Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
All right, so today's interview is with a guy who started a SaaS business with almost no money, just his own sweat equity.
For the first few years, he worked on that business part time, and even after four years, he was only earning around $1,500 a month in revenue, but he kept going.
Today, that business is doing around 70,000 in monthly recurring revenue, and it's possible that this he's going to hit a million dollars in revenue.
So it's a great story of a bootstrapped business.
But what's even more interesting about this person is that once his business was up and running, he decided to sell his home and most of his belongings and decided to permanently travel around the world with his family.
In the last six years, they've been to 30 countries and at the same time, he's been building and growing his business.
He has no offices and his team is made up, people all around the world working from their homes.
And he's a really great guy.
So I think you're really going to enjoy this interview.
Today's guest is the founder of Music teachers helper, a SaaS application that helps thousands of music teachers around the world manage their studio.
It lets them handle everything from billing and lesson schedules to automatic reminders and even tax reports.
I first came across my guest in 2012 when I read his story in a book called the Hundred Dollar Startup by Chris Gilbeau.
He started the business with almost no money in 2004, and within a few years, the business was generating almost $30,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
And he's doing even more than that as we'll sort of come to within the interview.
A few years after starting the business, he decided to sell his home and belongings in Utah and moved with his wife and two young daughters to Costa Ric.
His third daughter was also born, and in the past six years, they visited over 30 countries while still continuing to build this business.
I think you're going to love this story.
So today I'd like to welcome Brandon Pierce.
Brandon, welcome to the show.
Brandon Pearce (02:42.370)
Thank you, Omar.
Happy to be here.
Omer (02:44.290)
Now you have been traveling all over the world.
I remember when Chris's book first came out and sort of I went over to your.
Your blog, pearsonarth.com and I think at the time you were still in Costa Rica and so you know, you've been in kind of all places and Bali and Indonesia, but you're a little bit more local now, right?
Brandon Pearce (03:10.830)
Well, for the time being I'm in Victoria, Canada at the moment.
We're really enjoying this part of the world and we actually plan to spend another six months here next year.
But yeah, we've got, we'll be back on the other side of the world in a couple of weeks.
Omer (03:25.340)
I'm curious, how have your daughters found this experience over the last few years of, of, you know, constantly moving and new places and new people?
Do they still love it?
Are they getting tired of it?
Brandon Pearce (03:43.420)
Yeah, it's.
All of us love it and get tired of it at different times.
So yeah, at the beginning, you know, when it was so novel and we were all just loving it, incredibly enthusiastic about it over time and especially as my daughters have been getting older, my oldest is 12 now and just wanting more consistent in person friendships and long term classes that you kind of have to commit to.
It's more.
We found a desire to stay longer term in places.
So if we stay just two or three weeks or a month, it's often we just feel so rushed and it's not long enough to really get in.
So we like at least a few months in a place.
We'll be three months in New Zealand starting January this year and then like I said, six months in Victoria.
So hopefully, you know, those longer term stays will give us a chance to kind of settle in and we're really enjoying the friendships that we're making along the way, even the short term ones.
And the kids do stay in touch with their friends a lot through Skype, but yeah, we want to stay in places longer.
Omer (04:50.750)
Do you homeschool the kids or do you sort of try and kind of get into local schools where you are?
How does that sort of work?
Brandon Pearce (04:57.070)
Yeah, we do, I guess you could call it a world schooling approach.
We support our kids in learning the things that they're interested in and passionate about and just providing them resources to, to do that.
So you know, they use Khan Academy a lot for the basics of math and such.
But for example, my oldest loves music, songwriting and singing and guitar and piano and she's very musical.
So we've found a singer, singing and songwriting teacher who she takes weekly lessons from via Skype and we've been to recording studios and she's recorded some of her songs and getting ready to put some on itunes, stuff like that.
So we're really excited for her in that way.
With our youngest or Our middle child, she wants.
She's showing more interest in like gymnastics and that type of thing.
So that's one reason we kind of want to find a place to stay for at least a few months so we can get into a kind of program there.
So, yeah, the more fast paced travel is fun, but exhausting at times.
But I think over time we still want to travel.
I think we'll always travel, but looking for a little bit more of a home base to keep coming back to.
Omer (06:14.850)
So let's talk about business now.
I like to start by asking my guests about a favorite quote or sort of just what drives and motivates them.
So what gets you out of bed every morning to do what you do?
Brandon Pearce (06:29.520)
I.
Well, I just wake up when the sun comes up.
But I love creating things and thinking about what my creation is going to turn into, whether it's writing.
I've been enjoying writing and working on my website a lot these days and seeing how my business is growing.
As for a quote that kind of goes along with that, it's a very famous one by Howard Thurman.
Don't ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive and go do that.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Omer (07:04.110)
You know, I've never heard that one and I love it.
Brandon Pearce (07:06.430)
Oh, wow.
Love it.
Yeah, me too.
Omer (07:09.310)
Yeah.
And in many ways it resonates with me as well, personally.
