O Canada! Beating the Odds with James Franczek - Academy of Music, Ontario, Canada

Music Academy Success® is an international program with members on six continents. Our Canadian clients have had an especially tough year with COVID and very strict lock downs.

No matter where you are in the world, if you want to get some insight into perseverance to grow your business, this podcast is for you. Despite all of the odds, James has grown his school during this unprecedented time and is experiencing record sales.

If you're ready to get your enrollment back (and quick) this podcast will give you many tools you can use for your music school (or any business).

More about James Franczek...

James Franczek is one of the most sought-after guitar and fiddle teachers in Southern Ontario Canada.  He owns and operates the Academy of Music in Oakville and Georgetown Ontario and can be seen performing his driving Celtic Fiddle tunes in local pubs and events.   Although James prefers to perform close to home he has been featured at a variety of festivals throughout Canada and the US and has joined with music industry leaders to perform at Steinway Hall in NYC.

James is also the founder and director of the Oakville Celtic Fiddle Orchestra.  The OCFO is a 40-piece fiddle orchestra that was created to bring like minded Celtic musicians and enthusiasts together to learn and perform traditional Celtic music from Scotland, Ireland, and Cape Breton Island Canada.  During his time as the orchestra conductor the orchestra has raised over $30,000.00 for local charities through bi-annual concerts and other events.

In 2016 James launched the Canadian operation of the Musical Ladder System.  Along with Musical Ladder System creator and US operator Marty Fort, James continues to support music school owners throughout North America by giving them powerful tools to keep their students engaged in music and staying in lessons longer.  

In addition to his performance and business schedule James loves to spend time with his wife and two sons and has spent several years as a councillor in a local Cadet program.

Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to another edition of the Music Academy Success® podcast. Music Academy Success® is the largest and number 1 program for music school owners. Since 2008, master business coach, Marty Fort has worked with school owners and teachers in 44 states and on 6 continents. On the Music Academy Success® podcast, you’ll hear interviews with music lesson industry leaders so you can learn how to better your business by getting more students, keeping students longer and building the music school and lifestyle of your dreams. And now, here’s your host for the podcast, CEO of Music Academy Success®, Mister Marty Fort.

Marty Fort: Welcome to the Music Academy Success System® podcast. This is Marty Fort here with you. I’m your host and I’m the CEO of the Music Academy Success® program, which we call MASS®. MASS®, since 2008, is the world’s largest and leading program. We work with hundreds of music school owners all around the world on 6 continents. We work with music teachers that teach in their homes. We work with music teachers that teach in student’s homes. We work with small schools, 50 to a hundred music students, mid sized schools with 500 students. We even work with large schools that have 4,000 students. And I myself have 1,500 students, 3 locations, one of the largest schools in South Carolina. And what I do is I help music school owners to grow their businesses, grow their enrollment, fix their student retention and a variety of things with our coaching and our live events. 

We enjoy doing this podcast where we bring you guest experts in the music education field. Some are MASS® members. Some are just different authors and celebrities. We’ve got a lot of great episodes planned, so keep checking out the Music Academy Success® podcast. Subscribe to us on iTunes. And today, I’m very excited to welcome Mister James Franczek from Canada. I wanted to bring him on today because Canada’s had a very tough time this year, as we all have, but especially Canada. The lockdown’s been very stringent. A lot of Canadian schools have gone under. It’s been a very tough time up there, but Jamess’ schools are doing amazing. There’s a lot you’re going to learn from him on the podcast today about how he was able to break through a difficult environment. Another reason I wanted to have James on is we always get questions about, well, will Music Academy Success® work in my part of the world? We’ve worked with people in Australia, Serbia, Europe, all over Middle East. So, Canada’s the 2nd country to the United States that we serve. So, we have lots of Canadians in the program. So, I’m very excited today to welcome Mister James Franczek. James, how are you today?

James Franczek:  I’m doing great, Marty. How are you?

Marty Fort: I’m doing awesome. Let’s just go ahead and dive in. Tell us about yourself and tell us about your schools.

James Franczek:  Sure, sure. I’m of course from Canada. I live in a small town called Acton, Ontario. I have 2 music schools, one of them in Oakville, Ontario, the other one in Georgetown, Ontario. We’ve been there since about 1995, 1994. Sorry, 1994 is when we actually opened. We have 2 locations in Ontario Canada. One of them is in Oakville, Ontario. The other one is in Georgetown, Ontario. I 1st started teaching for the schools a few years before I purchased the locations, working for the previous owner. He wanted to get out. I’d actually met my wife at the studios. We got married. So, when it was time for the previous owner to move on himself, we were a good candidate. So, we purchased the schools in 2001 and we’ve been running those 2 locations now since then.

