From Patchwork to Platform — Lawrence & Jasmine Yu on the Systems Shift that Helped Symphony 9 Scale

David Martin (00:32.725)
Well, Jasmine and Lawrence, thanks for being on the show today. We’re so happy to get a chance to get to know you guys and hear a little bit more about your story.

Lawrence Lee (00:44.238)
Thank you for having us. It’s an honor. Thank you.

David Martin (00:46.971)
Absolutely. Well, Jasmine, you’re an internationally trained violist and an award winning musician who studied at UC San Diego and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with a performance career that spans orchestras in the US and abroad. Lawrence, you’re a composer, a pianist and a music technologist with a deep experience in curriculum based instruction, composition for film and games and critically,

the operational side of running a music education business. So together you guys pivoted from these professional backgrounds to create Symphony Nine School. And you’ve navigated all kinds of things, including COVID. So today, I just wanted to talk to you a little bit and hear your story about how you guys did that and what were some of the challenges, of course.

that you went through to create this amazing school that you guys have now. And so can you sort of take us back a little bit to, you know, before there was a school and you guys had these professional careers, like what inspired even starting a music school?

Lawrence Lee (02:03.296)
Right. So I guess I’ll start. So I guess when we were at school, teaching on the side, know, like I think every college student probably needs some side income. So you kind of do that. And we did traveling to home, I guess, in home lessons first. And then we were young. We could do that, you know, and driving to people’s house. And and then I guess we started to realize that we

enjoy teaching a lot, but then also on the other aspect, we were trend musicians. Like I think our dream maybe is to like, you know, play in an orchestra or just like for him is like work in the film industry and then like, you know, in the recording booth. So that just some seats, I think just something happened when we teach, we were like, oh, we’re actually passionate as you see the kids growth. And then then later we go to grad school, kind of still pursuing our dream to, you know, be a professional musician, still teaching on the side and

And then probably a lot of musicians can relate to this. After you graduate, you kind of struggle to find jobs, and then you audition here and there. And then for you, intern at a lot of recording booths. then it’s just, I guess the expectations and the dream, it’s kind of like the gap that you had to work through as a reason to graduate. I think also on the other end, teaching has been just, you know,

it’s stable but also very rewarding. You kind of start seeing the kids growth and then you work with the clients and then you kind of see their expectations and then like, know, in a real world setting, like, you know, what do the clients want outside, what I over there. So I think we started to teach, think, like full time, I would say, for two years in the Bay Area. And then I think Lauren’s parents are…

here down in SoCal mission vehicle. So we moved back right when COVID hit. So after that, it’s just a journey of some business want to sell, know, music school because COVID, you know, and so I think back then we, that’s how we step into this industry and how we got the business.

David Martin (04:22.187)
Excellent, excellent. Before we go on, real quick, Jasmine, so when you’re talking, I’m hearing, I think you’re patting the table or something like that, and it must be where the mic is, because I can hear. Yeah, yeah, no worries, I just want, it just makes editing on the post end a little bit more difficult. So, okay, so great, so great. So, Lawrence, so you guys,

Lawrence Lee (04:36.396)
Sorry!

Lawrence Lee (04:44.526)
be careful.

David Martin (04:51.281)
at some point you guys met, Was it before, I mean, it must have been before the music school. So kind of from your perspective, how did this all come about?

Lawrence Lee (05:02.188)
Yeah, I guess I’ll go a little bit backwards. we started, we actually had a big career change, I think, during our bachelor’s year. We did the typical, we both went to UC San Diego. So obviously music is, it has a great contemporary music program, but I guess the traditional music definitely is not the focus of that, even film music. So we were obviously into the science majors and everyone else was computer engineers.

And then we decided to make a shift just because growing up, think music has been a really good, positive experience to us. And we wanted to share that to the world. for example, her, she wanted to her. wanted to do composition. And then once we went to San Francisco Conservatory of Music, we decided to hone in on our skills. And then in the beginning, of course, teaching was only something of like an income, you know, to survive, to make sure we can do it.

And then afterwards we started to enjoy it, but we still tried to pursue our own careers. Me trying to reach out to various internships. She tried to do audition after audition. And then at a certain point during our teaching careers, there was a certain shift where we realized that we enjoyed teaching more than actually performing. actually for me personally, think studio work was nice, but I think the late hours kind of affected our health a lot.

So we decided to say, perhaps we can give teaching a try. And then I wanted to really get serious in teaching. Like I was actually working with another studio in Sunnyvale, California. And I started to really enjoy it. I thought, okay, maybe I can work with the owner and then figure out something to make a new career instead of only coming in and out, hour of students here and there. And then opportunity hit.

We’re basically like, okay, I had the opportunity to go back to Mission Beho, California. Then around, you know, that’s when COVID hit around 2020, 2021. And then I again, found job again, but then afterwards I felt like I was doing more or less the same. And then I thought, okay, let’s just try to see if we can make our own studio. And then getting this business actually was not really intentional. We weren’t really ready to buy out a building or create our own thing.

Lawrence Lee (07:25.486)
It was totally by accident. think when I was working with this studio in Mission, no, sorry, Laguna Hills, California, just for me, naturally, I really love teaching. So I think the owner wanted to sell it eventually. And I think the first number they told us was like, know, like quarter of a million, 250,000. And of course, someone just graduated with debt on their shoulders. That’s like impossible, you know, unless, you know, and obviously be young, you know, for me, I was lucky I didn’t.

went through master’s, so I didn’t have that much debt compared to her, but I mean, I still a lot to do. So then, you know, we, just said I couldn’t. And then I think they really, really wanted to, you know, pass it on because they couldn’t do it. Um, and then, yeah, ended up down to 15 K. So, I mean, at that point it was like, okay, it’s a lot, you know, for somebody, you know, just a millennial, you know, at this point of age. But then eventually, uh, we just took the bullet and she was very supportive and saying, okay, maybe we’ll give this a try. Um, and the initial location actually only had one year.

one more year of lease because we were just continuing a lease. So then it probably wasn’t a huge commitment we thought we wanted to try. Afterwards, we became Symphony 9 School and then we moved to the location Lake Forest. So it’s been quite a lot of steps and journeys, not really intentional. It’s like these things you can’t plan it out. You just look at what happened and then you say, can I take it? Sure.

David Martin (08:37.663)
Wow. Yeah.

David Martin (08:47.883)
Yeah, yeah, no, I love that. I love that you’re absolutely right because it’s, you know, the road is never straight. It always has unexpected turns. And so that’s interesting. So you guys were, you went to teach at this school and found that that was really something that you were enjoying. And then you decided to buy the school and the initial offer was too high, 250 you said. And then

Lawrence Lee (08:54.134)
Yeah.

David Martin (09:17.503)
that he came down to 215 and then you worked out a deal from there.

Lawrence Lee (09:23.03)
Actually it was 15, so that was really good. Like straight 15. And yeah, yeah. And I mean, a part of us was also worried to be like, okay, if it’s this low, are we, is it right? You know, we went through a lot of, yeah.

David Martin (09:27.294)
just 15.

David Martin (09:34.571)
Wait, wait, wait, I’m sorry. So you’re saying that he went from 250,000 to 15,000?

Lawrence Lee (09:42.39)
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that’s nice. But it was a straight like, you know, at that point, like, you know, like those things like, okay, was this right? You know, because like, were they really making enough money? Like, because I didn’t know the business side of it. I was actually only one of their employees. And actually, this was before I think California was more strict with the laws. I was even a contractor. So I think, you know, things have changed now with the laws. But I think at that point, I was

wasn’t sure if it was right. And then we had asked a lot of questions going through in negotiations, know, was, Miss Lee, she was a, they’re basically the agent working on a deal. it was honestly, the negotiation was really dreadful. I was looking back, it was six months and the, you know, I think they, I think every owner has a pride with the business that they build. But if you want to look at the economical side, right, like, what’s your revenue? And then like the, you know, bookkeeping clean and everything.

That’s where you really, you know, for the seller, that’s when you decide whether you want to buy or not. And I think for them, it’s, I think they expect the business to, to, to, or as a worth really high. But then for us, it’s like the bookkeeping is not really exactly what we’re looking for. And then, so we actually don’t want it. It like, just, you know, just we can pass it on. This is our best offer. And then I think the owner really preferred Lawrence to take over for, mean, because he’s passionate for teaching. So it went like six months, like back and forth.

I remember we didn’t even get through the deal after Christmas. then they were like, you know what, just like whatever prize you got, we were okay to sell. And then right after Christmas, the first day of New Year, we start, there’s no transition period. We just kind of get this client and then kind of get used to their CRM and stuff. so it was a pretty interesting role for us. Yeah. Yeah. So it was transition.

