know, a year later, I begged myself out of it and went on with my life. At Bak Tarak, we let kids play whatever genre they want because at the end of the day, a quarter note is a quarter note, whether it's hip-hop, country, classical, rock and roll. And if you can play what you like, you're gonna be more motivated to practice and to continue to progress. You don't have to be a musician. I would say you definitively want to be part of your community. All of our schools, we want to be really the hub and center of music education in their communities. And you're gonna need to like kids because at the end of the day, there's gonna we do have programming from infants to adults, but the core of the business, I would say, is four to 16. And you know, you're gonna have hundreds of kids running through your school each week. You better like kids.

Tom DuFore 5:02

For

Training Staff And Running Operations

Tom DuFore 5:03

someone that's coming in, I'm thinking of from a franchise perspective, even if someone has a musical background, they're not gonna be teaching all of the lessons. I wouldn't imagine that to be the case. So you kind of have this two-pronged piece where you're gonna have to, as an owner, find teachers or instructors as well as students that are going to come in to learn. So, kind of both of these pieces, and you mentioned community. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how you support your franchisees with that.

Brian Gross 5:31

You know, again, a franchisee does not need to have any expertise in music. At the end of the day, the teachers are gonna teach, just like at a restaurant, the chef is gonna cook, or what we want our owners to do is to oversee hopefully a million-dollar service retail business where our product is music education, right? So the most important skills is having a team, whether they're the owner operator or whether they hire a school director that can run a business. And that means sales, customer service, hiring and managing an eclectic staff of part-time teachers and musicians at that. So they are definitely eclectic. They're you know artistic by nature. So those are skills that are, you know, general business skills. They're not music skills. We certainly aid a non-musician and what to look for and music educators so that the quality of the product is high. They themselves don't need to know that. So, as part of our, I would say, onboarding and training, we have three-day franchisee training where we really teach them how to run the business, you know, everything from marketing to operations to sales to HR, all the components you need to successfully run a business. Then we have a three-day program for the school director. And again, that might be the owner, but a lot of times it's not. It's a hired staff member. And then that's really going through okay, how do you deliver our product and service so that we have the best experience for our students? And then when they open, we actually go on site for the first two and a half days where we do a train the trainer model where we'll actually do the initial training of their teachers with them as sort of co-deliverers, so that in the future they can then take that model and continue to train new teachers as they expand and grow.

Private Equity And Finding Investors

Tom DuFore 7:25

You had mentioned something early on about the family office getting involved with this business. And in franchising today, it's hard to come across a conversation where the idea of finding private equity or venture capital investment into a franchise organization doesn't come up. And so one thing that I know our audience is always interested in and learning more about is okay, well, I'm not maybe necessarily located right across the street from a family office and someone that that has this personal interest in uh their industry. What is it, I guess, as you look back and think about whether it be just franchising in general or maybe just some information, maybe a franchisor might be able to pick up from finding a potential investment partner or someone that might be interested, or maybe things that your group looks for.

Brian Gross 8:17

Cambridge Information Group was the initial family office, owned the business, bought it in 07 from the middle school music teacher. We went to franchising in 2013, just sold to True True Private Equity Company in May of this year, Spark Harbor. So Spark Harbor is a portfolio platform company that has multiple youth enrichment, youth activity brands under it, which we are one of them. So along with us, they have Water Babies, which is a toddler swim school, Ninja, American Ninja, which is you know the Ninja Warrior. So it's a retail setup for people to learn Ninja Warrior, and then us, right? So what I would say is there's a couple of things. One, build a concept that you can prove out and is both rewarding for the franchisee and for the franchise orb. If you do that, private equity will find you. And if you want to go out and try and meet them halfway, I would say that there are a lot of industry events, particularly conferences like Springboard and some of the ones that the now IFA has taken over, like Franchise Leadership Development Conference and then the marketing conference, where you will see a lot of private equity and family office individuals going around meeting with franchise ours. So before we had this transaction in May, I would say for the last six years, I've been having meetings, very preliminary, just getting to know folks, networking, their networking. But ultimately, when we made the decision to sell to a new investment group, we had a large Rolodex, it's an old old school term, Rolodex of contacts to sort of to go to to see who would be interested. And be the youth enrichment space is a very desirable space for private equity. So if that happens to be a space you participate in, there is a lot of demand on that side.