You know, I quit my corporate job and for a while kind of really wasn't sure what to do and thought a lot more about, okay, the obvious things to kind of pay the bills.
And then as we were talking earlier, you know, doing things like consulting isn't always the most rewarding thing to do unless you're lucky to work with great clients.
And I have a couple of clients that I really enjoy working with.
And so that doesn't seem like work.
But you can easily get sort of dragged down a path where you're totally unhappy with what you're doing.
And being able to pursue things that you love to do is amazing.
And I think I always feel very blessed when, you know, anyone is an opportunity to be able to do that.
Brandon Pearce (08:00.330)
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And I think as well that even, even some of the mundane things in life can be rewarding and make you come alive if you view them in a way that brings that about.
It's, it's a lot of.
It's about perspective and reframing.
Omer (08:18.020)
Yeah, I agree.
Okay, so let's go back to where you started this business.
I mean, 2004 is over a decade ago.
Yeah.
So long time back and before you became a SaaS or software entrepreneur, you were a piano teacher, right?
Brandon Pearce (08:38.900)
Part time.
I was, I was more a computer programmer.
Chris got that detail a little bit wrong in the book, but it was both.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I started programming when I was 12 and I started teaching piano lessons when I was 16.
So I had kind of always been doing both of those, but chose a career in computer science because again, I knew it would pay the bills better.
And so, yeah, I had about 10 piano students at the time and I was going to school as a computer for computer science in the evenings and then also at some point, I can't remember exactly when it was, I got a programming job.
I was still in college, but I had actually no, I made music teacher self for by that point, I was working at Internet tech support company.
Yeah, that's what I was doing.
Making like $10 an hour.
Omer (09:35.350)
Okay, so tell me a little bit about how you came up with the idea for this business.
Brandon Pearce (09:39.540)
Sure.
So I, I was teaching my, my piano students and often they would come to lessons and ask, you know, how much do I owe you for next week or for the lessons that I've had up to this month or whatever.
And I would, I would have to take out my old Palm Pilot and, you know, look at how many lessons they've had at, which I recorded in a little text file and count up the numbers and add up everything to figure out how much they owed and when their last payments were.
And I just noticed that was taking like extra time at lessons that I didn't think that I didn't really want to spend on during the lesson.
So I decided, well, maybe I can write a little app that will calculate that for me.
I'll just put in when they come to their lessons how much they pay and it'll show me how much they owe at any moment.
And so I did that and, and it was really helpful.
And then I made it available online with student logins so that they could log in from home and then see how much they owed so then they wouldn't have to ask me at the lesson anymore.
And then I made it so they could Pay online through PayPal.
And then they didn't even need to bring checks and stuff anymore.
Then of course, I added the scheduling in there and it just kind of continued building in features until, yeah, it grew.
Omer (10:56.020)
But you were building this for yourself, right?
I mean, it wasn't.
You hadn't started this out thinking, I'm going to build A business and a product from this.
Brandon Pearce (11:03.040)
Exactly.
It was all too.
It was all kind of a hobby project for myself to kind of save myself time.
Omer (11:09.840)
What technology were you using to build the app?
Brandon Pearce (11:14.240)
I wrote it in PHP and I was pretty beginner at php, so it wasn't using a framework or anything like that.
Omer (11:23.680)
And are you still building the product of PHP today?
Brandon Pearce (11:27.360)
We are, although it's had a few rewrites and is under a very serious over all encompassing rewrite at the moment, including graphics design and everything, so.
Which should be finished early next year.
Cool.
Omer (11:41.150)
Okay, so you're starting to use this with your own students and it's serving a purpose.
At what point did you, did you decide that you were going to turn this into a business?
Brandon Pearce (11:56.030)
Yeah, I was taking a class in college and one of my friends suggested, you know, why don't you take this idea and turn it into a business?
And I know I kind of thought about it before, but never really taken the idea seriously.
And I talked to other music teachers who I knew and they were kind of excited about the idea and thought, yeah, I would use this if you made it available.
So I figured, well, why not?
It wouldn't take much work to, you know, put a sign up form on there and, you know, add another layer of, of complexity so other teachers can use it.
And so that was it.
I just decided to try it.
And it took several months, of course, to get to the point where I was comfortable launching it publicly.
But yeah, and slowly, slowly got more customers and it started to grow.
Omer (12:46.890)
Do you remember how you got your first customer?
Brandon Pearce (12:51.610)
I don't.
Omer (12:52.210)
Had you gone on and done some kind of outreach or did you just wake up one day and somebody had signed up?
Brandon Pearce (12:58.900)
No, I mean, I did a few, you know, marketing things.
I think probably it was actually one of my very first customers.
I don't know if it was the first one, but it was music teachers that I knew in the community.
Friends were among the first signups, people I was telling about it in person.
Omer (13:14.420)
Okay, and so what kind of marketing were you doing in the early days?
Was this just kind of, as you said, sort of talking to friends and family and letting them know about it or were you doing any more than that?
Brandon Pearce (13:26.800)
It was, it was word of mouth at first, but I tried a number of different things.