David Martin (11:30.091)
Wow. So was this 2020, the Christmas of 2020, or was it the Christmas of 2021?

Lawrence Lee (11:37.55)
2020. Because we officially start 2021.

David Martin (11:40.203)
So all this was happening while COVID was shutting everything down. And so this seller, I mean, you guys really, it sounds like the timing was pretty remarkable because the seller was probably desperate because they were probably seeing like everything’s shutting down, my business is, know, so if I can get anything for this business from these folks, then that’s a plus. And I’ve never heard that before going from 250,000 on the purge.

Lawrence Lee (11:53.645)
Yeah.

Lawrence Lee (12:00.18)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lawrence Lee (12:05.963)
Mm.

.

David Martin (12:08.971)
the sales price down to 15,000 and you guys, and they agreed to it and you guys were able to walk in. How many students did this school have when you guys bought it?

Lawrence Lee (12:12.32)
Yeah.

Lawrence Lee (12:20.334)
50 to 60? I would say 40 on the record. 40, 40. Yeah. Yes. So I think in a way we feel lucky with this purchase, but on the other hand, was, I think for like some, someone being like in their late twenties, a lot of our relatives are like, you know, just don’t do it. You know, like they cannot prove profit. And then like you have to pay rent, like maybe 8,000 a month, like, you know, what are you guys doing? And so that was like a gimbal for us. Even maybe still we feel like a gimbal, but.

David Martin (12:24.491)
40.

Lawrence Lee (12:48.984)
But that’s how we got the business.

David Martin (12:51.475)
Well, yeah, and I think anytime you acquire a business, it is a gamble, right? there’s no guarantees with any of it. And so, wow, that’s amazing. So you guys took the leap, you bought the business, so what was that transition like? Like, at the time, you had 40 students. Lawrence, were teaching, Jasmine, were you teaching there as well?

Lawrence Lee (12:59.65)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (13:16.142)
was teaching at some other studio and then when we entered this negotiation phase, I started to take over some of the owner students just to see how their business is like. And so I was there for the last period of the negotiation. Yes.

David Martin (13:28.999)
Okay, okay. So you’re both teaching there. And so what was that transition like inheriting the teachers and the students and all that? How did you guys like introduce yourselves to those teachers and make that transition?

Lawrence Lee (13:32.13)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (13:50.008)
Do you want to start because you teach there longer? yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, they helped in one way. Like we had like a gathering with all the teachers and the previous owner and try to say there’s a transition going on. But besides that, not really much. We just, was, I, a couple of the teachers, I think I did interact with a lot more. So that transition was a little bit easier. I did teach a lot of the bulk of the clients just because I was like one of the longest staying teachers over there.

So I guess the transition was pretty smooth. I think the more difficult transition was definitely dealing with their invoicing system and scheduling system. So I think in the beginning, you you want to save costs, you know, so everybody uses, you know, the Google suite of tools. And I think everything was done through the Google calendar, which was functional, but it was difficult to keep track of everything. there was everything had to be hacked. You know, you had to create custom ideas and making sure that all the clients, you know, schedules were proper.

David Martin (14:29.994)
Hmm.

Lawrence Lee (14:49.678)
and I think, we, we use the outdated VoIP system phone system that I needed to carry over. then at a certain point I needed to transition to something a little bit more robust in the future. and yeah, that’s pretty much it.

David Martin (15:05.235)
So just the administrative aspect of running things, even at 40 students, trying to do it through Google and sort of like patchwork everything together was just very difficult. So you guys navigated your way through to a CRM and what was that process like?

Lawrence Lee (15:32.014)
It’s lot of work and a lot of training and a lot of learning, think. So I think that’s what Lauren said. I pretty much, change everything from the previous owner, the contacting system, CRM, scheduling system, invoicing system. And I think some of the, we do love to some clients because they are used to the old ways. For example, when we took over, there’s no deadline for the…

the tuition. There’s no, it’s just like whenever they feel like paying, they just pay. And then we thought, you know, I don’t know, maybe just like for some business, you know, just like envision like the business growth, has to be a deadline. So we lost some clients. And then I think we have some phone calls just saying that you guys just don’t know the wrong business. You guys are too young. And then, so I think for that, it’s a huge hit within like, you know, first month or two. And then I think with, sorry,

I think also with the invoice, they manually track every single lesson. that if you have, let’s say four Thursday in this month, and then they will build you four lessons. But then if you have five Thursday next month, then they will build you five. And then, so we had to do that for 40 students, which is not a lot, but then for the admin to do that every single month, there’s so many errors going on. So I think that was the first thing we want to change. And then later on, like scheduling, right? Like we try to switch to square at that point, because that’s the only thing we know.

And then what else, what other CRM? Yeah, we’ve been just using that. think just any kind of CRM, because I think everything was done manually, know, checks here and there, cashier and there. So we had to try to standardize it because as much as we come from a teaching background, we’re very, we’re trying to be benevolent as much as possible. But it was hard to kind of…

enforce just some guidelines with parents to say, want to work together with your child and making sure that we can have some kind of policy together. I guess some of them, it used to be run casually, which is not bad, definitely, to be close to your clients and making sure. But at a certain point, it’s also important that we’re working together to help your kid have a good experience, learning music and growing. And that was a tough transition because

Lawrence Lee (17:52.364)
some clients were used to the old style. And obviously to be fair, we were younger than most, you know, business owners at the time. so, know, there’s an age gap there all the time, especially hiring too. Yeah. Yeah.

David Martin (18:03.889)
Absolutely. Yeah, no, and I think that’s a real thing. So when did you guys switch to Opus?

Lawrence Lee (18:10.574)
Quite recently, actually. Yeah, it’ll be this year, most likely. Yeah, most likely this year.

David Martin (18:15.573)
So you went to Square and you did your scheduling and your merchant, your billing, that kind of thing. So why did you switch over to Opus from Square?

Lawrence Lee (18:27.97)
Yeah, I guess I can answer this. So most personally, think Opus has a lot of features that are useful, not bloated, I think. So with Square and other CRM systems, sometimes it’s difficult to navigate, okay, what you actually need. And then you have these hidden upgrades that you kind of need. It’s like, I’m a huge gamer. So it’s like, you know, where you have like a bunch of like DLCs you need to buy, you know, this kind of thing, you know, like little things that needs to add on to make things work.

David Martin (18:51.147)
Yeah.

Lawrence Lee (18:55.51)
And it just felt endless and confusing and a headache. With Opus, there was one tier that was just straightforward. Again, the support team was very wonderful. It was very easy to talk with them and ask any questions. felt very easy. Setting up was quick. I’m not sure if it’s on their end, but it was very good. The experience was nice. And keeping track of hours. And just a lot of music studio-specific things like charging monthly, operation and all of that features.

David Martin (19:25.515)
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s that’s awesome. So when you guys first took over, I want to back up a little bit to kind of. So you bought the school you’re taking over, you’re dealing that first month with, you know, people complaining about having to pay. I always find that so funny. You know, people complain about like, well, we have a deadline or, know, you got to pay on the first of every month or whatever your guys’ policy is. But just something that’s a little bit more automated so that you don’t have to chase them down.

Lawrence Lee (19:42.126)
you

Lawrence Lee (19:54.872)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (19:55.307)
What were some of the things that you weren’t expecting that you had to deal with? Maybe some surprises like, wow, now I’m a business owner.

Lawrence Lee (20:10.814)
Yeah. For me, it was the idea of how the lesson should be run. So, and then because we just took over a school, we don’t want to change too many things, especially with the transition period. So we pretty much keep the pricing the same, standardize it for everybody. So there’s no like special discount if you go to the schools and everything. again, as a result, we lost a couple of clients and that’s, I think for us, just want like a clean book,

keeping it just to be fair. that’s like the first step. And I think the other thing, like, the lesson. So the previous owner, as Lauren said, it was like pretty casual, know, like the way they run the lesson, the kids can eat snacks in the theory room. And then for me, someone grew up in Asia and then, you know, got hit by teacher whose posture is bad or something. Like for me, I’m not saying that’s great.

But for me, it’s so casual. We are talking about a lesson, and you guys are eating snacks, and the teacher is just on the phone. Or something like, for me, it’s just so much I want to change. But also, I understand that what you say earlier, expectations are different. And how do you transfer that to your teacher? that’s something we changed at first, just how the lesson was run and then standardized. Being timely, just some.

Also just treat it seriously as a music, you know, hopefully highly educated. Well, like, you know, high quality music lessons. Anything from you? No, I think, you covered that part really well. And I think for me, yeah, just judging from my experience, just the logistics of being a business owner, you know, the, the accounting, because in beginning you’re to have to wear multiple hats, you know, as you know, basically you have to do the counting, the, the managing of the staff, making sure we’re all on the same page.

and trying to build a team together. And it’s difficult, especially with music business in a certain sense, because a lot of times music students will seem like a jail sometimes. You have one teacher just go in and then hours and then leave out and there’s no communication. I think the reason why we’re so passionate about it is we feel like we want to do that differently in whatever way that actually teachers will know each other as the staff feels like a community.