Tom DuFore 10:22

Very interesting. No, thanks for giving just a little overview on that. I I think that's interesting. And to your point, what you were saying earlier is really getting the business ready for that and doing just all the things that a great franchise or should be doing in general anyway. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what does this look like ongoing? You've been part of the brand for a long time. It's been operating for many years. You have a national brand at this juncture.

Brian Gross 10:48

So talk a little bit about that. So we

Scaling Units With Transparency And Coaching

Brian Gross 10:51

have now 60 open units and another 10 or so that are in the opening process. We really do have a national footprint. It's not densely populated, but uh, I mean, we're from Portland to San Diego, all the way across from Florida up to B to Boston area and filling in in between, which is wonderful. And that was part of the reason why Spark Harbor was of great interest to us, as we were to them, is that, you know, they'll be that engine to really take us from where we've been to that next level to get to four or five hundred units nationwide. You know, they're obviously bringing not just capital, but great expertise in terms of being able to scale a business. It is immensely hard to get a franchise concept past 10 units, let alone to 50 units, and then to get it to 500 units is yet another evolution. And, you know, that was really what led us to look and what led Spark Harbor to invest in us was they saw the potential in us. You know, we saw the strength that they would bring in helping us get there. And yes, it starts with having a proven concept. Whether that proven concept is 10 units or however many, it's got to be something that folks believe can be scaled and successfully. Because at the end of the day, if the franchisees aren't successful and they're not getting the rewards that they expect, you're not gonna scale or go where you need to go. And so even after we open, you know, all the training that we talked about to get someone open, our team is heavily involved with the franchisees. Yeah, first year we're on weekly calls with them. After that, it might scale back to monthly, depending on the need of the franchisee. But our team is actively coaching, guiding, and consulting them to continue to be successful. And the beauty of a franchise model is that you have however many units you have of data and information and ways to attack a problem. Running a business is not science, it's really art and science. And so learning from each other, I think is the beauty of franchising, is we are completely transparent in all of our information. So every Monday, all of our owners get all the key data on every school. So you know exactly what every school is doing from revenue to number of students to everything. And I say that's not to embarrass anybody, that's to help you be smarter and learn. So if I'm not doing something real well, if I'm worth my salt, I'm gonna go look at the top 10 doing it and reach out to them and say, hey, how can, you know, how can I do this better? Obviously, our team is helping them in that way. But sometimes you hear something from another owner, you hear something from another director, and it just comes in a different way and it resonates differently. But that's the beauty of franchising. Otherwise, you might as well start your own business and not be part of franchising if you're not going to take advantage of all that's all that it brings to you.

Tom DuFore 13:47

I would echo that when I was a multi-unit franchisee, the kind of this hidden gem of franchising was the relationships I had with my franchisees, the fellow franchisees. In corporate, you know, was fine and great, but sometimes a franchise or giving advice or suggestions is kind of like getting advice from mom or dad. If it comes from someone else, it says the exact same thing, it just hits differently.

Brian Gross 14:12

Absolutely. And, you know, and so my job and our team's job is to really build ways to make those connections and facilitate those conversations. And obviously we have our conference, but we try and do things throughout the year to really help people establish those networks and establish, you know, those relationships. And, you know, I'm sure there are a lot of businesses like this, but I think, you know, being in a creative education-based artistic industry, our owners are so willing to help everyone else. There is no, I'm not, you know, I don't have time for that, or, you know, I'm more worried about my business. They're all so open and willing to help other folks grow, which is just a wonderful culture to be around. And that's one of my favorite parts about, you know, sort of Bakhtarab.

Keeping Culture While Growing Fast

Tom DuFore 15:03

One of the things that smaller systems, say under a hundred franchise units, that's really attractive is it really has a family type feel. It kind of has this small knit type of organization. How are you going to keep some of that familiarity and familial type feel in your system as you start to expand?