Marty Fort: Awesome. Well, let’s kind of dive in and talk about COVID. As I said, I’m in the United States. I’ve worked with people in 44 different states and it’s really run the gamut, James, of people that, in South Carolina, for example, things are wide open. Texas, things are open. Florida, things are pretty open. California, not as much. You are going to be at Disney World with us. Like a lot of our clients, we do that every year. We go to an annual pilgrimage to Disney with our top members. And Disney in Florida is open. Disney Land in California, closed. So, it’s been very schizophrenic. But take us through the landscape in Canada and let’s go back to kind of March 2020, which is a time I’ll never forget. Take us through what happened then. But even fast forwarding to now, a year later, things are still pretty locked down. And from what I hear, the vaccine’s going slow. Before we talk about your numbers and more about your business, let’s talk about just the country and COVID and start with last March. Take us through that.

James Franczek: : Sure, sure. I think that last March all around the entire planet, it shut down. It was frightening of course for all of us. It was March. Now, we have our March break where we shut down for a week, so the good thing was that it happened a week, a couple of days, in fact, before we were closing down for March break. So, I actually had a week to prepare, but it was probably the most emotional week that I’ve had in my entire life. We have a business that’s flourishing and the students are all coming in. The teachers are all coming in. We’re all having a great old time. And within 7 days, we have to pivot the entire business to the online system. What’s interesting about that is I know a few friends here in my area that are also MASS® members and I didn’t actually take it all that seriously. We saw the news. We saw it was coming, but I didn’t think it was going to be a huge issue. And this one particular friend of mine said, no James. I think you need to take this seriously. You need to pivot now. 

If I had not been friends with this other MASS® member, I don’t think I would have taken it nearly as seriously as I did and I think I would have really suffered badly for it. Not only the things that I have learned in MASS® over the years, the insight I get from others in this particular case literally saved my business. As of today, we are not locked down in Ontario entirely. It’s a regional thing. Our particular region is in a zone called the red zone, which means we’re allowed to be open, but we have a whole lot of safety precautions. We have about 60 percent of our students still taking lessons online and about 40 percent are coming in. A lot of the new students registering however are registering because they’re wanting in person lessons again. That’s kind of the way it’s working out now. 

As far as Disney goes, I’m pretty excited about it. However, I am going to be doing it online this year. Our government still has the borders locked down and non essential travel is not okay. If it were the case, I would actually have to isolate for 14 days upon my return. The great thing about the Disney experience this year is that you’ve made it available online as well as in person. So, I’m going to be able to get all the information and all the event and connect with my friends online, even though I can’t be there myself.

Marty Fort: Let’s fast forward to now. You know what I mean? You and I talk monthly, and you also are the Canadian operator for the Musical Ladder System®. We’re going to talk about that in a little bit. But you know, you’re doing really well James. As you said, a lot of people, they tried to go it alone and a lot of them have just given up. A lot of them sold. A lot of my competing coaches have sold their businesses. But we’re in a different zone. So, let’s talk about currently. Let’s talk numbers. How are things at your schools?

James Franczek: Amazing. I’d like to talk about numbers pre COVID because I think that that’s just as important as what’s happening right now. Pre COVID, in March, we were at our highest number ever. We had 523 students. I mean, from our beginning stages, that’s an absolutely remarkable number and life has been fantastic. COVID hit, we literally dropped, I’m going to say 150 or more students. We were down to about 320 something and it was frightening. Again, I mentioned before. It was really scary and I thought that if the numbers keep going down, we’re going to have to close our doors as well. The great thing about MASS® and of course your efforts, Marty, is you opened up those Coronavirus calls and you stepped up the game and every single week, you were on there talking about what you were doing in your schools and helping to guide us through ours. So, yeah. Our numbers dropped down. We were closed until August 1st, where they brought us into the red zone. They allowed us to open. As soon as we were allowed to open, we were still floating around 330 students. So, all that time, we hadn’t actually lost any more. Went down to about 320 something, continued to maintain that all summer long until we hit August, when we reopened. I then applied a whole pile of lessons that I had to learn not only from you, but from the other MASS® members going through the experience as well that had opened before we did. And I doubled down. And we grew and we grew and we grew. And it was great. We were up at about I’m going to guess 550 or 560 by Christmas time. Not only had we recovered our numbers, the 520, 523, but we had actually grown by several students coming into Christmas. Christmas time in our province, they actually shut down again. COVID numbers wave 2 came in. They shut everything all down again. We had to send everybody home. But this time, we were prepared. We had been through this and we had learned from the experience from others as well. So, we did not drop numbers. In fact, the opposite happened. We were closed from Christmas right up until February 24th or 22nd, somewhere around that neighborhood. We had grown even more and basically, we told people that we were going to start them online and as soon as things opened up, then we were going to go in person. And it was working like a charm. Today, we were at 611 students. So, this is 1 year from our lockdown, almost 1 year from our total lockdown and we have grown from 523 students to 611 that you see today. It has been remarkable.

