Bryson Tarbet, That Music Teacher

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. Throughout my career, I've had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses. But first and foremost, I'm a serial technology entrepreneur. In the Creator Space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can sleep when you're dead.

On this show, we ask new questions in hopes of getting new answers. Questions like, how can small businesses work smarter? How do you achieve balance between work and family? How can we redefine success in our businesses so that we don't burn out after year three? Every week, I sit down with business founders at various stages of their side hustle to small business journey.

These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context, and camaraderie. Today's guest is Bryson Tarbet.

Bryson is a musical educator and instructional coach. He uses his expertise to help music teachers regain their time by providing free resources, allowing them to spend more time on teaching their students. Bryson, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:03] Bryson Tarbet: Thank you so much for having me. I can't wait to see where we can take this conversation.

[00:01:07] Sanjay Parekh: I do love the area that you're in because I don't know that I've ever actually talked about it on this podcast, but I played cello when I was a kid. I had a great orchestra teacher and that really helped drive me for staying with cello for so long. But I will admit I have not played in many years, before we start talking to music and go deep into that, give us a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are today. 

[00:01:31] Bryson Tarbet: For sure. So I've taken a little bit of a long and winding road to get here. The short story is when I left high school, I was in music all the way throughout high school and I had a decision of, what am I going to do next?

I always thought I was going to be the next greatest opera performer. And then ended up going into high school choir education and then very quickly realized that was not the life for me. Thankfully, I fell into elementary music teaching and that completely changed the trajectory of my life. I went through, got my bachelor's in elementary music. I received my master's in elementary music and I spent the last six years in the elementary music classroom. Now, in addition to all of that, I've spent the last seven years running my company, That Music Teacher, which is all about creating content specific to professional development for elementary music teachers, because I very quickly found out that the vast majority of undergrad programs here, at least in the United States, prepare really great band and choir teachers, but not really the elementary general music level. I know for me, I took one class about teaching elementary music in the entire four-year degree, and that is not an uncommon thing.

So a lot of us in the elementary level are just piecing it together and figuring out what we're supposed to do, as we're doing it, which leads to some crazy statistics on burnout and teacher attrition. So I've been running my company full time, as of now, for a month, but it's been great to see what we've been able to do, even with me running it as a side hustle and being able to see the different teachers that we've been able to impact.

And then that kind of like exponential rate of, "If I impact one teacher, how many hundreds of students are we going to impact in their career?" and that's just been super fulfilling for me and my team. 

[00:03:18] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, let's make sure we unpack a little bit. So elementary, what grades were you teaching when you were doing that?

[00:03:25] Bryson Tarbet: I taught pre-k through sixth grade general music. So a little bit of everything from day to day. 

[00:03:30] Sanjay Parekh: Wow. And so why was that for you? Did that hit when you did high school that didn't connect for you? What was the difference for you in those? 

[00:03:40] Bryson Tarbet: I don't know what it was, but it's somehow this like very common thing where so many people go into undergrad to teach high school or secondary music and then realize they fall in love with this elementary level.

For me, I observed a high school choir director teach and she was phenomenal. She had a great program, but I just didn't see myself in that world. And I was like distraught because it was like the third week of college. I just did all this work to get here and now I don't want to do it anymore.

"What am I, what is this?" Thankfully, thankfully we observed an elementary music classroom not long after that, and that's when I got my spark, I really got the spark back. My flame was relit and I was like, "All right. This elementary life, this is for me." And the rest is history.

[00:04:23] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, I love that. So is this the first time that you've done something entrepreneurial or have you had entrepreneurial things in the past, entrepreneurs in your family? 

[00:04:31] Bryson Tarbet: So I am the first entrepreneur in my family. My family comes from, education. Actually, my parents are teachers.

My grandpa's a teacher. We have lots of teachers in my family. So going on this leap was a little bit of a leap of faith for a lot of people in my family. When I look back, I've never had any official businesses, but I've always been running these side hustles. I remember in fourth grade, I had this like rubber bracelet company that was like, it was so annoying for a fourth grader.