Lawrence Lee (22:33.646)
And we just kind of grow together and that’s a huge challenge to try to get into it and also the logistics. Yeah.

David Martin (22:41.055)
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I agree with you. You know, what’s interesting about the acquisition versus the startup, you know, a lot of music school owners started their music school and, you know, they like from their house and it’s usually from the house. That’s what it was for me. I started it. I started it. I didn’t acquire. And so the benefit to that

Lawrence Lee (22:49.932)
Yeah.

Lawrence Lee (22:54.926)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (23:09.149)
is that you can create the culture. You can set the expectations. You train the teachers. You hire the teachers. Like everything has got your fingerprint on it. The downside to it is that you’re starting from zero. like there’s nothing. You’re taking all the risk. You’re spending all the money to build the student base. But with the acquisition side, when you purchase a school, the…

the big challenge that you guys just expressed is that you’re inheriting all of the good and the bad. And so all of the good is great. Like usually the good is you’re buying revenue, right? Like that’s why you acquire is it’s kind of leapfrogging over all the risk of the startup, right? So it’s a known thing, right? It’s like we already have students coming. We already have a…

Lawrence Lee (23:43.037)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (24:02.461)
a name on the building, we’re just gonna like continue that and hopefully build it. But all of the things going on in the business, like you were just saying, the teacher’s not having the same standard that you do, maybe a little too casual, maybe the students aren’t really paying when they should or at all. Again, that’s just always amazing to me that people just think they can get away with doing something for nothing.

Lawrence Lee (24:24.302)
Mm. Mm.

David Martin (24:31.839)
But you have to inherit all that. And so you’re really coming in kind of like a fixer and you’re saying, okay, we’re gonna come in and we’re going to make this better. And I think the challenge for first time business owners that are acquiring, which would be you guys, is what’s the playbook? if you’ve never done it before, how do you just come in and…

know what to do. Well, I think in lot of cases you don’t. You just sort of, you try things, you test things out. And, you know, and what’s impressive to me is that you guys really, you made a lot of good decisions to kind of clean things up and to, and eventually to grow the school. Where do you guys feel like things started to turn in the right direction? When did that start to happen? Do you feel?

Lawrence Lee (25:29.861)
So I personally feel like it’s when we start to have new clients, to be honest, when their expectations are fresh, you know, and then the number of the new clients start to outnumber the old clients. That’s when we feel like the business is a little bit more stable. Because to be really honest with you, are still old clients expecting old rules even after the first year.

I personally will have clients who just complain to me. The previous owner just answered my text like 6 AM. We talk all the time. then you guys, like communication is down. You only talk during business hours. And I just told Lawrence, feel like I mentally just can’t do that. So as a result, I think we still have some friction with older clients. But then now with the newer clients coming, and the numbers start to grow, then we feel like, OK, yeah, maybe as you say, it’s an hour.

It’s our culture, you know, the built within our business. And then the clients are respecting that and the things are getting smoother. Right now. think there’s like a, a relationship to cooperate, not like always like butting head with like different ideology. So that’s how I feel. Yeah. I she said it right. Yeah. At a certain point, we basically started with compromises and then we just made sure that we were on the same page, making sure that we want to work together. And then I think, you know, you can’t.

please everyone, which is nature of all relationships. And I think we just want to make sure that we are honest and fair and just making sure that we want to believe in our vision and that we want to bring you on this journey if you’re willing. And if not, that’s okay. You know, then we’ll just move on. And then I think once that kind of, you know, settled down that, you know, as we entered in, you know, it really was like, you know, a Hail Mary. was like, it’s this crash course and so many

courses, like management, accounting, marketing, and then making sure that we can actually work with the clients. Communication is huge on this. Keeping our communication open, but fair and honest all the time. And as soon as that was really clear, we are different avenues. You can contact us at certain point. Then actually it became very smooth. And then we can focus on other things of the business.

David Martin (27:45.097)
Yeah, I mean, the more clear you can be upfront with people, even on the negative side, you know, when we first took students in, one of the things that we would talk about, I tell my staff this, is like, we want to deal with the things that are going to be the most unpleasant down the road upfront, because that’s when they’re the most excited about lessons, right? Like they’re coming to you to sign up, they’re excited to get their kids started. So let’s talk about like makeup lessons right now.

Lawrence Lee (28:12.322)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (28:12.489)
Right, so if you miss a lesson, this is what we’re gonna do, right? And whatever that is, everybody has their own, know, some people don’t offer makeup lessons, which I don’t, I think that’s a mistake, but some type of alternative, right? Whether it’s like a lesson made video lesson, whether it’s a credit, know, whatever it is, let’s talk about that now when you’re excited about lessons, instead of like, you know, sign this form and it’s somewhere buried, you know, in the text, right? But let’s address that.

Lawrence Lee (28:15.63)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (28:41.707)
Or like quitting lessons. Let’s talk about that now when you’re signing up. Like if you ever wanna quit, here’s how you have to do it. Or like, we talked about tuition payments. When we collect tuition payments, how we collect tuition payments, we require that it be this way. The best time to talk about all that stuff is when they’re excited about taking lessons. Like the psychology, right? Like it makes sense to deal with those things then. Then when, you know,

Lawrence Lee (28:46.286)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (29:10.505)
down the road when those things come up, it’s not, well, we talked about it, right? It’s not so much friction. Yeah, you’re still gonna have friction and yeah, you’re gonna have people say, well, don’t remember, you know, you’re still gonna have that, right? But you really mitigate a lot of those arguments and those types of things by just simply talking about it when they’re excited before, you know?

Lawrence Lee (29:15.075)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (29:22.798)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (29:37.267)
So that’s an important little thing. That’s something that we adopted along the way as we continued to onboard. Because what you’re talking about inheriting these families that didn’t do things, like they did things the way you didn’t want to do them. Like you changed some policies, you modified some things. That’s not necessarily only in your case, right?

Lawrence Lee (29:42.52)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (30:07.177)
Like I said, like we had people, you know, they would sign up, we would go through all the policies with them. And then, you know, two months later, they’re like, well, you never told me that, you know, your makeup lessons are on video. They’re not, you know, I can’t just make up whenever I want. Or, you know, you never told me that if, you know, like we did tell them, right? Like we did tell them, they even like put their initial next to the thing we taught, we told them, you know, but it still becomes a situation where people, so you have to deal with it either way, I guess is my point.

Lawrence Lee (30:21.154)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (30:25.912)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (30:30.03)
I

Lawrence Lee (30:35.982)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

David Martin (30:37.099)
And so I love what you said, like you just have to stick with you and your culture and your policy and they’ll either fit or they won’t, right? It’s like, it’s either a square or it’s round. If it’s round and it’s trying to go into a square, like it just doesn’t fit, it’s fine. Like no person, it’s not personal. Maybe you’re just not a good fit for our school, you know? And that’s it.

Lawrence Lee (30:46.542)
Yeah.

David Martin (31:02.975)
And that’s a hard thing to learn how to do as an owner, especially when you’re trying to grow. And so you guys, especially in these earlier years, which I would put you, you’re still in the early years of being school owners. What are some of the, share whatever you wanna share. I don’t wanna put you on the spot or anything, but my wife and I ran our school. You guys are married. I love that you’re doing this together. I think that’s so cool.

Lawrence Lee (31:08.078)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (31:32.179)
My wife and I did the same thing. We ran the school together. I mean, I I primarily ran it, but she was very much involved in like whenever there would be systems that were breaking down, she was good at thinking those things through and putting them together kind of like a puzzle. But we had arguments. We had a lot of arguments about what we thought, you know, the way things should go. you know, usually the argument stemmed around me just making knee-jerk decisions.

Lawrence Lee (31:43.863)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (31:51.214)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (32:01.129)
you know, pushing things forward, you know, spending too much on marketing, which is usually what I was doing. And but she she was like, no, we need to be more organized, you know. So we had we had a lot of arguments and it was always during stress points in the business. What are your guys’s? And again, you could share whatever you want, but do you guys have certain areas where there’s sometimes there’s some friction in your relationship when running the business?

Lawrence Lee (32:07.278)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (32:17.784)
Yes.

Lawrence Lee (32:22.274)
Yeah.

Lawrence Lee (32:28.758)
Yeah, I’m gonna honestly say of course. I think I think I’m just gonna carry off is exactly the same way with us actually. She’s more priority driven, I’m more vision driven. It’s the same thing where basically I would say I have a lot of these ideas that I think will make the music studio, you know, grow or have more positive light or just you know, be more exciting, you know, and I always think of okay, maybe this ensemble class, maybe this, you know, activity that they can all do.