Marty Fort: Yeah. It really is. I’d like to talk about something a lot of people don’t know about, James, that you educated me on. Of course, the United States, everybody’s familiar with the 1st round of the Payroll Protection Plan, PPP, and then the 2nd round, which just came out. They’re familiar with things like EIDL Loans, that kind of thing, forgivable grants. But the Canadian government has an interesting support system that we do not have in the United States with subsidies for you guys. Can you kind of take us through, especially for us non Canadians, how that works?

James Franczek: Yeah. Well, there was 2 particular benefits that they added fairly quickly, no specifically for business. For people all over the country, the government actually offered a program where they gave every single person who applied for it 2,000 dollars a month in order to survive through the pandemic. So, if you lost your job, then it was fine. For businesses, what they did is they started off making loans available. There were government guaranteed loans at zero percent interest. They started off with a round of 40,000 dollars. Every business that had employees that made more than 20,000 dollars a year, 20,000 dollars a year total payroll, you could apply for this loan of 40,000 dollars to help carry you through. So, I applied for that and we received it. Then, shortly thereafter, they introduced a payroll subsidy program. If you applied for the program or if you qualified for the program, you were eligible to have the government pay 75 or up to 75 percent of your labor. That was enormously helpful. We had a couple of office staff through the entire pandemic and the government did in fact pay 75 percent of their wages throughout the hardest times until we started growing. As soon as we started growing, our numbers were up, our revenue was up, we no longer needed the subsidy. But if we didn’t have it, then I think it would have been a lot more difficult to make it through those hard times.

Marty Fort: Sure. We did an event for our members. As I said earlier, we go to Disney once a year and we do a lot of cool things. We have a lot of really great live events. We’re going to Nashville this year. We’ve been to Dallas. Really big keynote speakers. Everybody from Randi Zuckerberg, who invented Facebook Live or Zuckerberg Media. She’s the author of Pick 3. We’ve got New York Times Bestselling Author Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likable, which as an aside, I’m prepping for his appearance, James, and he’s got like 700,000 followers on social media. It’s a mind boggling number, right? In one of the events we did, was in New York City, which ironically was 6 months before the pandemic broke. We were right there in Times Square. We got to perform at Steinway Hall and you got to perform as well and I got to perform. The cool thing about MASS® is we’re not all only business owners, but we’re musicians. We are all a combination of music instructors, music teachers, music business owners, but also performers. You call it the fiddle versus the violin. You work on, I would call it folk music, but take us through your musicianship. I want to know about your upbringing, what you did as a kid, teenager and developed into a fiddle player. And I’d love to hear more about currently. Of course, before COVID broke out, but under normal circumstances what you do, where you play, what kind of stuff you play. So, let’s talk about James Franczek, the fiddle player. 

James Franczek: Well, interestingly enough, I wasn’t always a fiddle player. When I grew up, I was a guitar player. I was 13 years old and I got an old Yamaha acoustic guitar from the neighbor. I was quite fascinated with that. I started kind of learning on my own. We didn’t have YouTube at the time, but there was a local music store. I would take the bus over there and get as many music books. In fact, the Beatles Complete was a music book. I must have learned every Beatles song over the course of that 1st year. I do remember getting into music wasn’t a thing that I just woke up one day and said, my gosh, I have to be a musician. This is everything to me. It was just a happenstance. My mom happened to be a piano player and a piano teacher, and I have nice memories as a young child sitting under the piano listening to her play hymns. I mean, it was a part of my environment. But it wasn’t a real passion. It was just a thing that existed that I kind of went through as a young person that helped me through some hard times.

