We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jake Merritt. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jake below.
Alright, Jake thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?
I really am happy working for myself, but success or failure is completely dependent on one person……me. Sometimes I do think about how easy it would be to work for a big corporation where I’m not responsible for every task that keeps the business running. It would also be easier because they have hoards of customers coming in constantly and you get paid time off and health insurance. However, I’ve always been more interested in freedom than money, and I think that being self employed provides me with far more freedom than my corporate counterparts. I find it very stifling to the mind and imagination to allow a corporation to tell me how to look, how to speak, how to think, or how to feel about their business practices. Many of my adult guitar students have been working very high paying corporate jobs for decades and have told me that they envy me and wish they could do something they love. A company buys your time with money but you can’t buy more time with money. At the end of my life I would like to look back and see that I spent my time how I wanted, that to me is true freedom.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a Guitar/Vocal teacher that teaches online lessons through Zoom. I have 55 students that each get a 1-on-1 lesson every week. My entire business is ran through a small website that I built and manage. I really try to make sure that each 30 minute session is the highlight of that student’s week and they gain something of value during that time. I don’t do any promotion or marketing because my students are doing that for me constantly.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Covid was a huge disruption to my business. Before Covid I taught all of my lessons face to face, but within a two week period I had to transition all of my students to the virtual format. It was very hectic for a while because I had to learn and invent new methods of teaching overnight.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I have watched a lot of people come and go in this business over the past 15 years. Some of them have moved between multiple jobs since they stopped teaching, and I’ve had some people ask how I have kept my student count up and kept money coming in. I just tell them “I’ve stayed dedicated to this one path rather than jumping around and starting new paths every other year”.
Contact Info:
- Website: JakeMerrittMusic.com
- Instagram: @oldmanmerritt
Image Credits
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