Maybe even thinking about, I’m going to do something that makes the teachers really happy to work here. But then on the flip side, perhaps I forgot about, oh, we need to book a recital venue. Like we have none that Christmas is very booked. Or something like, what was the last thing we did? think. Just kind of plan out the year. Yeah, plan out the calendar. Get out first.

Host piano examinations. So we also need to make sure that those are, you know, in line, I think you’ve probably heard of ABRSM. We actually got in good contact. We can talk to another topic about that. Yeah. But we got in contact with ABRSM and we’re really involved with them and just making sure all of our priorities are straight. So yeah, definitely that happened a lot. Yeah. But I will add onto that and saying that, so I guess like, we’ve been dating since college and then we happened to be in the same grad school.

And then we just happened to enjoy this last 10 years journey together. then the most arguments we have, it’s actually within the first, I will say, first year, if not two years, even still now. But then the first year was intense because we realized you probably have two passionate people running a business, but your idea is so different. And then you’re so comfortable with each other so that there’s no filter in your words. And then it was…

pretty difficult. I think our heart goes to any couple who runs a business together. It is quite challenging.

David Martin (34:28.115)
Yeah, well, but I would add to that that the friction is actually good. Like, you you talk about you’re both passionate, right? You have ideas. Your passion is what drives the business forward and what makes Symphony Nine unique because it is your passion that’s driving that. And when you’re both passionate, there’s that friction, like that friction actually makes each of you better.

Lawrence Lee (34:35.33)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

David Martin (34:55.307)
It’s like one plus one equals three, right? Like there’s this energy that happens when there’s a little bit of friction. Now, obviously, if it’s chaos, then you gotta be careful, right? Like if you’re just always at each other’s throats, that’s not you guys, and that wasn’t me and my wife. But the friction was good, because it actually made us better. And it caused and it forced us to really think things through from the other person’s perspective as well. It’s good to have a visionary and it’s good to have

more of an organizer. Another word for that is integrator. There’s a really good book. If you guys haven’t read, I’d encourage you to read. It’s called Rocket Fuel and it’s by Geno Wickman. Have you guys read it? Yeah, definitely read that one because it talks about the two different types of people that you need to really lead an organization, a company. You need a visionary and you need an integrator. And the visionary is the one that sees the future.

Lawrence Lee (35:34.094)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (35:37.44)
No, no, no, thank you.

Lawrence Lee (35:49.826)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

David Martin (35:54.089)
and drives things forward, the dreamer, the Walt Disney, and the integrator is the person that makes it all happen. Makes it, you know, the organizer, the one that puts a, you can’t have one without the other, right? If you have a visionary without an integrator, then you just have chaos, just tons of ideas all over the place, nothing happens. If you have an integrator without a visionary, then all you have is just systems. You don’t have anything driving forward, right?

Lawrence Lee (35:56.878)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (36:08.686)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (36:14.318)
I’m

Lawrence Lee (36:18.776)
Yes.

David Martin (36:21.451)
And so you have to have both, but they create friction because they don’t always agree with one another. So it’s a great book, great read. There’s even a test in the book where you can take the test and see where you fall. Because it’s a spectrum, right? It’s not like we’re all 100 % one or 100 % the other. We’re on a spectrum. We even had our staff take the test because everybody has sort of that spectrum.

Lawrence Lee (36:26.03)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (36:34.926)
you

Lawrence Lee (36:43.566)
Mmm.

David Martin (36:50.581)
who you are as a business owner, I think is so important, so important, right? Especially when you’re doing this with your spouse. Which again, I love that you guys do that. So I wanna come back to Symphony Nine a little bit though, like the vision behind it, Lawrence, you talked about being the, know, kinda having that vision and seeing, why, first off, why the name Symphony Nine and what makes your guys’ school so awesome?

Lawrence Lee (37:19.246)
I guess it’ll be better to describe our previous name. It was just JL Music School, very on the nose. was just Jasmine’s initial and my initial and it was just music school. That was the original name. It was just JL Music School. Yeah, very plain, very simple. And the logo did look nice, but then at a certain point, we’re just like, if we want to make a studio that’s a little bit more, you know, friendly community driven, it doesn’t make sense if it’s only, you know, her name and my name on there.

David Martin (37:30.345)
That was the original name.

Okay.

Lawrence Lee (37:46.958)
It just feels like exclusive and just one kind of idea. we thought of Symphony 9. I mean, I jumped around with a lot of ideas, you know, try to use like Italian word symphony or something. But then I was like, OK, maybe I shouldn’t be too shy. Symphony 9 is obviously a very obvious name for most musicians. Unfortunately, a lot of our clients sometimes don’t know why. So we have to tell them. But obviously, it’s usually the greatest work for a lot of composers. know, the obvious ones is Beethoven’s Vourjac. And it’s an opportunity for

people of different backgrounds, instruments, just to come together and make something greater. And I think that’s what we really want to do for us because instead of only doing, especially for me as a pianist who studied piano for so long, took so many piano exams, did a few competitions here and there, it’s a very lonely endeavor for piano, especially. I know violin has more opportunity to naturally do chamber ensemble. yeah.

That’s what I think so. I guess this is the example of like his vision and I put down and integrated, I put it down what he wants into the name. so sorry, David, I’ll tell you really quick. He loves Beethoven. So I was like, okay, you know, that’s, let’s brainstorm that. Symphony 9, it’s, all too joy. So we’re envisioning that this place will be happy. But also Symphony 9, we think it’s mostly the…

like the best work of the symphony, like most mature. So we’re like, okay. And also it symbolizes teamwork, which that’s what we want. We envision this to be a community. So all too joyful symphony night, teamwork, and also it’s his favorite composer, Beethoven. So that’s how we come up with the name.

David Martin (39:32.689)
I love that. Wow. There’s so many layers baked into that. That’s great. That’s great. I mean, I figured there would be and you know, so it sounds like you guys are appealing more to classical music. Is that right? Or do you is it all different styles at your school?

Lawrence Lee (39:36.706)
Yeah.

Lawrence Lee (39:50.592)
I think we are, most of us are, most of us are classically trained musicians. So I guess that’s where our, I guess comfort zone is. But honestly for Lawrence, he’s probably one of the teachers who, who had his like feet step into like film industry, jazz and like pop. And then as a result, we can talk about this later, but he’s like one of the most popular teacher here, which is big problem for a director and owner. Nobody wanted to let go of him, but.

But I think yeah, we’re starting to do more like pop style Because he truly think it’s amazing and different than classical music. We started classical but then at a certain point I realized that I want to expand my knowledge and I really got into What was good about the University of San Diego that even though it wasn’t super classical they were really into new music And even though I didn’t like everything of it It did force me to engage me my brain a little bit and actually think of openings

So then that opened the value of new music, film music, and then video game music. And I think that’s a good also avenue to bring those kinds of conversations with students, even if they’re learning classical music only, because kids sometimes need to listen to their own, music that they listen to, the enjoyments, you know, I mean, I can’t tell you how many times K-pop Demon Hunter has showed up, you know, the last, even this year still happening. Yeah.

David Martin (41:16.543)
It’s like my kid’s favorite movie.

Lawrence Lee (41:18.368)
Yeah. About six times or something. be fair, the music is bangers. So it’s great, you know. So we’re really open to all of that. So I would say foremost, yeah, we did start Classical. That’s why we have the name. But we’re very open to all the different styles, especially, you know, in the work that I’ve done in my work in San Francisco. Yeah.

David Martin (41:40.427)
How many students do each of you teach?

Lawrence Lee (41:45.617)
I’m not proud to say this, but yeah, so we are still at that stage where I feel like we had to way too many teaching. Like right before Christmas, I’m proud to say I’m almost about to let go. But then like after Christmas, when our teachers switch career or just say, you know how it is, they maybe want to prioritize different aspects of their life. And so I’m back to like, I would say 20 at this point. And I think for Laurence,

as what we just talked about. He is really passionate and as an owner and a teacher and he knows jazz, knows pop, he knows classical, he demonstrates all the songs that kids want to listen to. So I think for him it’s also, your students are 20-ish too. It’s just…

David Martin (42:30.837)
So you guys each teach about 20 students in your school? Yeah, yeah. So how do you manage that? So you’ve got your students, then you’ve got managing the, obviously the operations of the school, right? You’ve got the teachers that you’re managing as well. And then of course you’ve got the growth. So those are all different components of owning and running the school.

Lawrence Lee (42:33.068)
I think so. I think so. Yeah.