 I did take private lessons for a long time and once I started figuring it out, I wanted more and I wanted more and I wanted more. So, I became more passionate about it as I learned more. I do not have a university degree in music. I decided not to study music in university, but it had always been a part of my life. I was 22 years old. I remember and I was playing a lot of gigs and I got the opportunity to teach at a music school and really, it was kids wanting to learn how to play rock music and blues and jazz and that sort of thing as a guitarist. And I discovered that as I was going through that process, I was particularly good at it. I was extremely good at breaking down the lessons and helping kids understand music in ways that it seemed a lot of other instructors weren’t. And that may have been just my experience as a musician. I worked exceptionally hard trying to learn and keep up. And I think that that experience as a musician really helped me to relate to kids as they were learning. 
 
 So, in addition to that, I played a lot of gigs. The regular thing for me when I was in my 20’s was that I would teach 4 to 5 evenings a week at the studio and then I would gig on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, mostly classic rock and blues and top 40 and that sort of thing. It wasn’t until a bit later on, I was actually 26 years old and I had met my wife. The previous owners of the music school that I taught for decided that they wanted to start a violin program and they didn’t know where to begin. So, they literally approached me with a new violin in hand and said, hey man. I’d really like you to learn how to play this thing and then maybe we could get some lessons going. I said all right. We’ll give it a shot. I tried learning the classical method. I took lessons, but to be honest with you, I’m just not a classical guy. I prefer more traditional styles of music to begin with. But I did my best. 

My wife and I actually took a trip to Cape Bretton Island, which is Nova Scotia, Canada and the story is, is if you throw a stone in any direction in Cape Bretton, you’re going to hit a fiddler. The community is very thick and the tradition is deep. So, we’re traveling around the island there and we experienced so much fiddle music and that’s really when it got my attention. Almost like a lead brick, it hit me in my mid 20’s that the fiddle was something I really wanted to explore. So, basically, when I get back to the Toronto area, I sought out a Cape Bretton fiddle teacher. In particular, a gentleman named Sandy McIntyre. He’s one of the finest players from Cape Bretton Island and I took private lessons and I attended sessions. Every opportunity I had got, I sat in with him when he was teaching fiddle and I sat in with him as teaching dance classes. I took the opportunity to play dance music for the beginners, so on and so forth for, I’m going to say 10 years just religiously playing every opportunity I could get. Learning more tunes, learning more of the tradition until today. Now, of course, I’m more of a fiddler than I am a guitar player. It’s become an intense part of my life. That’s what most people know of me now.

Marty Fort: Yeah. Like I said, it was awesome to see you perform.

James Franczek: Thank you.

Marty Fort: And you had an accompanist with you. You want to talk about her a little bit or talk about some of the musicians you play with on a regular basis?

James Franczek: Yeah. The fiddle pre COVID, I often played in pubs and restaurants and I would have a guitar player and a piano player with me. Her name is Heather and she’s an engineer who has a lifetime of piano experience. Much like me, she got into the Celtic music later on in life, but found a passion for it. We were playing quite frequently in pubs until of course, COVID hit. One thing that I didn’t mention that I probably should have is throughout that journey, I actually opened up an orchestra. I began an orchestra which was originally to be a club. You know? I invited people to come and learn Cape Bretton style Scottish and Irish fiddling with me. Over the course of several years, in fact, it was 14 years before I handed off the Director’s position to somebody else, I had built that up into 40 musicians, mostly made up of seniors who had taken lessons with me as adults. They had never played before. I would teach these classes and develop them into learning the tunes, put them together in an orchestra and over the course of years, 14 years, we played regular concerts in churches and we raised thousands and thousands of dollars for charity throughout the whole process. 

Marty Fort: Awesome. You got a lot going on and that’s I think what’s very important, James, to understand about MASS® is a lot people, they’re kind of insular musicians, right? They tend to think of kind of their world versus the world. And what I mean by that is, it’s interesting with me having done this since 2008, the diversity we have in Music Academy Success. We have mariachi schools, Indian music schools, hip hop schools, country schools, jazz schools and I mean, high level jazz schools, classical schools, rock schools all over. Also, one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast today is, not only do I think musicians get stuck being insular with the genres they do, I think they also get insular on where they are. And what I mean by that is they’ll say, well, I’m in a small town, so you don’t understand or I’m in Manhattan, you don’t understand. And as you know, we have people in Toronto, Miami, London, Los Angeles, Topeka, Kansas, you know? Bear Elk, Montana, stuff like that. If that’s a town. My point is, small towns, a thousand people. I’d like for you to touch upon how MASS® works in Canada. I mean, obviously, the numbers speak for themselves, but what would you say to somebody listening to this right now who maybe is Canadian or European or Australian and they’re saying, I don’t know. How’s this stuff from this guy from South in the States, how in the world is this going to work here? What would you say to them?