I can't remember if AdWords was even around then, but I don't know if I was doing pay per click yet.
I did put up like flyers and music stores and then I went to music teacher conferences.
They have Kind of national and state level music teacher association conferences.
And I would go to those, set up a booth and hand out brochures and stuff like that there.
And those were pretty effective.
But most of our customers have always come from word of mouth.
Have done a lot of, you know, online marketing and stuff since.
But still, word of mouth tends to be our number one referral source.
Omer (14:06.600)
So you launched it in 2004?
Brandon Pearce (14:09.160)
Yeah.
Omer (14:09.880)
What did that first year kind of look like?
Was it was the product?
Do you sort of look back and feel like it was an immediate success in that first year?
Brandon Pearce (14:21.660)
Well, in a way, I mean if, I mean I didn't use any, you know, I didn't use any money really to start this up.
Just my own sweat equity.
So any profit was, was profitable.
So we were profitable from day one, you could say.
So in that sense, yes, it was a success.
But like I said, growth was very slow.
I don't remember how long it took, you know, to, to get to certain levels, but I do remember, actually I think it was around 2008.
That's four years later after, you know, 70 to 80 hour work weeks.
Of course I was in my spare time, I was, that includes full time job plus.
Omer (15:02.630)
So you weren't working 70 to 80 hours on music teachers help?
Brandon Pearce (15:07.910)
I wasn't until I quit my job in 2008.
And that point I was making about $1,500 a month from music teacher's helper.
So not much.
And that's after four years.
So it was, it was very slow growth and it took a lot of persistence and a lot of patience.
But yeah, I figured, well, fifteen hundred dollars a month I can get by and I can do freelance web consulting on the side, etc.
So I quit my programming job and worked full time on the business.
And I think that is when it really started growing faster.
Omer (15:43.910)
Okay, so two questions for you.
One is what kept you going with this product as a business if after four years you were only earning $1,500 a month?
Brandon Pearce (15:57.350)
Right.
Omer (15:57.750)
Because a lot of people would have just said, okay, maybe this isn't the business or the right business for me, and maybe I need to look at something else.
Because if after all of these years that's all I can generate from it, maybe, maybe that's it.
Maybe that's as much as I'm ever going to get from this business.
So what kept you going during those four years?
Brandon Pearce (16:19.580)
That.
It's funny, it's the exact fact that I was making fifteen hundred dollars a month that was exciting to Me?
Well, when you think about, I was only making, you know, maybe three or four thousand a month at my job anyway, so this was really adding to my income significantly.
And I mean, even that just that first customer, like, wow, I made something that people are willing to pay for, you know, and if there, if there's one person, if there's 10 people that are willing to pay for this, I mean, there's got to be thousands more with how many music teachers there are in the world.
So let me keep getting the word out.
This could really.
And I think that what motivated me more than anything was just the vision of having a business that would take care of my family financially no matter what happened to me.
That was my goal, that was my vision.
Because my father in law had recently lost his job in the tech industry.
He was working at Novell, I believe.
He hadn't done anything wrong.
They were just downsizing.
And I realized, man, there is no such thing as job security in this, in this industry.
I don't really want to, to put my family in that kind of risk.
So this business was.
I saw a way out of that.
Omer (17:34.019)
And that's interesting because from what I understand, the way that you've built this business is kind of, it seems to me that you've tried to build it in a way that it will operate whether you're there or not.
Brandon Pearce (17:49.939)
Yeah, that's been the attempt.
Omer (17:52.580)
And so what are some of the things that you've done to try and make that happen?
Because I think one thing that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with is if they don't get out of bed and work 12 hours or something, nothing's going to happen or that business is going to start struggling even more or fail.
But that's not the case with you.
So what have you done with your business to set it up for success?
And I guess just automated big parts of it.
Brandon Pearce (18:24.360)
Yeah, automation is a huge part of it.
I was constantly looking for tasks that I was doing over and over again and try to find ways to make a process or a system or a piece of software that would just take care of that.
Omer (18:38.200)
Give me one example of that.
Brandon Pearce (18:40.360)
Oh, man.
Customers would write in with feature requests of what they wanted the software to do.
And I would of course handle all of them individually, which was great, but trying to keep track of which ones were most popular.
And I had like this big list of things and I would kind of tally them up when people would write in with new features.
And I realized this is kind of crazy.
So eventually I found a software called uservoice.com which allows customers to submit feature requests and then vote on them.
So now I can easily sort the top voted items and you know, and there's comments and I can communicate about each one with the customers and it's a lot more efficient that way.
So that's one example.
Omer (19:26.380)
Okay.
Okay, great.
Brandon Pearce (19:28.060)
And then in addition to automation, of course, I hired help, which is a big step, and also systematized some of the processes and things that I wanted them to help with.
I made manuals for every person who was coming into the company to kind of say, this is, you know, this is how I've been doing things.
If you have other suggestions for how to improve things, please let me know.
Omer (19:51.030)
How many employees do you have?
Brandon Pearce (19:53.190)
Right now we have over 25.