Brian Gross 15:23

You know, for us, we're we are a high-touch organization. And then the question is, how do you scale being a high-touch organization when there's a lot more units? And, you know, obviously you can add staff, but that can get kind of expensive and difficult to manage. And I think one of the ways is technology is really, you know, helps break through some of that ways to communicate more effectively, ways to communicate quicker, ways to disseminate information faster, ways to link up and join together quicker. I mean, even what we're doing today, right? 10 years ago, nobody did this. We have been on a conference call, you know, so you get to see faces and establish relationships that way. So I we think about that a lot. And I think technology will certainly be one piece of it. The other nice thing is as you grow, you can do regional stuff, which right now, quite frankly, other than a couple of places, we don't have the density, right? So when we do stuff, it's either video based or it's nationally based. But think about when we have enough units, yeah, I have three in Seattle and I have 10, you know, you can start doing Seattle-specific stuff and you can start doing LA specific stuff. And I think that's how. So it might just be in smaller subsegments, but that human element is vitally important to having a healthy system. We use a third-party research company to do an every other year anonymous survey of our system just to make sure we're getting really honest feedback on how satisfied are they? How would it how do they feel about our marketing, our operations? You know, are they getting the reward out of it that they expected? All of those things. And, you know, we have done a our scores have been fantastic. And the, you know, obviously the challenge is how do you maintain that as you scale and grow and things are moving quicker? And so that is definitely what we spend a lot of time thinking about. We feel like we've built the foundation. One of the things we have that's a real competitive advantage is we have our own proprietary software that runs the schools. Everything from the initial prospect through to enrollment actually tracks and reports out to the family and the schools all of the curriculum advancements and the educational component. It interfaces with payroll systems, it interfaces with financial reporting systems. So it's kind of a tool that lets us scale faster because we have the infrastructure to support it. Whereas a lot of systems that might have more manual processes or more high-touch processes, it's harder to scale, right? Because then you need more and more bodies.

Advice For Emerging Franchise Brands

Tom DuFore 18:02

As you look back and see where you started to where you are, and then your vision forward, what advice might you give to an emerging franchise brand that's just getting launched or getting going and thinking about it? What advice would you give to them?

Brian Gross 18:17

I'd probably do a couple of pieces. One, make sure that you're always obsessively concerned with franchisee profitability, that if the franchisee isn't profitable, no matter how great your concept is, you're not going anywhere. Right. At the end of the day, that is why people get into buying a business. They don't get into it to buy to lose money. Not all of them care about how much they make, but they all need to make something. And then I think the other pieces, particularly in the beginning, you have to be extremely collaborative and flexible. So our early franchisees were partners, really, right? And we, even though we had at the time five company-owned schools before we went into franchising, the insights they brought and the information we gathered and learned from them was critical to the next set of evolutions that we made in the model. And, you know, you can't think you know everything, you know what you know, and you have to have a learning mindset of my initial franchisees or partners. So when you pick them, be critical and make sure you're picking people that will be partners. Because getting, I said, getting to 10, you probably know the data. To get to 10, so few systems ever get to 10 franchisees, and then even fewer get to 100. And so those first 10 are vitally critical to getting to that next stage.

Tom DuFore 19:46

What's a great way for someone who listens to this and says, this is really interesting. I'd love to learn more, get in touch.

Brian Gross 19:52

How can they learn more about what you're doing? Sure. I mean, obviously they can come to our website, Bach, like Johann Sebastian, B-A-C-H, Bach2Rock.com. Certainly they can email us at franchising at Bach2Rock.com. We always love talking to people that are into community music, children, giving back, education. You know, hopefully it works out. And if it doesn't, we still love talking to people and learning more about you know what people are interested in.

Misses Makes Multipliers And Meaning

Tom DuFore 20:18

Brian, this is a great time of the show. We make a transition. We ask our guests the same four questions before they go. And the first question we ask is have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?

Brian Gross 20:27

Many misses. I wish I could limit it to one or two. As I talked about, you know, having a learning mindset. Sometimes when you're younger in your um in your career, and particularly as you're trying to prove yourself, sometimes you believe you know more than you do. You know, I had one or two of those instances, and uh I was fortunate to be surrounded by some really great people that were patient with me and helped me understand that we is better than me. And I really adopted that mindset. And now it's funny, as an executive, I explained much more joy out of developing somebody who might have started as a junior person in our organization and rose to a senior level. That to me is uh as rewarding as almost anything I do on a day-to-day basis.

