We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Colleen Lilley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Colleen, appreciate you joining us today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.
I moved to St. Petersburg bound and determined to open Music & Me. The year prior to moving here, I’d taught the curriculum we use, Music Together, in Berlin, Germany and when it was time to move back to the States, there was no question in my mind that I wanted to open my own program of classes in my new city.
To get started I needed two things; space, and clients. Pretty quickly, I found a yoga studio willing to let me rent the room two mornings a week, so that was one problem solved, but how to find families with young children? Well, I’d noticed many families at the Saturday Morning Market so I printed up some invitations to a free trial class and approached people with children in my target demographic. It was wildly uncomfortable but also really well received. The rest went to people at the grocery store, Target and families I passed on the street. Indeed, I got my very first clients from that demonstration class and at least two of them attended because of the invitations I handed out at the market! My discomfort paid off. Everyone signed up for the full semester and most of them became long-term clients, many of whom I still know.
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?
In many ways, everything I did before opening Music & Me prepared me for my future roles as an entrepreneur and a teacher. Both my bachelor and my master degrees are in music performance, focused on classical voice/opera. While I was in grad school, I was hired as a placement specialist for a temporary employment agency. It meant interviewing and assessing candidates and placing them in temporary jobs that fit their skills. I had a lot of human resources training and learned a lot about client interaction both with potential employees and with employers. These skills I carried forward in every job I’ve had since, but most importantly to this one!
Post college, I performed for almost 15 years but, like most professional performers, I supplemented my income with day jobs when I was in town waiting for the next booking to begin. I was lucky enough to find several veterinary clinics that were happy to allow me to go when I had gigs, but were always happy to have me back when I was in town. Biology and animals behavior being two big interests of mine, it was a happy environment for me to be working and learning. I was trained as a veterinary assistant, asked to help with bookkeeping and was often the face of the clinics managing clients needs and emotions. Eventually, I became a manager and added to my human resources and customer service skills managing a large staff, problem solving both front and back end business dealings and handling the most difficult client interactions.
All of this prepared me to be a business owner and especially one who works with families. I truly love people and have a lot of natural empathy for what families often are experiencing navigating the first years of parenting. I also simply love learning and child development is an infinite pool of information for me to dive into over and over, each time deepening my knowledge. Because of my own love for learning and my excitement about animal/human development, I am eager to share and educate my clients. In doing so, I hope to enrich and make easier and more beautiful their experience of the earliest years of their children’s lives. That I get to do this through music, a powerful and universal method of communication, is even more special.
For me, Music & Me is an opportunity to connect our community, to support young families, to grow our communal understanding not only of each other but of how our children grow and learn. While our classes are playful and fun, they are also highly educational and truly supportive of healthy early development. It is my gift to be able to meet and positively influence in any small way the lives of our families.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
It may be cliche to name Covid-19 as a challenging time; it was for us all; but I truly imagined we might not come out still in business on the other side of shutdown. All of our classes are in person and a vital part of our philosophy was personal, group interaction. Obviously, we weren’t able to offer those classes during that long period of time when nobody really knew how Covid spread and what might keep us safe. It required a huge pivot to technology which came with a learning curve in just about every arena for me: teaching, marketing and providing a quality virtual class experience. Holy cow, what a heavy lift!
Inside of two weeks, I learned how to record and edit videos, upload them onto a secure platform and get them to clients. My team and I learned how to create videos that were length and activity appropriate, yet still as impactful as our live classes. Still, most families were not interested in engaging little ones with technology at first and it was a heavy lift encouraging folks to participate this way. But over time more people became willing to try it and often found their children were truly enjoying the program at home too. As soon as we were able, we did offer live classes again but outside and at a social distance. It was a relief to be together again, but we kept the videos going for a while even still to help families have something fun and educational to do at home while we were still mostly unable to be together.
We are now back to business as usual with no restrictions. I learned a lot about flexibility and faith that what we do here is worth doing in more than one way. I learned that families need connection, regardless of how it comes, and I learned how strong our presence and community really is. I feel incredibly grateful every day to still be doing what I love so very much.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
My approach to managing people has grown over time. In the early days of my professional life, I tended to mimic the management style of my bosses which, frankly, usually was very authoritative. However, in time I learned that managing employees is best done with a combination of clarity, direct and concise communication and compassion.
So many times, I have taken over managing a person who was demoralized by their previous employer for whatever failings, perceived or real, existed there. I find it better to make my expectations very clear and then provide regular feedback, both positive and constructive, which fosters growth and pride when goals are achieved. I begin with an extremely clear contract that leaves little to imagination regarding employee expectations, employer provisions and pay scale/increases. I then have the base line for every other communication necessary moving forward.
Employee evaluations are a key part of building an employee’s skill set. It’s an opportunity to see what they are doing well and what might need some support. It’s always easy to praise what a person does well, but employers often forget to do it. Singing their praises lets them feel valued and seen. When it becomes necessary to make a correction or grow a skill, doing so with clarity is vital. A communication never has to be given with negative undertones behind it. It does, however, have to be clear as does the expectations for moving forward. If an employee is regularly late, for instance, rather than chastising and penalizing them, simply alerting them to their tardiness, reviewing the contract where it outlines those expectations and then setting a boundary can solve the problem just as easily. Often even going a step further in understanding where the problem lies for them and brainstorming solutions together fosters a feeling of team and support. That said, communication regarding expectations should be clear as should be the consequences of the inability to follow through should it continue. In the end, should termination be the only option, it can be done without rancor and with clarity for the employee about why they were terminated and their own role in that termination. For the most part, I’ve found that identifying areas of improvement while celebrating strengths has given me a lot of retention and happy employees I truly cherish and believe in.
Contact Info:
- Website: MusicAndMeLLC.com
- Instagram: @musicandmellc
- Facebook: @musicandmellc
Image Credits
Sheri Kendrick Photography