Omer (19:55.670)
And are they kind of just sort of geographically all over the place or do you have sort of a hub or how is it?
Brandon Pearce (20:02.870)
Yeah, they're all over.
I mean, this business has always been online, so we have no office anywhere and everyone works from home.
So all of my managers are in the states at the moment, as well as my UX designer and some of our support team and say I've got a finance consultant guy in the uk, programmers in the Philippines and Eastern Europe, couple support people from the Philippines.
Yeah.
And not all of them are full time.
Most are probably part time.
Omer (20:32.060)
So I mentioned in the introduction that when Chris published the $100 startup, you were doing almost $30,000 in monthly recurring revenue, or about 360,000 a year.
Where is the business today?
Brandon Pearce (20:46.000)
Yeah, today we're doing roughly 70,000amonth.
Omer (20:50.880)
Wow.
2016.
Is that the year that you think you're going to get to a million dollar run rate?
Brandon Pearce (20:56.240)
It's very possible, yeah.
We've got some huge changes coming which I think are going to make a big difference.
Omer (21:02.960)
Awesome.
Okay, so let's go back to 2008.
You said that growth had been really slow and then you decided to sort of jump all in and start spending most of your time working on Music Teacher's Helper.
What did you start doing differently, which sort of contributed to the growth of the business?
Brandon Pearce (21:29.940)
Well, first I had more time to put into the development of the product, so I was still spending a lot of time programming at that point.
And I mean, one of the main reasons I quit my job as well was because I was, I was getting enough customers that there was so much I wanted to improve in the product and I was spending all my time doing that, plus answering customer questions, plus the marketing, plus design stuff and it was just so time consuming that I found myself, like, getting up early, staying up late, spending all my lunch break, and then maybe even a little bit of time doing like, programming stuff at my job that was kind of, you know, it would serve both sites.
And I'm like, you know, I just can't keep going.
Like, this isn't maybe even ethical.
So I decided to quit.
And so besides programming, I also brought on help as soon as I could.
So I think the first person I hired was a programmer.
It's kind of a story, but I brought on a partner, a friend who wanted to kind of partner with me on the business, and he was a programmer as well.
But it didn't really work out so well.
It turned out that he had different ideas and directions for the company than I really wanted to take it, and he wanted to write it, rewrite it in a different language and all sorts of stuff.
And I thought, this isn't gonna work.
So fortunately, I put a contract in place early on where I could buy him out.
So I lost a bit of money on that choice, but eventually decided to hire some other programmers from the Philippines and elsewhere and train them.
And that saved a lot of my time and also allowed me to kind of double.
Well, not quite double because there was a lot of training and checking and stuff like that at first, but it increased the productivity.
Omer (23:19.480)
So did you sort of step back and stop coding at that point?
Brandon Pearce (23:23.420)
I didn't stop coding, I think, until 2010.
I think at that point we're making like 12 grand a month, something like that.
Omer (23:31.660)
And then you sort of just got to people working full time on the coding for you.
Brandon Pearce (23:35.180)
Yeah, I had like two or three or four.
I can't remember how many people.
Did you.
Omer (23:39.500)
I'm curious, did you struggle with letting go?
I know when it comes to, with a lot of tech, technical founders, and, you know, I've been through it myself as well, is like when you build a product and you code it from scratch yourself, it's really hard to let somebody else come in and screw around with it.
Brandon Pearce (23:58.260)
Oh, so hard.
So hard.
And not just with the programming, but also with, like, support letting somebody else answer emails that, you know.
Yeah, it's hard.
That was one of the hardest challenges in the first few years of outsourcing is just realizing that the people I hire may not, you know, do things the same way I would do, but if I can let them do it in their own way, it's still going to be okay, it'll still work out.
And yeah, that's been hard.
But I think one thing that's really helped with that is learning to hire really good people up front who already kind of understand, you know, my values and, and where I want to take things.
Because at first I hired as cheap as possible, which is kind of where I all I really could do at the time.
And yeah, like I said, I spent a lot of time training and a lot of time fixing errors.
And yeah, it was kind of frustrating in some ways.
But there are a lot of people I have in my business now who are amazing.
They're so much better at the tasks that I've hired them for than I ever would be.
And so that's.
That's really helped as well.
Omer (25:14.120)
The people that you currently have working with you, how long have they been around?
Is sort of.
Do you.
Is turnover fairly low these days or.
Brandon Pearce (25:22.520)
Yeah, it is fairly low.
I mean, a lot of our developers are just contractors.
We'll hire them for a few months here and that's it, you know, just for a specific task or part of the project.
But who's been with us the longest?
Well, this is.
Okay.
Probably the earliest are actually a couple of our support team members who have been with us probably for eight years or more.
Seven.
Eight years.
Maybe not quite that long, but anyway.
And what I did with support is actually quite interesting from the beginning because I didn't have a lot of money to pay other people to do support first.
I tried like a.
To pay like some call center in India or something like that to handle it, but, oh, the quality they were putting in, I mean, there is.
It was awful.
I couldn't handle.