David Martin (43:00.447)
How do you guys manage all

Lawrence Lee (43:03.146)
no weekends. Every day you walk with a laptop and a phone. Yeah, think we still, yeah, as you put it, us in the, like, we are in the early stage. I think that’s completely right. think, you know, our really, you know, like the, maybe a new year goes to like really dedicate our tasks to other staff and then maybe start training them. But we, there’s, I feel like there’s like barely a

David Martin (43:05.393)
Ha ha ha!

Lawrence Lee (43:30.734)
Uh, was it work life balance for us at the moment? Uh, everything we do and talk about it’s, feel like 98 % it’s work. And then the rest may be, yeah, food and little bit of TV show, but then that honestly, you know, study about business. Um, and so that that’s, think that’s something we need to work on, it’s, yeah, it’s just, um, we’re still wearing many hats. No, not yet.

David Martin (43:56.219)
Do you guys have kids? Okay. It is so hard, the stage that you’re in right now. It really is because of what I just outlined. Like you’re wearing all of those hats. And I think one of the biggest challenges is how do you go from that to, like you say, having help, but also being able to afford the help, right, that you bring in.

Lawrence Lee (44:05.357)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (44:22.574)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (44:25.271)
And oftentimes all roads lead to just more students, right? Like marketing solves a lot of problems because it creates growth and then growth creates more revenue and then revenue gives you opportunity for help. And so has that been on the horizon for you guys? Like as you’re planning out this year, what are some of the big goals that you have for this year?

Lawrence Lee (44:52.8)
Yeah, I think it’s on the fringe, but I think our biggest goal is to really go deeper into marketing because before, in the beginning, I mean, it’s also the nature of our culture from our families. They’re very conservative people. My dad, even though he was involved in a business, he was the operations person. He wasn’t the visionary. So he was just told what to do.

And then Jasmine’s family was more traditional, know, just work a normal, you know, nine to five, you know, and then just sit low and then you’ll be fine. I’m sorry, I was getting this. yes, marketing. Yeah. So now, now we’re trying to probably get into marketing a little bit more and then just be a little bit more adventurous with it. As you say, you know, perhaps more students is the answer. Because as studios are, I think most studios…

our passion of what they do. They want to actually teach the knowledge that they’ve built up, the joy that we’ve had so much inside of us and instill that to students of the next generation, not just teaching music, but all the aspects of life. And I think we’re just going to have to be putting ourselves out there, being more aware, even probably do traditional marketing, just spending more money on it. But we have yet to discuss on exactly how to do that.

And I think if I can just add on the other thing is how do you translate your passion for teaching to the other teacher who is maybe also passionate and good, but I really don’t think they’re going to be as passionate as the owners, right? Because, you know, they just, it’s just different. And I think that’s really fair. But then the client sees that like, know, like every time clients come to us and then they’re like, Oh, you’re our favorite teacher. And then I was like, Oh, no, what, do we do? Like we should, we should probably, you know, you know,

talk to your teacher and then I know like maybe have a just maybe what you guys did before, like a training manual or just a talk and just like, okay, so what’s the incentive for them to either be passionate, whether it’s growth or monetize, you know, incentive or anything like that so that the clients don’t really feel like there is a difference between, you know, the teaching quality that they’re getting. That’s our next step too.

David Martin (47:02.793)
Well, and I love that you said that, Jasmine, because those go hand in hand. You can’t just get a bunch of more students, right? A bunch more students coming to your school. You have to give those students to someone, right? And if, you know, and it can’t be you teaching them all because there’s only so much of you to go around, right? And so that the only solution then is to hire more teachers. And so then you’re, you’re talking about the very thing that you have to contend with, which is, well,

Lawrence Lee (47:09.251)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (47:20.942)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (47:26.189)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (47:31.659)
How do I find teachers that have the same passion and standards that I have as an owner? And I think the short answer is you can’t find anybody that’s gonna have the passion that you have for your business. But you can find lots of people that have a wonderful ability to teach and a passion for teaching and for kids and all of that.

Lawrence Lee (47:53.326)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (48:00.203)
I mean, there’s lots of people out there that you can find, but they will not be you. And they will not have your same passion for your business. And that is the thing that you have to almost kind of have to let go a little bit, I think, when you hire teachers, you kind of have to let go of that control. And that’s a hard thing to do, I think. But I think that’s one of the reasons why, and you just said it, you have to have a…

like an actual standard. And I didn’t have this at the beginning. When I started hiring teachers, I just was looking for people. I was looking for specific attributes. So I had a different standard for my school. I didn’t require, I wasn’t looking for a classical background. I actually didn’t care about that. I just wanted teachers that really loved kids. That just loved and were fun people to be around.

Right? Because I figured those were going to be the kind of people that students would want to learn from. And so you have to have your standards. I think it’s a good idea to write it down and to actually come up with a list of like, these are the things that we’re looking for in a teacher. And so that way, when you go and interview people, it’s like you can just check the box. Do they meet this? Do they meet that? We even got to a point where we would, and when we

interviewed, we have two people and they would have a scorecard and they would actually rate each individually. They would rate the applicant and then at the end of the interview, they would compare their two scorecards and they would come up with a total score. And then if we were interviewing four or five people, then whoever had the highest score, that’s who we hired, you know. So like you can create little systems like that to help you get to a point to where eventually you’re not even the one interviewing the teachers, right? Like

But if you have a system for hiring them and you have like core values that you’re looking for then it becomes you know something that’s a little bit more Automatic and you can get the result that you’re wanting, but you’re absolutely right like that is the big challenge is going from you to Like replacement you had not having to teach but still maintaining symphony 9’s culture symphony 9’s passion your passion

Lawrence Lee (50:08.056)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (50:15.662)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (50:16.647)
It just won’t look exactly the same. And that’s kind of what you have to contend with. What are some of the things that you envision a teacher, like the ideal teacher for Symphony 9, what would that look

Lawrence Lee (50:19.287)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (50:32.044)
Well, someone, I guess it’s, I also caring. That’s probably the biggest quality, but then I think that, that’s so many different layers. mean, some teachers will care about what they teach, but then not exactly what the client is looking for. I think to be honest, like the teachers who work with us, ever since we acquired the studio, it’s been with us for a long time. And then we are

so thankful, but then I’ll just give an example. For example, there’s a teacher who has such high expectations for the students, but then maybe as a result doesn’t really know what the kids are actually enjoying it or not. And then when we communicate with the need and then the teacher will feel like, well, I’m like, trying to do my best job in teaching, but not necessarily like trying to

see what the kids like it or like maybe update the parents because I want to use every single minute to teach. don’t want to, you know, end five, less than five minutes earlier and then update the parents. And that’s something like, okay, well, that’s interesting. and then we’ll have to kind of sort it out. And, and then I think most of the teachers that are popular here, like you can see, they are so passionate. They not thinking about the time. And then I think that maybe not fair to say, but then that’s what the parents.

feel like the teacher really care about their kids. It’s like, they come out and they spend extra time to talk to me about how my kids is doing every single lesson. And then that’s just, and that that’s probably our challenge. It’s hard to ask that for every single teacher because I guess time is money. But, on the other hand, the, that’s what the, the, parents are looking for. How about you? Yeah, I think it’s, it’s always a tango with two different ideas. One of them is you actually want to give.

the music knowledge and run the lesson effectively. Because that’s why the parents entrust you with the education that they want. But on the other hand, it’s not human if you’re not even asking basic questions like, know, like, how are you doing? You know, what’s school like, you know? And they’re trying to integrate into that to the music. So I think that’s one thing we really, really want in a teacher is someone who can actually engage with the kids.

Lawrence Lee (52:50.35)
not just in the music sense, you know, then that’s why we learn music because it’s a life thing and we want them to actually engage them with their life and ask them, you know, the music they like and are we able to integrate the things that we are currently learning, you know, balancing so-called, you know, the vegetables and desserts, you know, like we have things that we want to achieve, but perhaps there’s other things that you, you know, are interested in and we want to engage with you. And that’s always easier said than done.

But I think ideally every teacher should be able to do that. That just makes it more wholesome.

David Martin (53:23.051)
I think what makes it difficult as you grow is to measure a successful teacher versus an unsuccessful teacher. How do you define that? as we grew over the years, we learned that there were different metrics that we could track. near the end for me, I had a lot of teachers, many of which I never met them.

Lawrence Lee (53:32.181)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (53:49.867)
You know, because my team, they hired, they trained, they did all that. And so it’s like for me, how do I measure if I haven’t even met this teacher, how do I measure whether they’re a successful teacher or not? Well, from the business perspective, it’s fairly straightforward, right? If we’re just looking on paper, one of the, I would say the most important metric is how many students did they lose last month, right?

Lawrence Lee (54:00.919)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (54:17.005)
Hmm.