James Franczek: You know, I actually thought the same thing and I struggled. One of my locations is in a smaller town. I was going to close it down. I don’t know if you recall, but we had a conversation once on a boat in Lake Murray in South Carolina there and I was nervous and I really wasn’t growing that school. I was going to shut it down and you said, well James, maybe it’s not the best idea to shut it down. Maybe we need to keep this going and kind of focus some more energy here and help it grow. That was probably one of the best conversations and best things I could have done for my school because it did work. 

First of all, I do have 2 locations, one is in a larger market and one is in a small town. And the small town school is growing like wildfire right now. The reason behind it is the same reason that musicians and other music school owners and teachers don’t really understand is that marketing fundamentals are the same all over the entire planet. It doesn’t make any difference whether you’re in a small town in the United States or Canada, or whether you’re in a huge city in Australia. It doesn’t make any difference because people think the same way. We all want the exact same things as human beings. Parents love their children and that’s absolutely universal. And the message that is being sent to them is also universal. The marketing concepts that are taught in MASS® really bear down to the fundamentals of human nature. That’s why it works absolutely anywhere for any school, for any style of music because in my opinion, people want the same things. Humans haven’t changed in thousands and thousands of years. We still want the same thing. We still love our children. We still want what’s best for them.

Marty Fort: And I’m glad you said that because 2 things come to mind from talking to you today, James on the podcast. 1, I completely agree. I actually have 3 things to say. 1, I completely agree because even though we’re a coaching program, at the end of the day, SEO is SEO and marketing is marketing and social media marketing is what it is. Software is software. But as you know, a lot of my clients are celebrating 10 plus years with me. And you’ve got music students like that. They’ll take lessons at your school for over 10 years and they’re your most serious ones. The reason they stay around MASS® is that we veer from the mechanics of marketing to - it’s really mastering the art of the dealing with human condition because we deal with human clients, human teachers and human office staff members and there are patterns. So, I completely agree with that. 

2nd of all, I want to talk about the other part of the human condition, which has been a silver lining through COVID, if there is one, which I think there is one. For years, major complications, Wall Street Journal, New York Times would come out and say, Skype is going to disrupt our industry and put us out of business. And even some top business gurus said as much. What this has shown us, James, is that is just not true. The good news for everybody on this podcast, no matter when they listen to it is, COVID has shown us that without a doubt, people prefer in person music lessons and our business model, I get this question all the time, James. Marty, what’s the outlook for the future? Where is our industry headed? And the outlook, as you know, Mister Franczek, is awesome. You know? If people have their marketing systems down, if they have their schools together, if they have the right systems in, if they get support, as you said. And you’ve also talked about some big things on today’s podcast. You get support from your fellow members. You get support from me. And you’re no different from a Canadian hockey player. Every Canadian hockey player, these guys make millions of Canadian dollars, right? But they have coaches. Not because they don’t know how to play hockey, right? But because the coaches pull out the best in them. 

The part about the parents loving their kids and the human condition is, we are social creatures. We want to be together. And the last one I want to touch upon is back to the boat story. Every year, we do an advanced academy and we’ve grown that from, it started just as a meeting in Columbia. Lake Murray, I don’t know if you know this. It used to be the largest manmade lake in the world and it was flooded. It was farmland and they flooded it and they used it in World War 2 for bombing training for the pilots. There’s planes at the bottom of Lake Murray. There’s an island called Bomber Island. They would use the island for targets. Of course, when we were there, the bombings were way over. But a sad note, that boat, it was a 2 story yacht that we rented. We love doing that for the members and it gave us a good time to network and chat, as you said. But they’ve decommissioned that. Apparently, they had to take it out of the water and it was just cost prohibitive. So, it’s now permanently docked, which is a shame. 

But yeah. You and I were able to have a conversation of, let’s don’t shut this thing down. Let’s keep it going. I could talk to you for 4 hours. I’m going to move on to some other things I wanted to hit just for the sake of the podcast clock, so to speak, James. Student retention is an issue for all of us, no matter what kind of school you run, no matter where we are. Musical Ladder System® is something I invented. It has 9 US patents that are in hand. We’ve got more pending. We’ve also got a utility patent pending. It’s licensed by over a hundred schools all around the world and we’re almost to the 50,000 student mark, James, for students that use that. You are the Canadian operator.