I couldn't support my customer supported that way.
So I quickly dropped that.
They just weren't listening.
They weren't.
And I even like made up scripts for them to paste, but they just, it was not.
They didn't put any thought into it.
So then I decided, well, who would do the best at supporting my customers?
Who really understands music teachers?
Who understands the software like, well, my customers, of course.
This is actually an idea from my mom, but she suggested I offer support position to my customers.
So I wrote a blog post and I said, hey, if any of you want to help, be on the support team for music teachers Helper.
I'll give you a free music teacher's helper account, plus I'll pay you $1.50 per email that you answer.
And I had a few people jump on that and they have been amazing to this day.
They're still our best support reps. Wow.
And quite Inexpensive as well, compared to like a full time dedicated call center kind of situation.
Omer (27:13.700)
That's an interesting model to use and I think your mom definitely gave you some great advice there.
If you can find somebody who really is supporting the product but is also a user of the product, that's going to be like day and night compared to just going out there and hiring somebody from a call center and giving them some scripts.
Brandon Pearce (27:32.880)
Absolutely.
Omer (27:34.080)
Okay, so let's go back.
So we talked about you going full time and what was sort of driving the growth then.
And so you sort of talked about you had a lot more time to spend on developing the product and continuing to improve that.
What else were you doing which helped to drive the growth?
Like, were you going out and doing more marketing at that point?
Brandon Pearce (27:57.630)
I was, I started doing national conferences, music feature conferences, and I, of course I read lots of books and articles and just tried everything I could marketing wise to get the word out.
Some things I found more effective than others.
For example, in my industry, I tried some print ads in music teacher magazines, which I thought, well, that's really niche, it'll be great.
But man, I'd spend a thousand dollars on an ad and get almost zero response from it that I could track.
Wow.
And it was, it was pathetic.
So, so I stopped doing that after like too many times.
And yeah, it's funny because as far as marketing, that's been effective.
I think first of all, just having a great product, it's been the best thing because people will tell their friends about it.
We also started an affiliate program to help encourage and incentivize people to share the word.
But it's funny because most of our customers still tend to, to just want to share spread the word for free.
The affiliate program is mostly used by businesses in the music industry who want to spread the word.
Omer (29:18.700)
Okay, so, so I mean, even today do you do, do you spend money on advertising or, or content marketing or is it really just word of mouth is, is doing, is driving the growth?
Brandon Pearce (29:35.830)
No, we definitely spend money on marketing and we always have.
Yeah.
And I guess I should say also, like, I did a lot of SEO stuff in the early days and I paid someone to do like article marketing and comment on people's blogs and stuff like that.
Before it was like kind of black hat and now we're doing a lot of like, partnerships.
I have, I have a marketing director who takes care of most of the marketing stuff.
But for example, he'll find music teacher related podcasts and work out advertising deals with them or across promotion arrangements.
And things like that that have been helpful.
Yeah.
And of course, social media.
It's funny, I would think that I speak about these things as if it's like, well, of course this is just the normal stuff that everybody does, but maybe it's not.
I don't know.
Omer (30:21.990)
What has been one of the biggest challenges for you over the last decade of building this business?
What sort of like, was one of the hardest things that you wish you could go back and tell yourself when you started out in 2004?
Brandon Pearce (30:34.250)
I think patience.
It's been hard to be patient.
And in dealing with burnout at a certain stage, I hit quite a period of just almost like, I don't want to do this anymore.
Even though I got it to the point where I was working like five hours a week on it.
It was just the mental energy of knowing that I'm responsible for this and hoping that it's going to keep growing and the emails that would come in and the decisions that had to be made and all of that.
It was just emotionally taxing and almost enough to the point.
To the point where it made me want to sell it.
Omer (31:13.470)
How long ago was that?
Brandon Pearce (31:15.470)
I would say maybe two years.
No, no, no, wait.
That was almost like three before.
It's 2016 now.
Almost 2000.
Okay.
So, yeah, that was like 2011, 12 when it really hit.
Omer (31:27.110)
And what was it?
You just.
You just weren't enjoying what you were doing anymore?
Brandon Pearce (31:31.030)
I wasn't enjoying it.
Yeah, I pretty much wasn't enjoying it.
Omer (31:33.790)
And so what.
What did you do to get.
Get past that?
Brandon Pearce (31:38.950)
One thing I did that made a huge difference was I sent a survey to my customers asking some really, I guess, some.
Some introspective questions to them, like, you know, what do they enjoy about teaching?
I mean, more than just my product, you know, I mean, what do you like about music?
Teach yourself or what don't you like?
What would you improve?
That type of stuff.
But also, you know, why do you teach lessons?
You know, what needs aren't being served in your profession?
What can I help you overcome?
You know, the types of questions like that are, what are your greatest joys in teaching?
How do you feel this or that?
So a lot of those types of questions and the answers I got back were so profound and really touched me too.
Like, some of the teachers really shared some really cool things that helped me kind of refuel my passion.
Seeing this business as it's not just something that's making me money so that my family can travel the world, but it is something that is really serving a need in the music teacher community.
