What It’s REALLY Like To Start a Tech Startup as a Musician

Yasi: Today, my guest is Eric Branner, a lifelong creative with a sunshine vibe, trained concert-classical guitarist performer and music, school owner. Eric Branner found himself spending upwards of 10 hours a week on administration alone, which cut into his teaching time and earning potential.

So he knew there had to be a better way. So he built a SAAS tech company focused on streamlining appointment-based businesses. So since inception Fons, this company, he founded has helped business owners to earn more than $20 million and quickly grow. So average professionals who use Fons earn up to 25% more each month.

So in this episode, I want to ask him all the questions so he can share with us how he built a successful tech startup and wheel idea into reality, despite the fact that, you know, he’s a first-time founder and he comes from a music background, so let’s hear it. Welcome to Fast Track Podcast Eric!

Eric: Thank you so much for having me.

I’m glad to be here. Thank you.

Yasi: Um, I, in my intro I talk about right, you’re a musician, and then you now have this successful SAAS startup. I think the first question coming to most of people’s mind will be, how did you make it right? Uh, being a first time, founder with no technical background?

What is the story of, from an idea, become a reality? What have you done? What have you been through?

Eric: Okay. Okay, sure. Yeah. I’ll try to boil that down. The inception really quickly is that, you know, yeah, I was a musician. I ran a music school, but I was here in Seattle, which is a technology hub in Seattle, Washington, and I was kind of seeking something else from the universe. I’ve been doing it for a long time successfully. My wife was an actor. We were having a great time here. Uh, but I was looking to either go back to get an MBA or go to law school that was, had always been kind of my plan. And I was presented with the opportunity, to work with someone, to build a technology company.

Uh, and I would. Would be the idea behind it. And I would be create the culture around it. And the person who I connected with our first investor was someone who had done this multiple times had exited multiple times had recently had a very successful exit. Um, and you know, it was looking to put bandwidth into his next project.

So I was extremely fortunate to ball into a very, accomplished technical and design team and management team. You know, I truly, I knew nothing about technology. I remember we had our first meetings, we were talking about basically how to automate my music school. Right. Cause it was a very inefficient operation and I thought I did it better than many others.

Uh, and you know, I didn’t know what UX was, but I was like UX UI, and everybody was laughing at me and I was like, I need to read a lot of books. But yeah, I was navigated through it and I’ve really found that I loved it. And I found that the scene of building a startup and a technology company was so much like being in a musical group or a band or, any it’s creative.

Right. You’re building something out of nothing. And it’s really hard. Just like being a musician. So I actually felt really comfortable in the space. Uh, and the thing that I also really love is how many really bright and gifted and motivated human beings were attracted to the space. Right. So, as I was working with these great designers and engineers and people that were just really fastidious about understanding how to create things.

I mean, that’s, it’s really not that much different than playing a Bach fugue on the guitar, right. Or playing in an orchestra or playing in a band as far as mindset and, attitudes. So that, that was kind of our origin story of how we got started and how I tripped into it. You know, and I’ve really fallen in love with the process.

Yasi: Very interesting. You use the word you’re presented with this opportunity and you’re falling into it. You’re, you know, it sounds like you’re presented this opportunity. Would you like to share with us, how did it happen? How did you come across your, I do not know, either your co-founders or your investors, like maybe we can learn something from it, right.

Also how to network, how to, you know, show your work ethics that people love, they want to work with you?

Eric: Well, you know, I think one is, I brought, I was very enthusiastic about the work that I did and I built a over 20 years of teaching here in Seattle. I had a very connected group of clients. Right. And you know, I was very fortunate for that, you know, from professional athletes to really well-known people in technology to, you know, different over time that I built this community, right.

It was very organic from teaching people’s kids and themselves, which is a great, a real strong bond and a lot of trust. Uh, and I also, I mean, when I said presented the opportunity, I kinda was telling the universe that was ready to do something different. And I’ve really, it really did happen. I was like talking to my wife and said, I’m ready to do something else.