James Franczek: I am.

Marty Fort: For the Musical Ladder. And the reason we did that is there are currency conversion issues, exchange rate issues. That’s a better way to say it between Canada and the US. Shipping issues, customs issues. That’s a big one. So, by having you there, it solves a lot. So, take us through, what is the Musical Ladder Canada? How does it work? And how could somebody get in touch with you if they want more information?

James Franczek Sure, sure. Actually, I want to talk about 3 things specifically about the Musical Ladder. 1st of all, you did mention it’s a retention tool and it absolutely is a retention tool. It’s huge. I had a conversation with a math teacher once, my son’s teacher. And he had mentioned that one of the things that he has discovered, that if you can help a child understand that they’re good at something, then they are going to love it, period. It’s as simple as that. If you look back to your own upbringing, your own education, the things that you loved the most were the things that you were good at and the things that you were good at are the things that you loved the most. So, the Musical Ladder System® is such an organized program that allows the schools and the teachers to help children understand that they are good at this, that they can do this. This, in turn, automatically makes them enjoy it more and want to continue in lessons. 

Now, you and I already know that as a general rule, we are not teaching professional musicians. A certain percentage of our students are going to grow and they’re going to university and they’re going to become professional musicians. But for the most part, in my opinion, I don’t want to speak for you or anybody else, but I believe that my business is there in order to make music an important people, a part of people’s lives. So, in order to help them along that journey, we need to help them understand that this is for everybody. They are capable of doing this. The Musical Ladder System as a retention tool really keeps their attention, keeps their focus and keeps them believing that they are capable and wanting to do more, therefore making them into better musicians. 

2 other things though that we don’t talk about as much and these are huge, especially for me. Referrals is one of them. I implemented the program in January, I believe it was 2015 and it was only 2 weeks following that, that a mom called and the conversation kind of went like this. She says she’s sitting down having a cup of coffee with a friend of hers and her son just came back with this wristband and the certificate from his guitar lessons. He’s really excited. He’s really happy. Now, my son wants to get into guitar lessons. Where do I start? 

So, it occurred to me at that moment that this is going to spread like crazy. Our students are going to love this. They’re going to share this with all their friends. So, from the business perspective, referrals are the things that you’re always working towards, right? In addition, of course to the wide variety of referral programs and systems that we have in place that we learn from MASS®, the Musical Ladder was a real step up as far as creating referrals and bringing in new students to our school. 

The 3rd thing that I think is really important is that it helps parents to decide on who the right school is for them. When they come into your lobby and the mom approaches the desk and she’s asking the lady all these questions about how much is it going to cost and how long am I committed for and how much do I have to practice, that kind of thing, the kid has already gravitated towards the display of trophies. They’re drooling a little bit and the only thing on this kid’s mind is, when do I get a trophy, mom? I really want to work hard. I really want to get a trophy. 

When a parent is trying to decide between 2 or 3 different schools, the school with the opportunities for their children to excel in music and to set personal musical goals and to achieve is the school they’re going to choose. The Musical Ladder is not only a retention tool. It’s an overall package that does improve your retention, and it increases your referrals, and it helps parents decide that you are a better school for their children.

Marty Fort: Absolutely.

James Franczek: Yeah. Now, as far as reaching me, you can send me an email at admin, that’s A D M I N at Academy Music, that’s Academy Music, not of in between. Admin@academymusic.org, O R G. You can also go to musicalladdersystem.ca. That’s mucialladdersystem.ca and fill out a quick form for, to request more information. And we’ll get back to you with more details and how the whole program works so that you could possibly put it in your school and improve your conversions, improve your referrals, and improve your retention.

Marty Fort: So, definitely reach out to James and that’s whether you’re in the US or are in Canada, because you are willing to talk to really, we need to let them know about this. You’re happy to chat with anybody in the world, wherever they are, about how the Ladder System works. Right?

James Franczek: I am. I am. And the truth is, sometimes, these conversations get quite animated. I love the program. It’s been such a game changer for my own business. Absolutely. I’m happy to talk to anybody about it. Just book some time with me and we’ll chat.