And teachers are loving what the software is doing for them, and it's improving their lives in a lot of ways because they're less stressed, they have more time, they're connecting better with their students.
And for me to just tap back into that idea of service and of seeing how my product was doing good in the world, that helped fuel some changes that I had been making in the business over the past few years to reshape it.
We're pretty much rewriting the whole thing from scratch and taking everything we've learned in the past 10 years in business.
And along with a lot of these other things that teachers have suggested that they want and need and other things that I've noticed that they want to need that maybe they didn't state.
And we're kind of putting it together in a lovely package gradually.
Omer (33:34.430)
That's a really great story.
And I think that, yeah, I think doing something like surveys or just engaging with your customers can be really powerful.
And, you know, I think for me, I have a personal example of that as well, is, you know, after I'd been doing the podcast for a little while, I sent out a survey asking people for some feedback on what they like, what they didn't like, what I could do better.
And, you know, up until that point, I'd been really sort of much more obsessed about, you know, the download numbers and is that growing and all of that stuff.
And.
But what really got me fired up was the fact that people took the time to fill out the survey.
And, you know, there was real people actually listening to the show who really cared enough to give you meaningful feedback.
Right?
Things that they liked, but also things that they didn't like.
And that, for me, was kind of like the moment where I was like, you know, screw these, like, all the things that people tell you about, like, like, downloads and all of that stuff.
It's about really figuring out how to make a connection with people and delivering something that people actually care about.
And that.
That drives me a lot more than.
Than all that other stuff.
So I completely get you on that.
Okay, let's.
Let's talk about life on the road while you run a business and.
And some of the highs and lows that.
That come with that.
So I hear people, and I've met a number of people who've kind of gone down that.
That route of traveling around the world while they run some kind of business.
What.
What has that experience been like for you and your family?
Brandon Pearce (35:12.040)
It's been fantastic.
And amazing in so many ways.
And it's also been a challenge in others.
So I mean office wise.
Like I said, I work on the business itself maybe four to 15 hours a week in a given week.
But I do something usually on it every single day.
So I rarely feel like I have a vacation from it.
I could probably take one.
I'm sure I could take off for a month and things would still be fine when I return.
But for some reason I just have trouble separating myself from it that much.
It'd probably be really good for me to do, but that's something I haven't done yet.
Omer (35:50.570)
What kind of things do you work on in those hours that you spend each week?
Brandon Pearce (35:54.470)
It depends on the week, but usually just the day to day maintenance stuff like I'll check an email, I'll check my email.
Usually I'll have anywhere from 5 to 20 a day in the business because my managers are handling most of the other stuff.
But it's mostly interaction with the management team like approving a new design for a certain section of the website and writing some comments about what I want to see differently there, or making a suggestion on marketing, different marketing focus or reading reports from my managers and commenting on those, that type of thing.
So it's nothing too taxing generally.
But there are a few things that are more involved.
Some of the design stuff I have to think more about, but that's fun for me.
I like the creative aspect, but then the rest of my day I still feel like it's so busy, even though maybe busy is not the right word because I'm doing things I enjoy.
But right now, the past month or so, I've been spending a lot of time on my personal website.
Actually, pearsonarth.com we just launched a redesign and I'm trying to make some of the information that's on there more accessible because I've written For the past 10 years or so about.
Well, I guess it's only since 2009 or so when we started traveling about, you know, our whole lifestyle and business and travel and our spiritual journey and everything that we've gone through.
But a lot of the content was really buried.
So I'm kind of bringing it to the surface and reformatting some things.
So that's been a fun project for me.
And then of course I'll spend time playing with my kids, we'll go traveling, we'll go out every few days to go do some fun activity.
And yeah, that's kind of what it's like now as far as like Office space and working.
Sometimes I don't really get an office.
Right now I'm in the laundry room down in the basement.
The unfinished, you know, laundry room with all the, the shelving and everything.
So it's not, not the best circumstances, but at least I have a little desk and a chair, which is unusual.
Sometimes I'll just be working on the couch or on the bed while the kids are running around.
So it's my Bose QuietComfort noise canceling.
Headbuds are an essential piece of equipment for me working on the road.
But yeah, it's different everywhere we go.
And I never really know.
Well, sometimes I know, but what type of what the living situations are going to be like.
And that can have an effect on how efficiently I can work.
If I can set aside two or three hours of focused time on something, I can get a lot more done than if I'm trying to work amidst everything else that's going on in the family.
Omer (38:28.360)
And in the early days when you were traveling, you were still coding and doing everything for the business at that
Brandon Pearce (38:35.360)
point, Right when I started traveling, I was still doing a lot, but I didn't start traveling until we had outsourced a little bit.
So I had help and I wasn't doing everything.
So yeah, I was still coding, but not as much.
Omer (38:48.160)
You know, I see a lot of people who are sort of traveling around the world while they're running some kind of business or doing freelancing or things like that.
But it's not so often you see somebody doing this with a young family.
Do you have any advice for, for somebody with a family who maybe is thinking about doing something like this?