As a teacher, I'd be like, "Oh my gosh, this is so annoying." But for me, I had so much fun doing it. And it's really funny because I learned a lot of lessons in that very early, what you may or may not call a business that I use in my company today that, while I might not have necessarily had any actual entrepreneurial endeavors before this one I've did a lot of the making mistakes part very early on in my life.

[00:05:26] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, is there a mistake that stands out to you that you made in one of those early side hustles? 

[00:05:32] Bryson Tarbet: This is one that it's so funny to listen to through an adult lens. But at the time I cut corners, I bought cheaper bracelets that were you could get more for cheaper and then one of my customers one of my fourth graders, they broke and not only did I not offer a refund or replacement which is you know, but that's what ended up shutting my business down. You know, someone complained to the teacher.

So in that moment I learned quality control is important and taking care of your customers is important, which I think is hilarious to think about this very important lesson that I learned very early on that I keep with me in a room every time I make a decision, I keep that the decision that I made that ended up getting me shut down back in the day right at the front and center. 

[00:06:14] Sanjay Parekh: I think there's an implicit lesson there too, that a lot of us as entrepreneurs talk about how, "Oh, we're entrepreneurs because we don't want to work for anyone and we want to do our own thing." But there's always somebody higher than you, even if you're an entrepreneur, right?

It might not be a teacher that can shut you down, but it might be the government or somebody like that, that can shut you down. So, there's always a boss for everyone at some point. So you got to think about that. Okay. So when you were starting it, so you're just a month in basically full time, but you started this years ago. So when you were starting it or now, like a month ago, when you went all in, was there anything that made you nervous and how did you deal with that? 

[00:06:57] Bryson Tarbet: I would say when I started my company, I didn't start a company. I just was doing this thing and it just kept spiraling.

So I really wasn't too concerned because it was just this thing I was doing. Now, quitting a salaried, pensioned career, that I had a little bit more hesitation. And, it really comes down to the fact that, my parents are both retired teachers.

They have that pension. My grandfather's a retired teacher. He has that pension. Everyone in my life has this, historically usually a pension from education and I was doing this brand-new thing, at least for me and my family. So yeah, there were definitely some reservations and some things I was afraid of.

But for me, the big nudge was realizing that it was okay that what I worked so hard to do, which was getting my master's and my bachelor's to be in that elementary music classroom, wasn't what I wanted anymore. And once I came to terms with that, that really made me understand that everything that I'd done up until this point was still really important. And it was still going to give me a lot of lessons and a lot of things that I can use in the rest of my life. 

[00:08:02] Sanjay Parekh: I was wondering about that. I meant to ask you about that earlier. Did you get any pushback from the family of "Listen, Bryson, you're giving up a pension and summer's off every single year, like you get summer vacation."

Most of us as adults, unless you're a teacher, you don't get the summer off, unless you're a kid right in school. So like you gave up two pretty big things. And what was the reaction?

[00:08:27] Bryson Tarbet: I mean there was definitely a little, not, I wouldn't say pushback, but more of a little just general concern from my parents because again, this is something that they hadn't done and they didn't really know anybody who had done it.

But at the same time, they had been with me the rest of my entire life. They knew that once I got my mind set on something, it was going to happen. My mom once told me, she says, "I learned from a very early age on that trying to stop you from doing something wasn't really going to be helpful It wasn't going to work.

It was just giving you those guardrails to make sure that you're doing it in a way that's going to be safe and like helpful." That way, and she's been very great with that, she's been very understanding. "Make sure, hey, make sure you figure out this. Make sure you figure out how you're going to do insurance."

And she's been very understanding. My family has been great about it. My friends have been great about it. Everyone is just, it comes down to the, I don't think they think that they could do it, but they are excited to watch me do it as long as it works. And they're always like, "All right, we're here. If you need this."

