Hey everyone! I’m Mike. I just posted my intro yesterday, but seeing how much this community is focused on giving massive value, I wanted to dive right in and contribute. I put together a Loom breaking down the biggest mistakes I’ve made over the last 12 years growing a multi-location music school business (and helping scale a franchise to 100+ locations). Since it's a bit long (I didn't mean to, I'm sorry!), here is a quick breakdown of what I cover so you can decide if it's worth your time: - The CAC Trap: Why my early success with dirt-cheap Google Ads in 2013 actually broke my mindset and stopped me from scaling for years because I refused to pay what customers were actually worth - The Cash Flow Equation: The exact formula I used to solve cash flow crunches while marketing aggressively: FMC > 2(CAC + FMCOGS). I break down how we front-loaded our offers with a "Discovery Month" to fund acquiring the next customer immediately. - The 15-Minute Radius Mistake: Why opening my business exactly where I lived (Akron, Ohio) made me work twice as hard, and how a simple 30-minute geographic pivot would have fundamentally changed the economics of my business from day one. I am totally new here, so many of you advanced operators might already know this stuff, but I figured I would just give what I have in case it's helpful to anyone! https://www.loom.com/share/b7d8e98ed8524422b28d400ee4397e5d

Hey guys! New around here and doing my intro post. I'll try to keep it short. Basically, I own and operate a couple of successful music schools in my area and from there have built a successful coaching and marketing business for other folks in my industry. My pay has been good and I am still sticking with my mission ( I believe teaching creativity is the most utilitarian thing we can be doing for kids). I even now work directly with a one of the biggest players in my industry. My original schools are also prepping for an acquisition. Good stuff! I for the first time in my life am not worried about money. That has not been fulfilling as I thought it would be. HI am definitely in a "What's Next?" phase of my life. I am also realizing that the most fun part of being an entrepreneur for me has been the creative side of it. With my business prepping for an acquisition, I can't go and change a bunch of systems. Working with a franchise (the big player I mentioned), change by nature has to be slow. It feels more like a job than an entrepreneurial venture, and I am missing that dearly. So what do I have? About 14 years of experience of operations and marketing for essentially a local services industry. I've helped folks around the world with that. What do I want? To figure out how to take these next steps and get myself in a position where I am feeling like I can be creative and MAKE STUFF again, rather than have systems I've made just run their course. This likely means expanding to other industries and getting more general again (hourglass, anyone?) What do I need? My guts tell me I need to allow myself some space again to think and be creative in business again. That has sort of disappeared as of late. Also need advice on how to accomplish these next steps. Selling some music schools is definitely not retire forever money, so I'll need to still be strategic in my next venture. Glad to be hear, everyone!