David Martin (54:19.487)
Like, how many are they keeping? So if I give a teacher 10 students over the course of a year, how many of those 10 students are still there at the beginning of the next year? That’s a pretty telling metric, because all of those things that you just said, do they care, are they actually teaching the student something, that sort of plays itself out in that metric. Like if a student just leaves, then obviously they

Lawrence Lee (54:31.47)
Hmm.

David Martin (54:49.451)
probably don’t feel cared about too much, or maybe they just, you know, they had something better to do, or they’re not learning anything, or whatever the reasons are. You know, there’s lots of reasons that people leave, but at the end of the day, most students stay if they feel those two things are being taken care of. They feel cared for, and they feel like they’re learning something, right? I think you guys nailed it. Those really are the two main things. And so retention sort of is that scorecard, right?

Lawrence Lee (54:54.573)
and

David Martin (55:18.409)
How many are left over? And so what we did was we just kept a scorecard every month. Our metric was 5%. We don’t want the teacher to drop more than 5%. So if they have 20 students, they shouldn’t drop more than one student per month, right? And so that was the way we tracked it and it was very effective. But…

Lawrence Lee (55:37.006)
Mm.

David Martin (55:43.719)
But that’s, you know, it’s such a good point, Jasmine, that you brought up. Like, how do we grow without losing the culture, without losing the passion that we first put into the school, Symphony 9, right? Like, that’s what you want. You want to keep that passion going forward, even without you having to be there 24-7 with, you know, I remember having a phone in my right pocket, my personal phone, and then the business phone was in my left pocket, and it’s like, you know, it just…

constantly on call, right? That’s kind of the way it is at the beginning.

Lawrence Lee (56:14.978)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.

David Martin (56:19.987)
So for you guys kind of moving forward, there’s different ways to increase the revenue of the company. One of the ways is obviously to grow and get more students. The other way is to increase your prices. How do you guys approach price increases?

Lawrence Lee (56:36.564)
Right. I think we, well, we kind of factoring in the, saw the reality check, like the rent is increasing. then we had to increase and that’s usually on the annual base basis. And then like, you know, the, the minimum wage raises, then we’ll probably need to raise the rate for teachers and also admit, but also the performance, you know, as you mentioned, like your retention rate, whether the clients are satisfied with service.

so I think yeah, those are the three factors, but we usually do it on the annual basis Yeah

David Martin (57:12.243)
Okay, so you have in your business plan, you have an annual rate increase for your school?

Lawrence Lee (57:21.526)
We have expectations and then that’s for the teachers internal, like the internal race and then for staff. And then also if it’s like a outside cause, like factor, like, you know, the rent and then the, the government race or anything, then that it’s a, the, another factor that we consider. I think in beginning it was more like, the first challenge was standardization. because I think.

The older location, think there was many different rates for different clients, grandfathered rates. And I think some of them were really low that it was difficult to keep up with the rent. So we just had to say plainly say, okay, we’re going to have to just keep everybody the same. So that was the first step, actually not even raising at the first step. And then afterwards we desired to take care of our teachers a lot more. We’re really, and in the beginning, like taking nothing really, absolutely. I had private students to try to, you know,

feed ourselves first, you know, it’s always a struggle for that. And then afterwards, you know, once those teachers can be satisfied, then, you know, then we just raise the pricing for new students and then we standardize there. So it’s more like a forward and then catching up each time for the race. So we try also to just double check the market around us. We want to make sure that we are, you know, fair, you know, to parents and we just want to make sure because we’re,

Frankly, we’re not experts in pricing and as we’re doing this because we didn’t have a degree. We came with a passion with music first and foremost. And that’s in general how we work.

David Martin (58:56.511)
Yeah, yeah. Well, no, and I think that’s the way most music school owners are. The passion is for the teaching and the music first, and the business is kind of like a necessary evil. You know, like you have to run the business because you’ve got to support the passion. But I think it’s a very important thing to think about too, is if you…

Lawrence Lee (59:05.72)
Mmm.

Lawrence Lee (59:10.648)
Yeah.

David Martin (59:22.667)
And I love that you said that you guys have this annual price increase because I think that has to be part of your business plan. Everything goes up in price. everything goes up. Costs go up. Like you mentioned, salaries go up, pay goes up. So you have to have that built into your structure. Otherwise, otherwise you’re literally going to be going down in profitability. You know, you can actually look at some companies where their revenue goes up.

Lawrence Lee (59:30.67)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (59:52.917)
but their profit goes down. More revenue doesn’t always equal more profit. That’s even a tricky little thing. But one of the ways you can become much more profitable is just by simply raising your rates. I’ve had a lot of conversations with music schools over the years, and sometimes I’ll do coaching calls with them, I’ll tell them, just forget about everything else I said, and just raise your rates. Just raise your rates. If you just do that one thing, then you’ll be fine.

Lawrence Lee (59:56.504)
Right.

Lawrence Lee (01:00:03.598)
Mmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:00:12.814)
Thank

Right.

David Martin (01:00:20.447)
So the fact that you guys are doing that annually, think that’s really good.

Lawrence Lee (01:00:25.422)
I think that’s a very difficult thing, for think people in the musician field, you because we’re used to be like, you know, giving people. saying we’re better than other people, but it’s more like, you know, we just had this nature and tendency. And with other businesses, a lot easier, you know, when a product has to, you know, like, you know, the rams, you know, that went up, that just had to go up because of, you know, the situation. So I think for us, it was really trying to wrap around and say, okay,

Even though we’re doing music business, we want to make sure, you know, things are fair and you know, the logistics is good. and I tend, and we just need to learn around there. yeah. And I guess, if you’re allowed to ask questions, I’m just curious. think to be honest, like we were in NorCal and then, we actually heard our Opus one right before we moved down to SoCal. We have an interview. I believe we met with, the owner Doris and then the, husband. And, so.

David Martin (01:01:06.207)
No, you’re fine.

Lawrence Lee (01:01:21.45)
I think one thing that stood out for a teacher back in the time is they actually have a salary system and then starting to include some benefits for teachers. we actually, think it’s such a good, just a brilliant way to keep teachers because teachers, you’ve got to attend them. Otherwise, who want to keep hiring and then do all those interviews again? think that stood out to me, but also it’s just another thing is

Yeah, that every owner had to consider your competitors. Like what are they offering? you know, do they have a price drop? And then like if your pricing is so high, and I’m pretty sure for Opus One or even like more established school, maybe just like very comfortable with like keeping your price and then be very comfortable with the quality. But then for like a new school, I guess, like I wonder your take on this, David, is that, you know, like do you care about your competitors rate? We just kind of like

Just keep it simple, just kind of do it your own way and then kind of the focus on quality and then kind of let it grow slowly and organically. do you have any thoughts on that?

David Martin (01:02:18.921)
Yeah, no, it’s a great question and it’s super common. I would very, very clearly just say, don’t worry about your competitors. Worry about your, like the experience that you give your students. Worry about that. Like make it so amazing and focus on their experience. And then the other half to that is your marketing. You have to be a very aggressive marketer if you want to grow.

Lawrence Lee (01:02:32.782)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:02:48.856)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:02:48.971)
It just is the way it is. In today’s day and age, a referral or a testimonial is the same as a, what would you call it? Google review. Like assembling as many Google reviews as you can. That’s a really big, and by the way, Opus actually has a really cool system for that, that we sort of adopted.

Lawrence Lee (01:03:04.174)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:03:14.146)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:03:18.603)
just in that, like you can integrate it right onto your website. It’s got, you polls from straight from Google and it shows the reviews on there. So that’s a, you know, definitely leverage that, but just know that don’t worry about your competitors. I think in general, I think once you guys are established, you’ve got things going, focus on the experience and focus on your marketing. Those two levers, if you do that, then.

Lawrence Lee (01:03:32.867)
Hmm.

David Martin (01:03:45.001)
Like for us, one of the things that was interesting was we grew so much faster than everybody. We had about 1,000 students by the time we sold our schools. we were quite a bit more expensive than any of the other schools around us. But we enrolled, I would say, close to 100 students a month. So when you get to that level, you don’t really have to worry too much about competitors in terms of the price.

Lawrence Lee (01:03:52.957)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:04:13.227)
Because obviously we were giving them a great experience, right? But we were also everywhere. Like our marketing was everywhere. And so you kind of have to think about, know, it really does have to be those two things. It can’t just be the experience. It can’t just be all inside the walls. Maybe that’s another way of thinking about it, right? Like it has to be inside the walls and out in your community, right? Like that’s what you want to think about because your experience for the student is going to keep them there.

Lawrence Lee (01:04:36.194)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:04:42.099)
you being everywhere is going to get them there, right? And so that, yeah, I guess that’s how I would answer that. I think that’s a really good question. And you guys, when you first bought the school, you were quite a bit smaller and you started making the changes and creating some of those systems. How did you grow to where you were? And you got, what do you have?