[00:09:28] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that point you make there, they don't think they can do it. I think most people can do it. It's just, are they courageous enough to do it? Because everybody has a first time of doing all of this stuff, right. No matter how successful you are, there is a point. Where you didn't know anything and that person had to do it for the first time. And that's what obviously you're going through right now. You're doing it maybe for the first time for not just you, but also for your family. So let's talk about this then. So the business that you're in is in serving teachers.

So you don't get to have the schedule necessarily that they have, right? Because your summers, you could be working during them. You could take them off. I don't know if that's your plan, but it creates a different kind of stress on you than when you were a teacher in the classroom. And so how do you think about that and how do you deal with that for yourself?

[00:10:21] Bryson Tarbet: Yeah, I think when you were talking about, the summer the perk of the summer vacation for teachers. I almost laughed because I'm the worst at taking vacation. My first year of teaching, I started my master's degree that summer and then pretty much every summer I'd either been in grad school or working full time or running my business full time because the reality is this; because our teachers have time, the teachers in my audience have some time to breathe a little bit. This is where we actually see the most of our engagement with our community. We have our big elementary music summit, which is essentially an online conference for elementary music teachers.

That is by far the biggest thing we do, the entire year and that happens in July. So for me going from, working part time in my business to working full time in business has actually been fairly simple because I would always work full time on my business in the summer anyway.

So I already knew what that life could look like. It's just, what will it look like when everyone else goes back? And that's, that is the, big question that we will see. 

[00:11:21] Sanjay Parekh: Was there a defining moment or thing that happened that caused you to say "Okay, it's time to go all in on this."

[00:11:29] Bryson Tarbet: There were a few reasons. First of all, this past year, I became a foster parent, and raising a child on your own has a lot of wonderful things that come with it, but a lot of stress and just chaos that come with it. And quite frankly, I took a lot of days off of work because the kids were sick or we just got a placement or whatever reasons.

And, I just kept thinking there has to be a better way for this right like there has to be a more flexible situation because I'm very thankful that I had great administrators that when I had to take a sick day because I was sick or my kid was sick. They were great about it, but that doesn't help the fact that there were no subs.

It was usually my colleagues that were pulling the weight when I was gone. And, it's just part of a broken system. And for me, the big thing for me was realizing that what I wanted in my life didn't necessarily connect with what I could get out of being a public servant and being in a teaching position.

There were a lot of small steps. Quite frankly, teaching through COVID was a big one. That kind of made me like, "All right, what else is out there?" But the big thing for me was just realizing that I wasn't showing up for my students the way that I had in the past.

Because my life had changed. I didn't get to go home and do nothing. I had to raise a kid. And for me, it really made me realize that there's someone that can do this better, and quite frankly, there's something better that I can be doing to make an increased impact. So let's give it a shot and see what happens.

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[00:13:16] Sanjay Parekh: You made a reference before about you and your team in the business. Is there a team? How many people do you have with you? 

[00:13:22] Bryson Tarbet: Yeah, so I'm very thankful that I have some wonderful people that support me. I have some contractors, like I have a graphic designer, some support assistants. I have someone that runs most of my social media.

And then I also have, I don't know, her title has changed so many times; she's been with me since early 2020, but my wonderful community manager, Brie basically keeps me sane. She makes sure everything happens. She makes sure all the projects are working. She's basically my second in command and she's been super helpful.

But regardless, even when we had different structures and things like that, having teams, even a couple hours a week to support me when, especially when I was running still working full time, I would not have been able to scale my company as quickly into a way where I could step into a full time had I not offloaded some of those tasks that I just didn't have time to do when I was working full time. 

[00:14:10] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. That makes sense. This is going to be a funny question because you've only really been at it full time for a month, but, you've really been thinking about this and working on it for a few years, six, seven years, right? If you could go back in time and do something differently, what is that thing and why? 

[00:14:28] Bryson Tarbet: I think, I had a wonderful opportunity because I still had a full-time salary for the vast majority of the lifetime of my company, I was able to make a little bit bigger steps and not worry about them exploding, because worst case scenario, I still have my salary. I still think though, at times that I still played it safe. And I let the imposter syndrome get in the way. I'm like, "Who am I to do this? I've only been teaching for this many years," but the reality is regardless of if you're in teaching, regardless of what niche you're in, you have your secret sauce.