I’m gonna start applying to MBA programs and law schools. And I just opened my eyes and almost immediately. I was talking with someone that had recently you know, finished their, exit from their last big project and was looking to do their next big thing. And they very interested in the space that I was doing.

And so it, it was an organic process. There was a lot of luck involved. Um, but I, you know, I think when I looking back at it, it was such a massively educational moment and also having the willingness to, not know what I was doing and be okay with that for a while, was the two big pieces to it.

Right? So that’s how it kind of took off.

Yasi: And it also happens that, you know, someone who has this idea to ready to do something or try something or look for something, and then they tell their friends and families, and then more opportunities will show up. If you keep that to yourself, nobody knows that you want that.

So you already have this networks from students or the parents from students, and then you tell people, and then they already know you. And, yeah, there’s more opportunities show up. And what’s funny it’s you mentioned that, to be comfortable with not knowing everything right, the process. So can you tell us some stories that, you know, now looking back, some of the things that you didn’t know at that moment, and now you look back and think, how am I not supposed to know that being a tech founder?

Eric: Oh my… There’s just so much. And it’s, you know, it’s actually, you know, I knew right away going into it that I did not know what I was doing, but I really wanted to. And I, knew that I was a good learner. I love, learning, you know, I’m comfortable practicing guitar five to seven hours a day.

Uh, I always have had that, piece to me. , and I also knew that it was going to be, to take a lot of, you know, really, not being prideful and saying, I don’t know what you mean. What is the difference between UX and UI, right? Or, you know, and from everything from incorporating to, um, the legal stuff that rocked up managing a team and running stand-ups and being able to, to be able to organize our projects, what we’re gonna work on next. Right. Uh, learning about constraint theory, like all these, you know, so I just started reading all the time and learning as quickly as I could. And again, you know, the person that I, founded the company with first, originally he’d been through it and he was wise enough to know that I had the spark and the interest and he let me make appropriate mistakes.

Right. Because I think they knew this would be a really long tail strategy, building a SAAS company and building a brand is something that is, it’s not a two or three-year project. It’s a seven to 12 year project, right. That was, we knew that going into it. We knew I had time to learn and, you know, they had people in place to be like, oh, you can’t do that.

Right. So we had good lawyers and we had, I had great technical founders help and a really solid technical team. So I could be creative and I could be authentic and go out and start building community. Right. Which is, that was the thing I was really comfortable with was going out and meeting people and telling people about the idea.

Uh, you know, we started bonds. Bonds was initially, it was a concept to run a music teachers school, right. Or a music school with a bunch of teachers. And the way that it always been traditionally done, I was very confident that I had one of the most successful schools, probably in the United States.

Right. And I set down and instantly this team of engineers and designers and thought leaders were like this is terrible. You’re still sending invoices and taking paper checks. Like we’re not doing this. And I was like, what do you mean? So. I had to go out and start really researching about what the modern applications were to be able to streamline these operations and talking to personal trainers, gyms, academic tutoring, firms, dog-walkers, right?

All these people that have client appointment-based relationships, businesses, uh, really learning about them. And we started finding all these new, you know, these new ways of doing, we ended up coming up with was so far from what I originally imagined. Wasn’t even close. Right. And, but it was great because it was so collaborative and so many minds weren’t were involved in

it.

Yasi: Well why do think, later the, you know, the structure of the product is so far from what you initially imagined?

Eric: Yes. Yeah. It was, it was. What’s that?

Yasi: Why do you think like there’s a big gap in between, is it because initially you, based on your own understanding of the industry and then compared to later, you have talked to so many people, like, why do you think there’s such a gap?

I think it

Eric: was a gap because what we had done is created something that worked for us.

Right. And we had over a new, did that happens we create operational systems, you do it. Everybody has an operational system. They put into their business that can somewhat become through a narrow focus. Right. And then when you start bringing other ideas, right, you start to be like, wow. And to give you like a really concrete example, um, the way this business has always worked is if I were going to

teaching music or be your physics tutor, you know, I would, at the beginning of the month, I would send you an invoice for the sessions we would have that month. You would pay me hopefully by the fifth of the that month. Often you wouldn’t, right, it has no corelation to your financial situation. It’s just people don’t like doing invoices.

