We recently connected with Emily Zimmerman and have shared our conversation below.
Emily, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start on the operational side – do you spend more of your time/focus/energy on growing revenue or cutting costs?
I always think to myself, if we had greater revenue, this cost wouldn’t be an issue. So for that reason, I prefer to focus on growth and expansion. So far this has always worked to my advantage as we have doubled or nearly doubled our revenue each year since we opened. I never have worried about the costs involved to grow, as I’ve always told myself “It takes money to make money” and I guess I’ve been lucky cause we have always grown enough to cover new expenses.
One year I sold my car, bought one at half price, and used the extra income to build out new teaching rooms for my studio so we could double the amount of bookings we could take on each day. We quickly filled these rooms and the next year opened a second location which we barely used for the first several months, but in time started filling those rooms as we doubled our clientele that year as well.
If you have a good marketing plan, good word of mouth, good reviews online, good SEO, and happy clients, and happy staff, you pretty much have a recipe for growth and success.
I also think it’s important that you live beneath your means in your personal life as a self employed business owner, so as to not stress out the business too much with your own personal take home pay. I like to take home only the amount that is absolutely necessary as my personal owner pay, and the rest goes back into growing the business and making it better. If I was living a very extravagant lifestyle, or giving myself lots of extra bonuses every-time we have an up-season, the business would definitely feel the financial stress later in our dip seasons.
Managing cash flow is half of the battle in business. If you aren’t good with money, having more cash flow won’t fix it, so even though I lean towards growing revenue rather than cutting spending, I have to admit that I keep my spending really low to begin with.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
About myself…. I’m Emily Zimmerman, although I recently got married so now my last name is Bechtel. It’s new so i’m easing into it. It’s weird to change your whole identity after half your life as one name, and now you start over with a new name cause you got married, (Which I should note, I am very happy about getting married!) Still getting used to my new name though… I digress…
About myself… I’m an easygoing gal, but with a very organized and strategic type of brain. I’m a visionary, and once an idea starts, it typically expands into a reality. I don’t like to just talk about cool ideas, I like to make them happen! I also like to drag lots of other people into my big ideas. It’s more fun to do things together with other like minded people. :)
I spent a lot of years (mostly all of my 20’s) mentoring teens and running summer camps and campus programs for teens. I started two non profits in my 20’s, one for arts which I ended up handing off to a friend to run, and another for troubled teens. This was my main thing before I got I started my business.
One thing I discovered while working with troubled youths, gang kids, and foster kids, is that teens who don’t have hobbies or skills tend to spend a lot of time getting depressed and into trouble. They also tend to have fewer business and trade skills when they don’t start out with hobbies and a passion. Teens need something they can pursue and get excited about. This helps them build confidence and keeps them dreaming big dreams, which is actually important for people of all ages. Without a dream to pursue you just float through life without a sense of purpose and drive.
I eventually decided that the non-profit world was a nice thought, but took so much time and energy for fundraising that it left less than adequate time open for actually doing the vision. So, a for-profit made way more sense to me, since I would have a lot of options of what I could do once I had steady cashflow to count on. I wouldn’t always be in need of donor money in order to get things done. Imagine getting a paycheck, and having funds to pay rent and hire staff! This was not always a reality in the non-profit world cause I hated asking people for money, hated spending donations for anything personal including a salary, and I also hated fundraisers! :)
So with that thought, I opened a business designed to help people learn creative skills and be matched with mentors who are artists, musicians, and creative professionals who can teach and guide students in various artistic genres.
My real passion (other than mentoring people) is the creative world. Since childhood I always have spent large amounts of time doing random and varied creative things. I had lots of time because me and my siblings were homeschooled and raised on some property. I spent lots of time learning instruments, building bird houses and other things out of wood, doing sewing projects, cooking, and taking photos and scrapbooking. When people asked me what I wanted to be one day, I always said, an artist.
Village Creative, (my music and art school) became an adult version of what the kid me could have only dreamed to have access to. Since opening, we have run creative labs and private lessons for art, music, sewing, culinary, photography, theater, vlogger/blogger, and various crafty things.