You have something that you just, you absolutely love. You hyper fixate on that. You've gotten results for you or people around you that people want that solution. And I wish I would have taken bigger steps earlier on to get those smaller transitions, those smaller steps that made differences in my career so that I could have gotten that information that transformation out towards my audience earlier on without having to deal with his big mindset shift of who am I to help them when the reality is they are literally they're asking for help. 

[00:15:33] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that makes sense and talking about imposter syndrome, I think that is, that runs rampant amongst us as entrepreneurs because the fact that we're doing such new things and it's something that you're a hundred percent, right. Like we all have something secret that we know, or we can do and make things better. And why shouldn't we, right? Why should we not do that? Give it the attempt to make things better. 

I want to ask you one kind of business question, then I want to ask you some stuff about music a little bit.

[00:16:04] Bryson Tarbet: Let's do it. 

[00:16:05] Sanjay Parekh: So if you were talking to somebody that was thinking about doing the same thing as you taking that leap and starting a side hustle or going all in, like you've done a month ago, going from the side hustle to the full time business, what advice would you give to that person? 

[00:16:18] Bryson Tarbet: The biggest thing that I would tell anyone is that, regardless of your background, there are transferable skills. One of the soap boxes or the hills that I'm willing to die on about education is that teachers feel like they can only teach because that's a lot of time what society tells us. But a lot of times when we really boil down what happens, say in a teaching position, it's project management, it's training, there's all these things that are easily transferable skills.

So even if you're not in teaching, if you're in a different niche, there are definitely going to be things that you already know or things that you already had to learn or things that will help you in an entrepreneurial position. One of my best friends went through the process of getting an undergrad in music education, which by the way, is not easy and she never taught. She went into the corporate world and she has so many transferable skills that she learned, not only just figuring out how to get the degree, the skills that she had learned to balance all of that, but the skills of teaching people of building out a curriculum of understanding where everyone's at moving from there.

Those are things that help her day-to-day and what she does now. And I think that regardless of what your background is, regardless of you're trying to make a leap full time or part time or do a side hustle, you already have some of the skills that you need. 

[00:17:33] Sanjay Parekh: A hundred percent agree in that because I don't think a lot of people really realize all the skills that they happen to have, or they discount some of those skills that they have.

I want to ask you a couple of questions about the business because there's a couple of fascinating things here. First of all, the name, That Music Teacher, why did you decide on that as the name of the business? Because honestly, I love it.

[00:17:53] Bryson Tarbet: It's honestly, it's one of those things where, again, I didn't plan to start a business. All of this started six years ago, I spent the past six years in the elementary music classroom, but there was a year between before that, that I had finished college, but I wasn't in the music classroom yet. So I was working as a special ed assistant at an elementary level, and I loved it, but I missed the music classroom.

So I created an Instagram account that just so happened to be called @thatmusicteacher and I just use that to follow a bunch of music teachers to live vicariously through them and then that started this whole spiral of, when I was in the music classroom then I started sharing what I was doing and that created a instagram live series and that created a podcast and it just kept spiraling and spiraling and it all started from this night in my first apartment where I was just sad because I missed the music classroom. So I created a brand new instagram account and the rest is history. 

[00:18:47] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that's, that is a very funny origin story for a name like that, okay. So the other question for you then on the business, I noticed on the site, you've got memberships and that's how it looks like you're generating revenue. So $20 a month, a membership for getting access to all of the materials that you're creating. Why did you decide on that price point? And how did you get there? 

[00:19:11] Bryson Tarbet: You're poking at the bear of talking to a former teacher about money mindset because let's be honest, teachers and money, there's a weird relationship going on there. And that's definitely something that I had to learn when I was essentially asking teachers for their hard-earned money.

But what came down to that price point is I knew that the professional development that's inside my membership is going to help teachers. I also know that the vast majority of teachers don't get any of that content-specific PD from their districts. They get how they have to sit through a math PD and that technically counts for whatever reason.