And, you know, that was a hallmark of the way, the whole business and the industry, it worked for a very long time. And we were in this new phase where, that wasn’t necessary anymore. Right. Everything can be automated, like invoicing for this type of work. Doesn’t make sense. If you think of it, like now it’s almost like a Uber.

Like my students just show up and they get bill for being there. That’s technology has been able to solve that through a myriad of ways. So I think we were fortunate and building our solution to have a technical, a tech visionary on our team. Right. Who was able to say, oh my gosh, we’re not doing that.

Let’s do this and try this and experiment with that and talk to these people. And that’s how it really morphed into being a real tight operational, uh, toolkit that we’ve built for these types of.

Yasi: Yep. And I also find it very valuable, you know, case that you have a business partner who, has being a successful tech founders in the past, and now you are very experienced service based service provider, or you run home music school, and now you combine the two worlds together, and then you develop a product that serve those service-based business owners using technology.

Eric: Yes. Yeah. It never would have happened. You know, it’s like, it’s one of those things where every week pride five or 10 people will contact me. Like I’ve got an idea for an app and I’m like, oh my gosh, well, hey, you know, engineering is extremely expensive right now. And no code has kind of a thing that everybody’s exploring, but really building a company is really difficult because there’s so many moving pieces, right.

Not only building the products one piece, but building customer base. Who knew that was going to be so hard, right? To get people, to try this new, radical way of doing something, you know, people, it was very hard to get people to adopt. No one wants to try a new thing. It takes so much tenacity and then there’s, you know, there’s, 10 other different pieces to that puzzle of building a product like this.

So yes, having someone that’s been through it is fabulous, because they’re often wanting to find someone that’s energetic, someone that knows a space really well. You know, someone that has real domain authority and that’s proven it, that’s powerful. Right? So mixing that domain authority that I had in my enthusiasm and belief, right.

Because that’s the other piece is that traditionally musicians, artists, uh, academics are not seeing, as much as a professional, as a car mechanic, right? Most car mechanics make more money than, you know, people with doctorates in classical piano. Right. And so our real vision began to build this tool to elevate that whole career path.

Because it’s so meaningful. Like I knew the work that I was doing really mattered to many people’s lives, you know, and as a music teacher, my value proposition was that people would work with me and find joy in their life and become good at something and learn how to learn. And you know generally really use that as a stepping stone to be happy in their adulthood and their existence.

So, you know, it was a really great experience, a really beautiful path.

Yeah. And

Yasi: there’s also create impacts on many peoples like small business owners and also has an indirect impact on their lives. And, um, my other question would relate it to, you know, the fact that your company has helped so many like service providers, increase earnings by 25%.

What would you think are the reasons people are, you know, under paid in the past or they did not earn as much as they could.

Eric: It is much of it. And I’ll just speak cause I I’m going to speak to the music industry because I think that’s just, I’ll pick one. They’re not, all of all vertical we serve, they’re close, but in music traditionally it was almost taboo. Taboo, to money, to be a piece of it, especially the more like , you know, classical music or jazz, the more it went in that direction of like highly skilled musicianship, the less you wanted to talk about it.

Yasi: Why?

Eric: So it’s just, it’s the way it’s, you know, they were assumed that the goal would be to get a professorship or to tour and, you know, and so what we grew up when I grew up studying with the many of the famous people that are out, that were out there teaching, it was always kind of like, you know, assumed either came from a financial background and had money like a trust fund or something, or you had a professorship or there was some way. And what we’ve found, I’ve been very blessed with mentors, people that have popped into my life and have kind of guided me. And the thing that turned, it was a turning point for me on the journey to building bonds was I had been teaching for probably 10 or 12 years.