Marty Fort: I want to talk about mentorship. We are in the business of mentorship. I have mentors still as well, James. I’ve got a business, various business coaching mentors, one primary one. I’ve got an appointment with him this Thursday. I coach with him monthly and I have going on now 12 years, right? I have exercise mentor that I work out with 5 days a week for my physical needs. Of course, I’ve had numerous musical mentors. I’ve got a master’s degree in classical guitar. I was a professor at USC upstate for 6 years teaching applied guitar, group guitar, intro to music, music business. I also taught at Midlands Technical College, founded a vocational school as part of Midlands Technical College Continuing Ed, called the Midlands Audio Institute. Pro tools classes music business, live sound, that kind of thing. I am definitely, as are you, in the world of mentorship. But a lot of musicians struggle with that. There is a disconnect between the whole concept of musical mentorship, which is what a piano teacher does, guitar teacher does and what a fiddle teacher does, right James? And business mentorship. And deservedly so. Business mentorship gets a lot of, a bad reputation and it should because there’s a lot of shady operators out there that really don’t have any business in coaching. They just want to go in this for quick money and they bail and there’s a lot of problems in our industry. However, there are a lot of good coaches and there are a lot of good programs and there’s no way that Music Academy Success®, like if you Google Music Academy Success®, if you look at us on Facebook, if you check us out at the Better Business Bureau, since 2008, we’ve never had 1 bad review. And that’s really hard to do, my friend. Especially when we charge real rates for what we do. The best music teachers, and what we help music teachers to do is to charge the best rates, right? 

James Franczek: Right.

Marty Fort: The best music teachers are not charging the cheapest rates. Now, that’s kind of a red flag to me if somebody sees a business coach and they’re charging like, a low entry thing. 39 dollars, 99, whatever it is. That’s not real business coaching. If somebody’s going to open their entire world to somebody else and show them everything, which is what we do, they’re not going to do it for a cheap price. They’re going to do it for a price that makes sense for both parties. 

So, 2 questions for you. Can you comment on the comparable between music mentorship? Everybody on this podcast that’s a musician has had music teachers, but very few of them had business mentors and what business mentorship is to you? And also, the whole concept of investing in yourself? That there’s lots of free E books and that kind of thing, how that compares to what we do in MASS®, which is a more high level investment intensive thing. Can you take us through those 2 things? Business mentorship and music mentorship and also, really what MASS® does at the fees we charge?

James Franczek: Sure, sure. As far as music mentorship, I mean, I think everybody listening to this call likely understands that you are not going to be able to grow as a musician unless you have somebody that has the proper techniques, that has the proper information that you need in order to develop. I mean, there are certain techniques that you simply cannot accomplish, certain songs that you cannot play without developing specific techniques in order to allow your body to physically do that and mentally do that. This is why we take lessons from somebody that’s considerably more advanced than we are. I mean, that’s a no brainer as far as I’m sitting. 

The problem with business coaching versus musicians that don’t really understand the whole idea is that they really don’t know what they don’t know. It’s not as easy for them to see the bigger picture, in my opinion. They get wrapped up in this little thing. Yeah. So, as far as getting business mentorship, you would never dream of learning music entirely on your own and we’ve seen how that works out. YouTube is a huge example of that situation. Lots of people start on YouTube, but you hit a wall. You end up not being able to progress as quickly as you could or should, because you’re simply staring at a screen and getting basic fundamental lessons. Not even fundamental. Just basic lessons without it being tailored to your situation. 

I personally struggle with the idea when I talk to other musicians and I talk to other music school owners that are not in the program. I find the whole thing quite frustrating because an opportunity is right there for you to learn how to grown your business in a similar way with a coach that has actually been there and can still, pardon me, a coach that’s actually been there and a coach that is currently doing it as well. In the MASS® program and we’ll talk about the mentorship from the other people as well. I think that’s a good idea. But as far as you’re concerned, Marty, your schools have 1,500 students. You’ve been running the MASS® for, I think it’s 13 years or something like that. You’ve built up your programs from scratch. You started small and you gradually built and you learned the lessons and you gradually built. When I think about MASS®, I think about, what would I pay exactly for the opportunity to sit in front of somebody who has done this from beginning to end and is still continuing to run his programs? What would I pay exactly in order to sit and get all that information from somebody? That’s worth so much more than a university degree. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, I think that’s really important as well. The other thing is I know of quite a few business coaches, some of them in the industry and some that are not in the industry. And I have discovered that a large percentage of these business coaches are no longer running their business and I find that frustrating. 