We opened our business in the downtown of our small community. We had a fun video shoot to create some social media ads and started getting sign ups. It was a very exciting time! Me and a handful of friends I hired to help teach classes were filling out our teaching schedules and learning what worked and what didn’t as we went… For about three happy months until covid broke out.
And then nearly everyone quit because of the pandemic, and the remnant went to mostly online lessons which was a hilarious learning experience for all involved. We prevailed. The business stayed alive because I had a second job that I lived off of and my dad owned the building we were renting for Village Creative, and he was okay with us not paying rent during covid. Thanks dad!
I just told myself, “It doesn’t matter if we make money, I’m doing my dream and that’s what matters for now.” Or sometimes I would remind myself “It’s supposed to take two years for a business to be profitable.” Which I must have read somewhere.
Anyways, we grew a lot in 2021 when the world opened back up, and that was exciting! by 2022 we were expanding our space to accommodate new classes, and by 2024 we opened a second location. By 2025 we had nearly 20 staff, and over 300 weekly booked lessons.
We have run battle of the bands, art fairs, fashion shows, songwriting workshops, busking downtown, had teachers and students play live music at local restaurants, and run creative festivals at the local park.
I have lots of big ideas of where I hope we can expand to in the future, I think the creative arts are what make each community unique, and training artists and creatives, and then offering them ways to make money either teaching or selling their work, is the type of thing that is really exciting to me.
My staff often tell me how happy they are to be able to do the thing they love most for a living.
Any advice for managing a team?
This is something that I actually take really seriously! I think one of the most important parts of building a successful business is the culture that you create within the staff, and the overall work environment. Where to start?
1. What would my dream job look like? Create that for my staff.
My dream job would pay me really well. I always offer well above what entree level people can make, and I try to offer more than what normal teaching jobs at local schools can offer. I also offer bonuses and make clear paths for how people can increase their income based on performance.
2. Hire people that are enthusiastic, easygoing, and drama free. Fire people that create unnecessary tension and aren’t team players.
3. What gets rewarded gets repeated.
Publicly reward staff at regular intervals for good work! We have individual awards and also big picture rewards for various things.
For instance when we hit 200 weekly enrollments, we did a staff day at Disneyland for a reward. (This was when Disneyland was fairly cheap, right after Covid.) Similarly, when we hit 300 weekly booked lessons, we bought the staff tickets to a really fun music festival.
4. Coach your staff and help them to grow their individual dreams. Make them feel that their ideas are worth trying out, and give them space to try new things and to develop as artists and teachers.
5. Hire from within. I love hiring teen students and training them to teach. They tend to really understand the culture since they have experienced the student side of the business. The littler kids also LOVE having a really cool older teen as a mentor.
6. Don’t freak out when people fail. Sometimes they miss a lesson or show up late for a really lame reason, or maybe even a decent reason. Sometimes they totally make the wrong move with how they handle a weird parent or difficult student… Coach them through it calmly and don’t make them feel awful every-time they miss the mark.
7. Don’t allow bad actors to go un-checked. Good people don’t want to work in an environment with low quality staff or low standard processes. Mediocre leadership will attract mediocre workers. The good, high level staff want a high functioning work environment where they feel like their work ethic and personal standards are aligned to the company’s work ethic.
8. Have fun together. All work and no play is… I can’t remember the quote… Something not great I think… Anyways, schedule times to just chill out and enjoy each others company! We like to have a staff Jam sesh and BBQ from time to time.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
Kids and families from local schools near our studio has been the best place for us to find our people. We have lots of charter school and homeschool students who fill up the morning hours at the studio, and the public school families fill the later afternoon and evening time slots. Sometimes we find our people by following the locals with our business instagram, so they can click on our page and see what’s up at Village Creative.
We also show up to local school fairs, festivals, and city events.
Every good parent wants their kid to be exposed to opportunities to develop their natural talents and abilities in a fun and creative environment. As a parent, you have this kid born to you and you have no idea who this person will become, so you enroll them in this and that and you just hope that you land on the big IT thing that will be your child’s lifelong passion.
That is the journey we want to be a part of. We can help parents and kids find their creative passion, as they try this and that and see what sticks.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Villagecreative.net
- Instagram: villagecreativelabs
Image Credits
Chad Lamon, Onur Uzunismail, Emily Zimmerman