That was the first time I started to leave the industry. And I said, I did the same thing. And I said, you know what, I’m going to go do something else. And I was starting a family. I had a beautiful studio in downtown Seattle, but I was like, I think it’s time for me to like, get into a day job or something. And I had a client who was 60 years old and he was a legend in Seattle.

He knew everybody. He was a great connector of people. Uh, he was an architect that built everyone’s house. Right. And so he was in the class and he’s like, Brandon, don’t quit teaching. You’re too good at this. He’s like, I want you to double your rates. Right tomorrow. And I was like, I can’t do that. That’s weird.

He’s like, just do it. No, one’s going to care. And I was like, they’re gonna care. And I was like, I can’t do that. So finally he talks me into it and basically overnight, I was like, hey, I’m either leaving this industry. I have to double my rates to make this really work for me. Not only did literally no one cared, like all of my clients were like, okay, or we’re so glad to hear that you’re doing that.

So you’re staying in this field. Eight weeks later, I had a massive waiting list because perceived value came into play where I was getting more calls for new clients than my very famous professors that I had worked with. And I was charging almost twice as much as they were. Right. And so I was like, wait, this is weird.

Like you should be reaching out to this person. But they wanted to be, the average consumer doesn’t really know how to judge outside of saying, oh, well, there’s these two options. This person’s X and this person is two X. This person must be the person I want for me or my family. And that was like my mind exploded.

And then I kind of was like, not only did I have another decade. Um, you know, making a really great living, buying a house here in Seattle and having a great life and doing great work. I started really pushing that idea to other service providers to be like that. Dude, if you want, your marketing strategy is to double your rates?

It always works provided that you’re really good at what you do. Um, and I’ve talked to literally thousands of music, teachers and tutors and personal trainers and saying, Hey, if you want to get busy first thing you do is like, at least charge as much as your plumber. Okay. Right. Because you have so much training, you deserve at least to make as much as you’re the person who works on your car.

Okay. And then it’s 100% effective. So that I that’s a long answer, but it’s really important to me because it’s one of the key tenants of my philosophy, about this field that I believe in so much is it’s great to see people come in and we see them. We’re like, oh my gosh, you have a doctorate of musical arts.

You’re charging, like not you’re charging half of what you should please do this. And then they, change it and they go, oh my gosh, no one cared. It always works. Thank you. So it’s a really, meaningful to be able to help guide people in that direction.

Yasi: Yeah, actually at the end of the day is what’s, your worth is equal to how much people are willing to pay, not how much you think you’re worth.

Right.

Eric: Oh, you should say that again. Cause that’s really good. Yeah. Can you repeat that?

Yasi: Yes. Your

worth is equal to how much people are willing to pay. It’s not equal to how much you think you’re worth.

Eric: That’s so beautiful. Right. And it’s also part of being a community. I’m very interested in the idea of equity and who I can work with, I would never turn away a person for money.

So I, in my teaching, I was able to charge this higher rate. Also knowing that if I ever needed to, I would, by all means I can teach people for free because I can say, oh, I charge enough here. And the people that work with me, they’re so appreciative of that. But my clients that are very fluent. They’re happy to pay it because they know that’s the scene I’m creating.

They want me to thrive. They know my kids, they want my kids to be healthy and they know the other families I work with. So it’s a really beautiful business structure that everyone that really helps everyone. I will say that in the last three years I’ve had one person bought, cause I still teach I’m doing follow-ups, but I still teach much less than I used to, but it’s something I do.

I have 10 or 12 students at all times, and I’ve had one person bulk at my rate structure and they were the CFO of a national insurance company here in the United States. And I was like, wow, that’s just disrespectful. It’s one thing to be like, you know, a school teacher would be, often try to pay my rate and I’d say, Hey, let me give you a break.

Right. Or something like that. But the, you know, in general, people have been fabulous that.

Yasi: Yeah, that’s great. Like, I oftentimes hear the same story, like increase your rate, increase your rate. But on the other hand, I want to ask you, what advice would you give it to service providers like coach trainers or teachers, to what extent they can increase their rates?