Lawrence Lee (01:04:46.03)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:05:10.987)
How many students do you guys have now?

Lawrence Lee (01:05:13.902)
120, 130 something. Right.

David Martin (01:05:17.387)
been 120, 130, okay, yeah. So you’ve essentially tripled the size of your school. How did that happen?

Lawrence Lee (01:05:26.99)
So to be honest, in their original location, the Gunah Hills, it’s not, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the area, but then basically it’s not exactly like competitive, I would say. For example, like I think I was in NorCal for a while, like Cumpatino, Fremont, they have like a lot of, I think very competitive schools over there. But then if you go a little bit more outside, like I don’t know, maybe Sunnyvale or something. So I think that city, it’s a little bit more suburb, is that the word?

so it’s not a lot of competition, but there is also in the very hidden Plaza. So what we did was how to just do more, I guess, increase the SEO, you know, like, you know, on the website, cause I feel like that’s the only way we know how to, grow. also, we realized there’s not a lot of string teachers, I will say. So as a result, a lot of, we have a lot of stringing inquiries back in the, back in those times. and then when we moved.

to Lake Forest, which is closer to Irvine, like a bigger city here down in SoCal. And so it’s expensive in rent, but the visibility is pretty good. So we decided to take the risk, pay a little higher rent, but then move here. And it’s been our, I think, second year right here. So we kind of grow in that way. just recently, we started to participate in more local marketing events. For example,

I think in our neighborhood there is a giant lake, Lake Mission Viejo, and then they have seasonal music events. Last time we got invited to participate in one of the Halloween events and then we just performed K-pop Demon Hunter songs there, like, but live. And I think we got a few students, but I think it’s all very organic and we had to be physically involved. So I feel like we still…

David Martin (01:07:15.541)
Haha, love it.

Lawrence Lee (01:07:25.614)
have a lot to learn about marketing. then we kind of cross, we learn from other businesses, we put flyers in different neighborhood. But to be frankly, I think the results is pretty, it’s not very, what is it, satisfying. We did some Facebook ads too, Google ads, but it wasn’t just really rowing the students as we thought it would be, but it’s just more, a lot of inquiries. I think one of the podcasts you mentioned is like, oh, you put the base there, but we don’t get a lot of fish up. yeah, so yeah, we’re wondering, you know, wonder.

David Martin (01:07:51.413)
Sure.

Yeah, yeah. What would you say, Gates, of all those things that you just mentioned, what do you think was the most successful? Just strictly in terms of the number of students that you got.

Lawrence Lee (01:07:55.246)
You saw me robbing ya.

Lawrence Lee (01:08:09.048)
being physically involved in the maybe local events, like we had to go and perform and usually they’ll get us a few students to sign up. But then I guess also on the other hand, it’s quite tiring, I guess for owners, right? Because we are also running the school and then we had to go in a Saturday evening to perform and with all those equipment, keyboards and microphone. And so I don’t know how long we can keep doing this, but that’s the…

David Martin (01:08:25.738)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:08:38.626)
That is the, I guess the event that got us more students. and then referral, like, you know, parents start talking to each other in the school and then we have more kids from a certain school. I think because parents tell each other word of mouth. That’s right. Yeah.

David Martin (01:08:55.071)
You know, one of the things that I’ve found to be very effective, and this might be something that you guys are already doing or not, but, and I’ve talked a lot about this over the years, is just having your three main marketing lists. The first is actually, like the most, the easiest, fastest, cheapest way to get new students is actually to market to the students you already have.

Lawrence Lee (01:08:59.32)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:09:11.917)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:09:23.487)
I used to call them family upgrade sales, sibling specials. At every recital, we would have a letter that I would just, I literally just typed it up. I came up with the idea the morning of the recitals, of course, right, last second. And I just typed up this sale, right? It’s like, sign up and we’ll give you two free lessons. And it was either add an instrument, add time, you know, go from 30 to 60 minutes, or just add a day.

Lawrence Lee (01:09:27.928)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:09:47.832)
Mmm.

David Martin (01:09:51.943)
Take lessons on a second day during the week. And then we gave them the first two for free. So giving your active students a reason to spend more money with you is a really smart thing to do. And most of them will do it. They just have to be given a reason. And you’d be surprised how many of your students are probably already thinking about it. They just don’t have an excuse to pull the trigger.

Lawrence Lee (01:10:05.08)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:10:13.774)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:10:18.414)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:10:21.823)
Well, what’s a good excuse? A sale. A sale is a great excuse to do something that you’ve already been thinking about doing, right? And the way you get them to take action on the sale is put a deadline on the sale, right? Like this expires in three days or this expires in seven days. So the first list is your active students. That is a really, really smart thing to do and to have a system for, I wouldn’t harass your active students, I would do it once a quarter.

Lawrence Lee (01:10:30.689)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:10:34.51)
Hmm.

David Martin (01:10:49.685)
So once every three months, I would be sending them a really compelling, exciting offer that they can take advantage of and increase their subscription with you, their subscription spend. By the way, there’s also a business truth about that. The more somebody spends with you, the longer they will stay with you. It’s kind of a counterintuitive thought, but it’s actually true.

Psychologically, you think that’s the way we all operate. It’s a sunk bias cost, right? If I spend a lot of money on something, I don’t wanna just walk away from it quickly, right? Because I’ve already spent all this money. And so whether it’s logical or not, that’s not the point. The point is that it’s true, right? We have kind of that truth. And so if you can get your customers to spend more money with you, then they’re more likely to stay with you for long.

Lawrence Lee (01:11:26.434)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:11:33.592)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:11:40.824)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:11:44.861)
So that’s just a something to think about. But having your first list of your active students and marketing to them on a quarterly basis is a very smart thing to do. The second list is the students that were with you at one point that are no longer with you anymore. Those are your former students, right? Those students, reactivation campaigns. Well, one of the things that we did was we would at the end of every single month,

Lawrence Lee (01:11:59.841)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:12:14.751)
the last week of the month, we would send them a reactivation campaign, an offer, right? Like, we miss you. We’d love to have you come back. And every single month they got one. And we always signed up students from that. Because that list will just get longer and longer. Because you’re always having people drop out, right? Well, that doesn’t mean they’re gone forever. It just means they’re gone for now. And you don’t know what’s going to change in their life. They might want to come back. And they probably will. Many of them do.

Lawrence Lee (01:12:21.803)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:12:38.414)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:12:43.763)
Why not give them a reason if again, they’re already kind of thinking about it. Give them a reason to act and give them a reason to act now. And so send them an offer the last week of every month with it with an expiration date being usually on the last day of the month. It’s just a good idea. It’s it’s just a it’s a. You know a list of people that they already have spent money with you before, so there’s a there’s an inherent trust that they already have with you.

Lawrence Lee (01:13:07.861)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:13:13.161)
And if they get annoyed and they go off, they want to unsubscribe, then fine, right? Then you won’t market to them anymore. But many of them will stay on your list just because they, again, they have that trust. The third list is your prospect student list. These are the people that raise their hand and ask questions and said, hey, I’m interested. But they didn’t actually pull the trigger, right? And so you’ve got this list of prospects that is growing, should be.

Lawrence Lee (01:13:28.238)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:13:34.99)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:13:42.607)
And so you want to nurture those prospects. And one of the ways you nurture those prospects is to get them into your school to try and experience your school. So one of the ways that we did this was we did an open house. We did it every single month. We just had an open house. They could come in for free, take any lessons they wanted with any of the teachers that we had on hand. And they could try piano, they could try violin, they, you whatever. They could just try for free.

Lawrence Lee (01:13:59.823)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:14:12.329)
And then at that lesson, at that time, they would have to walk past the front desk on their way out. We would give them this crazy offer. Like, two lessons free, free t-shirt, free book credit, all this stuff, just like $200 value, whatever. But it’s only good for today. The deal is only good for today. It expires at 9 p.m.

Lawrence Lee (01:14:36.302)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:14:38.653)
And our conversion rate on that was like 90%. Like almost everybody that showed up to those open houses, you don’t get a lot of people that show up. Depends on how big your list is. But the people that do show up to that will most likely sign up on the spot. so it’s a great, know, those, but those three lists, you already have those. You don’t have to spend any money. You already have spent the money to get that list, to get those lists curated. And you already have those people.

Lawrence Lee (01:14:51.266)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:14:57.538)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:15:04.802)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:15:07.177)
Like every school, this is usually, know, when school owners ask me, you’re like, what should I do to get more students? This is the first thing that you should do. Because it’s the fastest, easiest, cheapest way to get your enrollment up without spending hardly anything. And so, and the more aggressive you get with this, the better your results are gonna be. So that’s what I would say more than anything. Like there’s a lot of things you should do.