For me it came down to making it accessible. One of our core values in the company is to empower and support our teachers and make it in a way that they are able to access it. So could I easily feel good about charging a hundred bucks a month for it based on the content? Yeah, but not necessarily for this audience.

So it was a really big back and forth of making sure that it was able to meet the needs of my company. Because again, if I can't run my company, I can't make the impact and I can't keep the membership alive, but also making sure that it was accessible to the people that I wanted to be a part of it and the people that I wanted to ask for their hard-earned money to join us inside the membership. So it was a lot of back and forth and figuring out how can we set up this recurring revenue, but also set it up in a way that our teachers are going to feel good about giving that monthly payment fee. 

[00:20:34] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, did you iterate on the price? Did you start a different price point and move up and down until you finally figured out 20 is the spot? 

[00:20:39] Bryson Tarbet: Actually we've only had a membership for just under a year now. So this is actually our founding member price that we haven't messed with yet but we're feeling pretty good about it. We're feeling good about the teachers that are in it and how long they've been around, will it change in the future? Who knows, but we feel pretty good about it right now. 

[00:20:57] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah you've had it for about a year. Do you see them being signed up 12 months out of the year or do they drop off during the summer? Like how does it work for you? 

[00:21:08] Bryson Tarbet: Yeah, so we're right in the first summer. We launched it after our elementary music summit last year, which was right at the end, right? July. So that goes pushing into the school year. So right now we're seeing pretty good retention over the summer, which I have to say was a big concern of mine.

So it's interesting to see that. I think what it really comes down to is again, we have teachers that know they need PD They know they want to try new things and get these new skills. But a lot of them don't have time during the school year and now is the time when they go in and binge all the stuff that's been happening in that, that essentially the back catalog of what's been going on throughout the year. 

[00:21:43] Sanjay Parekh: Have you done anything to make this, the things that you've done be considered like official professional development is a thing, like I know some industries, they have a certain amount of continuing education credits they have to have. Is that a thing for music teachers? 

[00:21:59] Bryson Tarbet: Yes. So short answer is yes. That is definitely a thing for teachers. The tricky answer is, every state does it completely different. It's definitely on our list now that I'm full-time to figure it out like some states are super easy and basically you have like we'll get a certificate and says this person was here and that will count some states you have to be like sponsored by an organization within that state. So there's so much red tape in there.

So the short answer is we're working on it, right? Every department of education is different and every state is different. It does create some complexity there. But the goal is to get it in a way that makes it so not only are the teachers getting the stuff that they need to actually feel like they know what they're doing, but also be able to renew their license or advance on their pay scale and things like. 

[00:22:41] Sanjay Parekh: Do you feel like, unlocking that is going to unlock additional revenue for you, or do you think it's a nice to have? 

[00:22:48] Bryson Tarbet: I don't think it necessarily will convert to more revenue, but I think those that do it and that end up taking advantage of it will feel a lot better of it. I think that will just give us more of an expanded reach and necessarily, I know right now we're in talks with, for our summit next summer to be able to offer graduate credit for a very reasonable price through a university.

And I think that would make it really helpful because those graduate credits for most teachers in the United States, equals more money that they get as they advance on their pay scale. So I think that would make it a lot more worth the while of the teachers, especially since it's July and technically this is mostly our time off.

[00:23:28] Sanjay Parekh: Right. Yeah Bryson, this has been absolutely fascinating and fantastic. How can our listers find and connect with you online? 

[00:23:37] Bryson Tarbet: Yeah. The best way to find me is that Instagram account that has been around for literally the entirety of my business, over at @thatmusicteacher on Instagram, thatmusicteacher.com is also a great place to start. But that's, those are the two main places and I'd love to continue this conversation. 

[00:23:53] Sanjay Parekh: Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. 

[00:23:55] Bryson Tarbet: Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:23:56] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And to hear more Side Hustle to Small Business stories, or share your own story, please visit Hiscox.com/side-hustle-to-small-business. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.