One of the reasons why I stay in MASS® is because the information I get on a weekly and a monthly basis is always current and it’s always relevant to what’s happening in my music school and what’s happening in the world today, right now. If I’m trying to get advice from a business owner or I’m sorry, a business coach that sold a school 2 years ago, well, what does he know about running a music school during COVID? And so, in the nicest possible way, I’ll want to express that I find that very frustrating. That I don’t think it’s wise to learn from a coach that’s no longer doing it because the world changes so quickly and the industry changes so quickly that you need to be learning from somebody who is current and up to date and living the same life that you are.

Marty Fort: Absolutely. I completely agree and that’s a big advantage we have in MASS®. We are about at time, but I really enjoyed the podcast today. I would love to do another one in the future. We have so much we could talk about. And I want to congratulate you, James. You’ve come through COVID strong. All of my Canadian clients have had a very difficult time, but you just get an A plus across the board. It’s just been amazing. Before we let you run off to fiddle and running the schools and being a dad and all the stuff it is that you do, Ladder and everything else, you’re a very prolific entrepreneur, did you have any closing comments or words you wanted to throw out there?

James Franczek: Yeah. I actually would like to mention one thing that I feel is extremely important and when I joined MASS® in the 1st place, it was this one concept that helped me to understand its value. I don’t know specifically what the program costs currently. It’s been a few years since I’ve joined, so I’m sure you wouldn’t mind sharing that. That would be great. But when I joined, it was in the neighborhood of 1,400 or 1,500 dollars. I believe that there were payments that you could make and it was very easy to join. And I know there was a guarantee. I’m sure that you’ll explain all that. I told my wife that I was thinking about joining this program and she just about fell off her chair. She said, how much? 1,500 dollars? Are you kidding me? But then, I actually spoke at that time with another MASS® member and he explained it to me this way. He said, listen, how much do you charge for lessons? How much do you pay your teacher? What do you have left over? That number’s really important because you have to decide how many students you need to get by joining this program. So, when I did the math, in my particular situation, the answer was 2. I needed 2 students to make it worth getting started in this program. And so, it’s a much easier, when you add the guarantee on top of that, all you need is 2 students to find out if this is going to- what are the odds, if you’re going to sit in front of a business coach who has grown his schools to 1,500 and helps schools grow to as high as 4,000, that you’re not going to get 2 students out of this? So, at the time for me, that was a really important piece of information that really helped move me forward. Of course, as you know, I have gotten an awful lot more than 2 students out of being a MASS® member. My entire life is different now. On that note, Marty, thank you so much. I truly appreciate your program.

Marty Fort: Well, thank you. Thanks goes back to you because you’re a smart guy. You are passionate about what you do. You’re persistent. You’re a hard worker. Your 3rd location and who knows what else is coming. As you said, it’s very simple in MASS®. We’ve actually even improved the terms, James, to where now, we’re the only program, we do a free trial essentially. We will ship it for free. Everybody’s got 30 days to check it out before first charge. They can pick their own date 30 days out because we know how it is, James. People come to us. They don’t have money. I didn’t have money when I was starting out my studio and doing Marty Fort Guitar Studio. So, we make it as easy as possible and make it easier than any other program. Again, somebody is approved, if they’re not blocked, they fill out the application. They go to musicacademysuccess.com/apply. If they’re approved, we ship it to them for free. They have 30 days. They choose their 1st billing date. And then, of course they stick around because there’s so much awesome stuff in there and it’s 3 payments of $499USD, 30 days apart. It doesn’t get any easier than that and we’re still today the only program in existence with over 10 years of experience with a full 100 percent money back guarantee. It’s a really simple decision. There’re only 2 outcomes, James. People who come on board and they’re happy, and they got a full 12 months. There’s no rush. There’s no 14 day trial. There’s no quick 30 day trial. They get 12 months to make up their mind. There is no way somebody could stick around MASS® and really try, right, for 12 months and not get 2 students and a whole lot more. So, listen. Once again, give them that website. Give them the Canadian Musical Ladder website and give them the US musical ladder site.

James Franczek: Yeah. It’s the same website, but just a different ending. So, it’s musicalladdersystem.ca if you’re Canadian. And it’s musicalladdersystem.com if you’re in the US or anywhere else. If you hit either one of them, if you’re an American and you request info on the Canadian site, it’s no problem at all. I’ll make sure it gets to where it needs to go and of course, feel free to reach out. I’m happy to chat with you on a personal level about it.

Marty Fort: God bless you, James. You’re doing amazing work. Keep rocking. And everybody, thank you for checking out my podcast. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes. We’ll see you on the next podcast. And here’s to your Music Academy Success®.