Tom DuFore 21:12

Great. Well, let's look on the other side.

Brian Gross 21:15

I'd love for you to share a make or two. It's it's a small, simple one, but like when we have our conference and an owner runs up and gives me a big hug, and you just know that you helped. Because look, starting a business is a huge undertaking and a huge risk. And it's very scary. In our discovery days, when somebody's sitting across, I said, if you're not a little scared right now, you probably are in the wrong place because it's a both a capital investment, it's a time investment, and it's an emotional investment. So when I go to a conference or when I see somebody when I'm doing a in school visit, and you know, they're smiling and they give me a big hug, that is like the greatest thing because you know you help somebody find something that they're passionate about and that they're successful. Successful at and you had something to do with it. And you know, that that's that's a rewarding piece.

Tom DuFore 22:05

The name of the show is Multiply Your Success. Have you used a multiplier to grow yourself personally, professionally, or any organization you've run?

Brian Gross 22:14

Obviously, nobody gets where they are without a lot of help. I would say, and this is a an odd one, probably, maybe you've heard it before, but my family. I've been very blessed. My wife has a very similar background to me. She was a banker, turned MBA, turned marketer, turned business owner. And so just having somebody that you are that close with that you can share and learn from and bounce stuff off of. You know, one of the hardest parts about being a president or CEO is you don't have a big peer group for day-to-day, right? Certainly you can be part of president or CEO networks and other things, but like day-to-day decision making, it's hard sometimes to go to your VPs or to your directors because it might be impacting them in a way that they they might not want to give you this the answer that they need to. So it's nice to have someone at home that I can really share with. And then having three kids who are now um out of high school and in college or on their own, it's really great to remember back and to see how you know you start your journey coming out of school and getting into the workforce and all the things that that you kind of forget until you see it in somebody else that's up close to you.

Tom DuFore 23:27

That's great. Well, the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?

Brian Gross 23:33

I think it's having a passion for what you do each day, whether that's work, personal, family, etc. I was lucky to find Bakhtorak. I can say with a straight face that I had a lot of jobs before that that didn't bring me joy, but it brought me a paycheck. And I did it for a paycheck. But Baktorak is something that I look forward to. I don't dread Monday mornings. You know, I think about it over the weekend. So it's really great to do something that you love and to feel that, you know, to feel that pride in.

Tom DuFore 24:07

And as we bring this to a close, Brian, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?

Brian Gross 24:14

No, just that, you know, Bakterok, you know, obviously the music space has been around for 2,000 years, but I really do think we and probably longer, but um, but I think we really do have a unique take on it. And if people are interested in exploring it or learning more about it, I encourage them to. Again, if it doesn't work out, so be it. But we're always looking for like-minded people that want to make an impact in a kid's life in a community and do it through a really expressive, creative, wonderful way. For better or worse, the public school systems are diverting resources out of arts, music, phys ed, and and kids are not getting that the way they did when I was younger and in earlier generations. So I think what we do is important. You know, I think it's needed, and families seem to really value it. So I think it's uh it's a great place to be.

Key Takeaways And Closing Ask

Tom DuFore 25:08

Brian, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. And let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So, takeaway number one is when he talked about one of their big missions is learning music should be fun. It's called play for a reason. I thought that was simple and direct. It was fantastic. Takeaway number two is when he talked about putting kids into groups where they learn how to be part of a team and a final performance. A lot of times people think these are things that you can only earn or learn from sports. And yet you're able to learn this through arts and music. Takeaway number three is when he talked to the franchisors out there. So those of you that are thinking about franchising your business or have already franchised, he said his recommendation to get in front of these folks is to just build a franchise system that works from the onset. And number two is to go to industry events to learn from people. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win comes from when he talked about his advice to an emerging brand. And his advice was clear and simple. Make sure that you are always obsessively concerned about the franchisee profitability. And number two, in the beginning, you need to be flexible and collaborative and view those franchisees, the especially the initial franchisees, almost like partners. And I thought that was great. That's the same kind of advice we give to our franchise clients and franchise ours that we work with. It's something that we see tends to be true as well. It's an important aspect, at least to have that mindset. And so that's the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at BigSkyFranchise Team.com where you can schedule your free, no obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.