Lawrence Lee (01:15:13.112)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:15:23.17)
Mmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:15:29.73)
Hmm.

David Martin (01:15:35.647)
You should have a pretty strong Google presence. That was where we got most of our students, if I’m being honest. We ran Google Ads, we did SEO. We were very aggressive on Google. And just because everyone’s on Google, everybody knows it. If you’re not on Google, you basically don’t exist as a business, from a business standpoint. between those two things, those…

Lawrence Lee (01:15:35.694)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thank

Lawrence Lee (01:15:55.0)
Mm-hmm.

David Martin (01:16:00.683)
would be the two top things that I would be spending my time on. But more even than Google, like I say, those three lists, that’s where you’re gonna start to see some growth. And the amazing thing about those three lists is that it can actually grow within itself. You could actually build your entire school just off of nurturing and growing those three lists. You know what I mean? And you can just keep growing your…

Lawrence Lee (01:16:08.226)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:16:26.446)
Mmm.

David Martin (01:16:29.961)
your student base just from that. And it literally costs hardly anything to do. So if you’re not doing that and not paying a lot of attention to it and investing in that, then that’s where I would start. That’s where I would pay a lot of attention.

Lawrence Lee (01:16:32.13)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:16:47.276)
That’s like awesome tips. Thank you so much. Yeah,

David Martin (01:16:50.281)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, and like I said, because you guys are in the stage where you’re doing everything, right? You’re having to manage it all. And so the only way through this to the next stage is to grow, to hire some teachers, and then get to a point to where you can hire that first admin person. And really, that’s where life starts to get a lot better.

when you can get some relief from the administrative aspect of things. So that’s an exciting spot, but you guys aren’t far from that. What would you say, as you’re looking at your business, what are the numbers that you normally look at to determine whether or not things are going well or things need to be improved?

Lawrence Lee (01:17:16.525)
Hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:17:20.803)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:17:42.051)
You’re the number guy. I mean, for me, like, you know, I look at whatever resource I find like one basic one is just making sure that the percentage profit revenue is feasible, you know, just, you know, looking at, 15 % or something, just some basic numbers over there. But besides that, nothing much beyond that, I think what I’m most concerned about is just making sure that that the teachers have

enough hours for sure when they come to the studio because a lot of times, in our experience teaching, sometimes they only come for one student, which is not worth their time. And we’re hopefully trying to grow to that tipping point where teachers can come and actually feel like what they’re doing is meaningful instead of just a side thing. Yeah.

David Martin (01:18:32.042)
Yeah.

How do you guys determine what you pay your teachers? What do you pay your teachers if you don’t mind me asking?

Lawrence Lee (01:18:41.848)
So I think we honestly, the data comes about like market research again, like, okay, maybe we look on Indie and see what other competitors are offering and how much we can actually offer. Cause you know, I think for every owner, if you can pay your best and then make every teacher happy, I think that’s our dream, right? Then, you know, everyone’s happy. But then I think just kind of see what we could do with the profit and then how to like, you know,

basically pay them, while also based on their experiences, education. Right, yes. And then I think all of this data, there’s, for lack of a better word, just like market research at this point. Yeah.

David Martin (01:19:11.893)
So you pay them based on their experience.

David Martin (01:19:22.739)
Okay. So every teacher starts at a different rate or do you start them all at the same rate?

Lawrence Lee (01:19:29.25)
We do have a guideline where if they come in without any experience, then we’ll give them this rate. If they have some experience, then we’ll have a certain rate. There may be some variation here and there, but it’s most likely standardized for us. Then we look at the marketing conditions and see if we need to raise it higher.

David Martin (01:19:50.215)
Okay. Okay. And do you have a system for giving them a raise?

Lawrence Lee (01:19:56.127)
Yes, I think so. Yeah, he usually will have a lot of charts internally for that So as he say like the teacher different rate will be based on you know, certain criteria And then also like with the internal race if they meet certain standard like me certain number of student for example or something like that or like that say You know, there’s been timely or something like that. Then. Yeah, we have an internal system for it

David Martin (01:20:21.449)
Right, right. Do you try to keep your teachers’ pay at a percentage of your total revenue? Or at or below a certain percentage? And if so, what’s that percentage for you guys?

Lawrence Lee (01:20:35.758)
Um, I honestly think we try to learn from the podcast, you know, like probably 40 to 50. Yeah. then, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think we just kind of see how the business only have done it before. Cause I think again, we will love to have more business background, know, degrees if we have the time and resources. Um, but that’s how we determine by listening to all those new stories and experiences.

David Martin (01:20:40.469)
Hmm?

David Martin (01:20:59.851)
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s great. think 40 is a good number to shoot from. Lawrence, you said the profit. Ultimately, that’s what it affects, right? The 15 % profit margin, think, a good… I would say that’s a baseline. I wouldn’t want to go much lower than that 15 % profit. But yeah, think that’s a good approach.

you know, as you’re looking forward to kind of what you’re, as you grow, you want to try to keep that, or like I say, protect that. What would you say to school owners that, or maybe musicians that are thinking about growing a music school or maybe thinking about buying a music school like you guys did, what would you, what would, advice would you give a young person that’s sort of in that stage that you guys were in before?

Lawrence Lee (01:21:59.599)
would definitely say have a clear game plan of what you want to be and what your culture is. And then once you review it with, you know, like, you know, your friends and family or just the students that you have, you know, and then make sure you just review that with real people and then just stick with it and believe in it. And I think there’s a lot of points in our journey where like, once we entered, we did have an idea, but it was more like…

emotional, more emotional, more vague, you know, it wasn’t really written down. That’s why we always create business plans, you know, in general, but that’s, that’s just something I think would would it be nice, you know, to approve on that if I told the younger self myself, you know, just to say, you know, you just reveal with people and then just believe in it, you know, and then the time will come. That’s my advice, I think, by myself, guess for me will be if you’re

Well, at the stage you start a music studio. I think a lot of teachers are doing that, to be honest, know, teaching at home and to see how it grows out, right? That’s like the organic, like what, what, how like David, you started. And I think if you’re a crying music business, then the number one things, maybe look at it bookkeeping and make sure that’s something that you’re comfortable with. And just be prepared for a couple of years of no weekends and then just like, to be really involved.

this if you’re just your true passion, then it will you’ll be really excited, I guess, exhilarating. It’s going to be tiring, but also it’s going to be really rewarding. think especially for musicians, we practice a lot in our own practice room. We don’t really think about the business aspect. We always want to deliver like the music and that’s what make us happy. And then we practice to the result. But then this is such a good way to train a different aspect, you know, for every

I guess for artists too, it’s just like how do you basically monetize your service? And also, there’s so many other things like people scales or just like kind of understand what the clients are looking for. It’s more holistic, I think for us, at least for this journey has been rewarding.

David Martin (01:24:10.589)
Yeah, no, that’s great. How would you guys define success when you think about the future of your of Symphony Nine and your business? What would be a success story looking looking forward? Where are you guys headed? What does that look like?

Lawrence Lee (01:24:24.63)
Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Lee (01:24:29.47)
I guess for me, first thing will be the teachers are happy, happy with their pay, happy with their working environment. And then we can hopefully retain them, you know, on the yearly basis. And then for students, they are happy with the quality that they receive. They feel like teacher care about their progress and then that their expectation, both the students and the teacher, they are meet. And then for us,

I was telling Lawrence, if I could just have one day off, I’ll be really happy. It’s been like this for the past four years and just maybe starting to enjoy some life. For me, that maybe will be happy. But of course, then we hope that this will maybe operate by itself. We don’t have to be involved this much. We can maybe think about a second location, for example. We can think about growth. But I think just to step up from.

being a teacher and then like having the other teacher to kind of delegate your tasks, but also parents are happy, you know, with the services. That’s my ideal vision of, I guess it says. That’s perfect. Yeah. I think, just bringing off of that, just successfully delegating, you know, other tasks, you know, to people you trust, you know, because you can do only do so much, you know, as one person. but I

I believe in a sense that if you really believe what you do and more people are involved with it and more success, it’s meaningful, but also the success will come to you at a certain point. And that’s what we hope to believe, that if we’re able to delegate our tasks correctly and then just making sure that we share the same vision and we grow together. At the end of the day, if you’re willing to just…

learn to trust other people and then grow together and always be on the learning mindset. And I think that’s the, at the end of the that’s the best success.

David Martin (01:26:24.373)
Well, Jasmine and Lawrence, you guys are truly an inspiration. I love what you’re doing and your story’s amazing. So keep doing what you’re doing. Symphony Nine sounds like an amazing school. I’d love to visit it someday when I’m in the area. But thanks for being on the show. I really appreciate you guys.

Lawrence Lee (01:26:44.303)
Thank you so much, David. We appreciate talking to you. Thank you so much.