We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brett Frey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brett below.

Hi Brett, thanks for joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I have always wanted to be a full time musician ever since I was 11 years old. I have studied the craft of performing from when I was in 6th grade all the way to my Doctorate. So I have always been a performer, not a business person. So when Covid hit and the world of performing shut down, it forced me to think of my life’s work differently. I had to figure out how to best use my knowledge and experience in a way that was beneficial to others in my community. So when my mom told me there were new commercial retail units being built in her neighborhood and suggested that I open my own business, I jumped at the opportunity. The caveat was, I had to sign the lease for the space within a couple of days from the time I had inquired about it. So after I signed the lease I had to create my company! I had to:

– File the LLC
– File my assumed name which required a license agreement from the neighborhood I worked in the use the community name
-File the IRS paperwork
-File the State, County, City business tax licenses
-figure out how to pay the city taxes at tax time
-hire attorney’s to make staff contracts
-Make ad’s to put in all the local newsletters
-create a facebook page and business email
– communicate over the phone and email with prospective clients
– learn how to file my income taxes
– learn how to get tax write off’s through expenses
-learn how to create all my paper trials for accounting purposes
-learn how to write and file 1099’s

and the rest is history.

I had to figure out how to do all of this through google searches, IRS articles, trial and error, and a lot of people telling me “oh you can’t file this until you fill this out first.”

I didn’t read a book, I didn’t take a class and I didn’t have a business degree. I just figured it out through doing it and I am proud of being able to take on the challenge of doing it and getting it all to work.

Brett, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Music was always in my house growing up. My mother played Piano and my brother played violin. Music was very important in my family and when it was my turn to try to play a musical instrument I couldn’t find the instrument that was “for me” for a very long time. At age 11 I discovered the bass guitar and I have now been playing the bass for over 15 years as well as the Double (Upright) Bass for 10 years now. I’ve wanted to be a professional musician since I started playing the bass. I received a Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate all in Bass Performance, and I finally moved to Nashville in 2019 to start my performance career (my first job in town was playing for Trisha Yearwood and the Nashville Symphony). And then…….. 2020 came and Covid hit, and everything shut down. For the next 3.5 months I lamented over what I was going to do for what at that time was looking like the next 2 years. My mother found out they were opening small retail spaces in her neighborhood in Franklin TN that could be leased to businesses and she suggested I open my own music school. I was so excited by that idea that I signed the leased, created an LLC and a bank account and I became a business owner over night. From 2021 to the end of 2022, my business “Westhaven Conservatory” operated primarily as a school. After meeting a lot of fellow musicians in the area and getting acquainted with the neighboring businesses in the community, I started offering a live music contracting service where anyone who has a live music need for an event or within their business can hire me and I will contract the band, create the repertoire list and design everything around the clients needs. I think my business is unique within my community in particular because no other business with my business model had existed previous to covid. I am not the biggest social media/marketing type person, so one of the things I am most proud of is developing an “on the ground” reputation, where I meet families face to face in the neighborhood, I develop great relationships with people on a weekly basis, I patronize my neighboring businesses and I have great relationships with those owners and then my client base builds from that in addition to the quality of my services as opposed to me looking at a analytics chart every day of how many people saw my instagram link in California or something.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think I have built my reputation off of three things: Care, Passion and Communication.

When it comes to care, I care about people. I deeply care about my students from their success in their lessons, to their success in life. If I have a student that is performing somewhere, I will always make an effort to go and see them. I care about the student’s families. If the parents need something from me whether is help with scheduling, providing music for their business needs, to sorting out an issue with their kids lessons, I care about what they have to say. I always treat my students, their siblings and the parents the way any human would want to be treated with kindness, compassion and understanding. I also care about the quality of my services from the lessons that I teach, to the staff members I hire to the live music I provide for others.

Passion – I am very passionate about what I do and I think that helps when it comes to how thorough I explain things in lessons and if I am excited about what is being discussed, I think it excites the students as well and then the parents feel like their child is learning in a great, positive, encouraging and enthusiastic environment.

Communication – I hate leaving people hanging when they are looking for information, so I try to be very prompt when it comes to communicating over email or over the phone and I give my families a lot of time if I am able so that they can leave a conversation with me feeling like all their questions were answered. So if you send me an email asking a question, don’t be surprised if I answer within a minute of receiving the email!

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Westhaven Conservatory is in a planned community that has 2,000 homes with another 1,000 being built. For my music school: Families from all over the country move into the Westhaven neighborhood and right across the street from my business is the local ice cream store Sweethaven. Every kid on the planet loves to get ice cream, so when families go to Sweethaven, they cross the street to get to the park benches and then everyone sees the piano in my store front window. This then forces mom’s and dad’s to go “What’s this?” They then look at my smaller sign that says we are a music school and then they call the phone number and that’s one of the biggest ways I build a student base.

For my live music contracting business: Westhaven has a lot of live music concert series’ in the summer and fall. My staff and I will often put a band together for an outdoor concert where people from all over Westhaven, Franklin or Nashville just stop to watch our group play. After those concerts take place, I will get a phone call from someone that says “We saw your group and we would like to hire you for……” It’s such a great way to meet new people all the time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://brettfreymusic.com/
• Instagram: @brettfreymusiccityband
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/westhavenconservatory
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@brettfreymusic803

Image Credits
Andrew Rozario Kyle Frey