Brandon Pearce (39:10.730)
My advice would be if you're thinking about doing it, give it a shot because it's so much fun.
When we, our first, the first time we did it, we didn't just jump and say, hey, let's go, let's sell our house and do this.
We actually took six weeks in Panama first.
It's kind of a temporary.
Let's try it out and see how we feel.
It was a life changing trip for us.
It was a different kind of trip than we take now.
I actually planned everything in advance and I booked all our hotels and you know, it was that kind of a trip at that point.
But just spending 24 hours a day with our kids, which I wondered if we'd go crazy.
We actually loved it and we bonded so much and being able to see the world through the kids eyes was eye opening and you know, walking down, down the path and Having them point out little things and stopping and just, just taking life slower as well.
It just made such a difference to, to how we felt and how we lived and how we connected as a family.
I'd say do it.
Omer (40:13.030)
Have you sort of dealt with, I mean, a lot of people might have like concerns about security.
Is it safe for me to go out there and travel to all these countries with my kids and, and health care and all of that stuff?
How have you guys dealt with that?
Brandon Pearce (40:27.520)
I think those are funny concerns if you're talking about coming from the States.
I think a lot of places in the States are much more dangerous and have much worse health care than elsewhere in the world.
But yeah, we felt so safe.
Pretty much everywhere we've gone.
There have been a few issues.
Like I once saw a guy getting beat up in the streets of Quito, Ecuador and the police standing around not doing anything about it, stuff like that.
But I wasn't with my kids at the time.
I was out on, on my own.
But yeah, most of the time.
And we have, we got robbed in Costa Rica which wasn't so fun.
But I mean, this is the kind of stuff that can really happen in any major city.
And yeah, I think a lot of the fear of the dangers out there are really overhyped.
And you know, maybe statistically there are more murders or more this or that in a certain city, which, you know, is something to take into consideration when you're choosing a place to go.
But a lot of that stuff, like a lot of the crimes in Mexico, for example, would be drug related and you're not really going to see them unless you're involved in the drug scene there.
A lot of them.
So I don't know, I'm not so, so concerned about that.
And we stay close to each other.
We.
Yeah, I mean, there have been times we let our kids go wander off in different places, but it's usually when we, we kind of know the landscape and maybe even know some people around.
Yeah.
And staying in a place long enough to get kind of, to get to know the community a little bit is another helpful tip, I think, because it's, it, it's deepened our experience when we've done that.
Omer (42:06.530)
Because when you go to a place, you don't kind of go out and stay in like touristy places.
Right.
You kind of find a way to embed yourself in whatever community you're in.
Brandon Pearce (42:16.330)
That's right.
I mean, well, it depends on where we go.
Like we were going to be going, like I said, to New Zealand In January, and we booked one house for three months there in Nelson on the north tip of the south island.
And we hope to meet people in the community there and get involved in classes and activities.
And we like to connect with the.
With the homeschooling communities where we go especially.
But on the way to Fiji or on the way to New Zealand, we'll be stopping in Fiji because the flight went through there anyway and it was just as cheap.
But we'll just do like two weeks and that'll be more of a touristy trip.
But we're going to try to get some sponsorships there for hotels, which we're just starting to do.
We did it in Mexico with the food tour, got a free food tour for blogging about it and sharing it on social media and stuff.
So that's been helpful.
Nice to cover some of the costs.
Omer (43:03.830)
Yeah, that's very creative.
Well, it sounds like a blast.
All right, it's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like you to answer them as quickly as you can.
You ready?
Brandon Pearce (43:14.580)
All right.
See how we do.
Omer (43:15.860)
All right.
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Brandon Pearce (43:20.900)
Probably just to get started, just the idea that my friend said, you know, why don't you take that program you wrote and turn it into a business?
Because it was an opportunity that was already there.
Something I was already interested in, the incentive to and the courage to put it out there.
Omer (43:39.550)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Brandon Pearce (43:42.350)
Besides like the four hour workweek and $100 startup and those type of books?
You know, I recently read one called the Empathy Factor by Marie Mirashiro, and it's about using nonviolent communication in the workplace.
And that has been really helpful for me to kind of look not only at, you know, my work relationships and really understanding the needs of the people I'm working with on my team, but also my customers and myself.
And I really like the nonviolent communication philosophy.
Marshall Rosenberg is the founder of that, if you haven't heard of it.
Omer (44:18.360)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Brandon Pearce (44:23.080)
Definitely persistence, dedication, commitment to see that.
That vision and be able to push through it, push toward it, through.
Yeah.
The obstacles and the emotional barriers that come up.
Omer (44:40.060)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Brandon Pearce (44:45.100)
I love journaling.
I write every morning and night about, you know, what I'm grateful for, what I'm doing during the day, what I want to do, what I accomplished, and How I want to feel.
That type of thing, really helpful for me.
Omer (44:58.380)
Do you do that on paper or on your computer?
Brandon Pearce (45:00.100)
I do it on the computer.
I have a Google Docs file that I just put the date and then I start writing.