Eric: Well, that is a challenge that we’re finding is that we don’t really know what the ceiling is. It really depends on where you are. Um, there are, you know, one thing that you will see is most people are not bold enough, right? Because it just, it’s a way of the economy right now. People want what’s theirs.

There’s not nearly enough service providers. What we do like right now, you and I having a human connection. Right. Even though it’s digital, it’s still human. I’m getting to know you. And you’re getting to know me. People are starving for that. Right. And to get that. And so our work that we’re doing as a personal trainer, isn’t just, let’s get really healthy.

It’s, I’m here to listen to you and to know you. And so it’s been, you know, all the statistics and reports are saying over the next 10 years, it’s just such a growth field. Right. So I don’t know what the limit would be. You know, I do know that some, I know what providers charge. I know some of them charge incredible amounts of money.

And when they do, they often just are busy, making much more money, not necessarily based on their education or their level of skill, but based on what they’ve, you know, what they’ve put out there.

Yasi: Um, Do you think it’s quite important that, you know, a service provider or a teacher should have the adequate experience or skillset to provide quality service,

and then they are entitled to charge higher rates? Because I’m just wondering if some people charge too much and then they won’t get enough clients. People just think it’s not worth the money they’re paying for.

Eric: That’s a great question. Uh, and I, the only way that I could really equate that is I try to imagine myself as when I was first started teaching, I put myself through college teaching and I’ve always, my grandfather was a music teacher.

I’d always known, I love teaching people. Um, What I lacked and experienced then, I had youthful energy and an excitement about, so my students then still did really well because I might not know as many tricks and I might not have the patience, but I was so stoked. I was so into being able to, I was so grateful to be there.

So one of the things that we see is young providers that come in with great enthusiasm and knowledge of their craft. They charge more and they get really busy. So I think a lot of it is more about your attitude. If you really, if you believe that you’re helping people, right? That drives you. If you believe you’re serving people, if you believe that, you know, your work is meaningful and you’re willing to put into, the price has really become secondary, right.

Cause that’s what people will get, right. If you can make a child happy, right, if you can bring joy into a child’s heart or an adult’s heart, it’s, you know, it’s priceless and parents and clients will be happy to.

Yasi: Yeah. And oftentimes people make emotional decisions, not rational decisions. And what I like about what you said just now is, you know, you have this energy, right.

Make people feel stoked. And if, from my personal experience, I really feel that if someone is performing, you know, even a service or provide a product to me, or we have a working relationship, I can feel the passion, you know, the sparkles, in the other persons. Then I feel, I’m really learning something from someone who is passionate about this topic.

And I actually had a guitar teacher when I was maybe 10 years old or 12 years old. I actually stopped with the teacher because every time when, you know, the hour is finished and it’s, my class is finished and the teacher just wants to, you know, let me go and then finish today. I don’t feel the passion. I kind of lost my passion in learning guitar.

So I completely understand that what you say.

Eric: Yeah. And that’s, you know, that is, and that teacher probably was highly educated, but was not passionate about transferring the knowledge and seeing young people struggle their way through going. Like, I love that. I love, I started playing guitar late. And so I really remember what it was like to learn.

Being a newcomer at a new idea. So, yeah. I’m sorry that happened to you.

Yasi: Maybe if I have met you back then, I was still playing guitar

right now.

Eric: It’s never too late.

Yasi: Yeah. So my last question is, what do you think are the let’s talk about, you know, starting a successful company or tech company, what do you think are the success ingredients?

Eric: Well, you know, it is the reality is I wasn’t prepared for how difficult it would be. Um, and if I did not have people around that I really trusted to help. I don’t think I would’ve made it. It is, you know, come on, be like, oh my gosh, it’s so fun. It’s so great. Do a tech startup. It’s really hard.