And then I usually do like categories of gratitude and how I want to feel and what I'm gonna do and that type of thing.
And then at the end of the day, actually on my phone, I do a daily summary where I kind of summarize what I, what I did that day.
Also, sometimes I have a log.
I keep a log like every, every time I switch tasks or every hour or two.
I'll just write the time and then make a note of what it did in the last couple hours just to help keep me on task and help me remember, you know, I'm going to
Omer (45:31.920)
steal that idea from you and start to implement that.
Because I've tried journaling in the past and to be honest, I didn't really see the benefits until I stopped doing it.
Now I kind of think about it and I was like, oh yeah, you know, it was, it did used to be better.
And even simple things like, I mean, you can go through, you know, I'll go through a week and I'll look back and go, oh my God, it feels like I wasted the whole week.
What did I do?
Brandon Pearce (45:52.430)
Yes, yes.
Omer (45:53.030)
And then you start to break it down and go, well, no, actually I did this or I did that and, and sometimes they aren't actually tangible things.
Maybe it's, I don't know, I, I got time to go and have lunch with my wife, which we never get to do.
It's those kinds of things that when you kind of put them all together and sort of look back over a day or a week, it kind of really helps you appreciate, you know, things that maybe you take for granted on a day to day basis.
Brandon Pearce (46:17.390)
Yeah, absolutely.
In fact, if you want to go even, even deeper with it, I've tried this a couple times, but using a tool like Slimtimer or there's probably better ones these days, but I tracked every second of every day for an entire week.
Omer (46:31.360)
Whoa.
Brandon Pearce (46:33.600)
It was so enlightening.
And then I wrote a couple blog posts.
You can find them on my blog.
How I spend my time and how I spend my time.
Now, I think Tim Ferriss even guest blogged one of those on his post on his blog.
But it's.
I categorize how much time I spent in each.
Yeah, somehow how much time I spent in each category throughout the week.
And it was really interesting to see.
Wow.
I. Yeah, it helps show you what you value, I guess I'll include a
Omer (47:02.180)
link to that in the show.
Notes.
What's a crazy business idea or a new idea that you'd love to pursue and build as a business if you had the extra time?
Brandon Pearce (47:14.180)
You know, it's funny because I actually started one and I may pick it up eventually later, but it's a folding digital piano.
So I love playing the piano, but often when we travel I don't have one, so sometimes I'll rent one, but it's kind of a pain.
I'd love to just have one all the time.
So I woke up with a dream one day of a 88 key full size high quality digital stage piano that folds into thirds and packs into carry on luggage and hired some engineers, got started on it, said I'm going to spend 20 grand, get this to the point where we can launch a Kickstarter, etc.
But I'd never done a physical product before and I was not physically present for any of the work and my electronics engineer actually ended up passing away from cancer and we lost all of the stuff that he'd worked on and then my mechanical engineer moved and so anyway, it was kind of a disaster project and I'm kind of back to square one now with it, so.
But someday, maybe if I, if I get the, the nerve up again, I may pursue that one again.
Omer (48:15.320)
It sounds like an intriguing idea.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Brandon Pearce (48:22.600)
I had heart surgery when I was 2 weeks old and barely survived.
Omer (48:26.280)
Wow.
Wow.
Brandon Pearce (48:29.080)
Yeah, it freaked my head.
Omer (48:29.920)
I don't know what to say to that.
Oh, well, glad you're still here.
And finally, I think I know the answer to this, but what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Brandon Pearce (48:42.330)
You know, just creativity in general, I would say.
I love music, I love photography, I love writing, of course, travel as well.
Yeah, all those things.
Omer (48:53.450)
Awesome.
Brandon, thank you for joining me.
It's been a pleasure talking to you and I've really enjoyed kind of helping to share your story with Music Teachers Helper and the, the amazing life that you're living with your family and traveling around the world.
Now if people want to find out more about Music Teachers Helper, they can go to musicteachershelper.com that's right.
And if they want to find out more about you and your travels, they can go to piersonearth.com and I'll include the links to both those sites.
In the show notes and if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Brandon Pearce (49:35.280)
Yeah, they can just go to pearsonearth.com and go to the contact form and shoot me a message that way.
Omer (49:40.800)
Great.
Brandon, thanks again.
I'm going to continue to follow you.
It's kind of really been funny.
I read about you back in gosh, almost four years ago.
I've listened to the hundred dollar startup on Audible a number of times.
I've kind of been on your blog and kind of following what you've been doing from time to time.
So I'm really glad we had the chance to finally do this.
So, you know, thank you.
You know, I really mean, thank you very much for joining me today and I, I wish you and your family all the best with wherever you, you go and, and I hope the business continues to grow.
And you know, please do ping me when you hit the magic million dollar mark.
That's gonna be a huge milestone.
Brandon Pearce (50:26.730)
And thank you, Omer.
I appreciate that.
It's great visiting with you today.
Omer (50:30.650)
Great, thanks, Brandon.
Cheers.
Brandon Pearce (50:32.330)
Cheers.