The SAAS space is really difficult. It’s competitive. Um, everything’s challenging. Right. You know? And so, it’s relentless. So I would say, you know, I used to have this great quote, um, in life, whenever I was say, my car broke, I’d be like, I can fix my car. I can play a Bach feud. Right. Like I should be able to think that out.

And you know, this has been an experience that has really pushed me to the very limits of my learning and my ability to keep up. My social skills, trying to remain authentic. And so the thing that’s, you know, our stories be still being told, you know, as far as what success will mean and, uh, what will come next for us is, is it is worth it to chase after your dream and to try and to realize that you’re going to need to be very resilient.

Like you could be super lucky, like the stories of startups we read about. Becoming unicorns in six months before they have any customers or whatever, but that’s not really likely to be your journey in building a business. Um, I do think that building a startup is great to do with people that you like and friends, because it’s like a family, like you’re in it.

You’re going to be battling together all the time. And so I it’s different than other business structures in that sense that the people I work with. We’re like family, right? So I would say resilience and not giving up and also willingness to really admit and, uh, prioritize your time because there’s not going to be enough of it.

Right. So you’re relentlessly editing. Right? That’s the thing that when I meet with a lot of other founders that are really early and just getting started, I hear these ideas and they’re so scattered where they’re focusing. And so learning how to like run a Kanban board, well, and only choosing the top card and being very protective of your time and your energy, uh, understanding constraint theory really well, like read the goal again and again, and find out what, where your bottlenecks are.

Um, is something else that’s been really helpful for us? Cause I was, for instance, I was brilliant. I was like, I could get people to sign up for this thing all day. Right. But, and I was so excited because we got all these sign-ups and I was like, I am based on basically right at exit. None of them were converting.

None of them were becoming paid customers. And so, what a tough lesson to learn. I had to go back and like, oh my gosh, my onboarding is terrible. So probably do that too. So, you know, that it’s that constant state and be like, yes, this is so cool. And then, oh my gosh, this is so hard.

And I did something so great and I messed something up so badly. So I think it’s just a really, you know, I’m a pretty laid back person, but also intense by nature. Uh, as far as my focus. It keeps me up at night. Like nothing else ever has. Like, I can’t really turn it off. Yeah. It was like, I think about all the time, which I’m sure most

startup founders do.

Yasi: But later, did you learn to turn it off?

Otherwise you can also sustain this, this

level, right?

Eric: No, that’s been, my greatest challenge is that I am a very, I’m a sensitive human being, like I know hundreds of our customers. Like I, cause I use them to learn about how to build the product. I talked to them every day. I jumped into the customer success channels.

Uh, I really care about their success because they’re me right. And I want to build the best platform in the world to do this. And we’re competing with really gigantic companies with a much smaller team. So, you know, I really, I take it very personally. So, you know, when the are bugs that happen in the system, they’re going to happen right,

to every company, you know, that really stresses me out or, you know, I just, I, yeah…

Yasi: You really care. You really care about the product and your customers.

Eric: Yeah. Yeah. It’s become very close to me.

Yasi: And well, I, from your story, I learned, what I learned, right, is that you mentioned so many times about people.

So have like group of people who support you within your company. Also your customers, you care about them, you are people oriented. So customer centric and you talk to differnet type of industry, service providers, honestly, what’s the need and you know, the way you use that insights to develop product that serve them better.

I think eventually, all this like learnings from your stories can be also implemented and borrowed by other tech startup founders. So, for that, thank you so much for sharing your personal stories and your learnings.

Eric: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It was, great to chat with you.

Yasi: And lastly, would you like to share with us, where people can find you follow you learn more about Fons? If they are service providers, coach, you know, teachers probably they can use your service.

Eric: I’m Eric Branner on LinkedIn, if anyone would like to talk. I love talking about startups. I love hearing about new ideas. Bonds.com is where you can go to learn more about Fons and you can also connect with us there.

So that’s a great place to reach out to us and we’re on all the social channels under Fons.

Yasi: All right as usual you can find, for the audience, you can find all the links in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here, Eric.

Eric: Thank you so much for having me. It was great talking with you.