What if it all works out?

We’ve had some intense discussions at our house over the last few months about the future of the 443.

I love the creative aspects of running a music venue, like coming up with new cocktails and menu items and decorating our outdoor patio every year. I love turning our guests on to my favorite musicians. I love that we are selling out shows more and more often. But mostly, I love creating a space where so much magic happens. Looking around our room during a show and seeing a huge smile on every face, the room completely engaged with the artist on stage, sharing this powerful experience… it’s PROFOUND.

It is my church.

It’s also frustrating, exhausting, and labor-intensive… the work is never “done”.

I am the talent booker, admin staff, marketing team, content creator, photographer, graphic artist, and website designer. I am the finance manager and tech support. I am the bar manager, human resources, chief technology officer, and customer service. Most days, I’m also jumping in as a bartender, hostess, cook, janitor, gardener, and groundskeeper.

I often feel like I’m drowning… I’m paddling furiously to keep my head above water, gasping for breath and trying to manage the firehose of messages, phone calls, and texts that come in… and most days, feeling like an utter failure at staying on top of it all.

I’m forever apologizing for my “delayed responses”.

I’m certainly not afraid of hard work, but at the end of the day, I’m only one person – and a 55-year-old person, at that.

I have sacrificed my health, my sanity, and my sleep to make a go of my dream. I’ve missed out on family events and social life. My house and garden are wildly neglected. I’ve put extraordinary stress on my marriage.

I have a “love-hate” relationship with this business… and my husband  – who also happens to be my business partner  – has more of a “hate-hate” relationship with it.

At the beginning of 2023 Jimmy and I agreed that the 443 needed to hit certain benchmarks in order for us to continue. We are both in our mid-50s, and I gave up a decent paycheck to be the managing partner in the business. He has worked for the same company for almost 30 years and is looking forward to retirement. But, in the 4.5 years we’ve been open I have not been able to consistently pay myself. While the 443 IS a passion project, the plan was never that I work for nothing indefinitely.

It’s not unusual for a business less than 5 years old to still be struggling (especially when it included 2 years of COVID shutdowns), but we just aren’t in a position to keep the doors open if we can’t make it a viable business that pays me some kind of reasonable salary.

He’s understandably frustrated with the situation because if I continue to try and make a go of it, it means our personal situation is stalled. I’m driving a 17-year-old piece of crap vehicle and we’d love to get into a bigger house. It would be amazing to go on weekend getaways again.  I’m at work 4-5 nights a week, and when I’m home I’m usually trying to catch up on booking and marketing. It’s all-consuming, though I’ve been making a conscious effort to be more present when we’re both home together.

The benchmarks we discussed mainly had to do with booking private events during the summer. The way I saw it, the only way we were going to survive another summer was to lean more heavily into private events. Our short warm weather season makes it ridiculously hard to sell tickets because we’re competing with major festivals every weekend, outdoor music everywhere, people traveling, summer camps, boating, etc. So, I began turning down bands for weekends to keep them clear for private parties.

We ended up booking more parties than last year but did not hit the goals I set back in January. I was disappointed, but I realized we were experiencing a major shift in another area – somehow we started selling out more shows – even in the dreaded summer season. 

I hadn’t really sat down and looked at sales trends in a while, so I started comparing all the metrics I could think of… and while I knew things were going better, I was pretty shocked at the improvement.

Sales have been holding at +55-60% for most of this year. That’s huge! We also hit a monthly sales record in the spring, then broke it the following month.

In the first half of 2022 we sold out 26% of our shows. In the first half of 2023 we did more shows and sold out 67%, an increase of 158%. I took a closer look at June and July, typically really thin months for us, and the increase in sold-out shows during that timeframe is even more dramatic – +550%.

We didn’t book as many private events as I would have liked, but we still increased them by 100% for the first half of the year.

Other stats are also going in the right direction – traffic on this website is +47%, social media followers are up, and our email subscribers increase steadily every week.

Our VIP Patron program, which has turned out to be a critically important part of our business plan, is at its highest membership level yet. Their financial support is a massive help, of course. But they are also some of our most effective brand ambassadors, bringing new music fans to the room and helping to spread the word. A handful of them have become my unofficial board of directors, a sounding board when I need advice.

You can find information about our VIP membership HERE

And yet… we’re still struggling. A lot.

The increase in sales is encouraging, but we’re still far from stable. Cash flow is a constant battle, so my attention lately has turned to cutting costs and working to keep more of the money we take in instead of watching it fly out of our account as quickly as it came in.

Aside from bank statements, expenses, and sales metrics, I’ve been contemplating the bigger question –

How long do I really want to do this?

Live music is a young person’s game… it’s physically demanding, and the long hours aren’t especially conducive to self-care. There are things about it that drive me bonkers.  And there are dark days when I’m profoundly depressed, beaten down and defeated.

One of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur is not allowing your self-worth to be tied to the health of your business or the balance in your checking account.

But, I was able to make two critical shifts in my role at the 443 over the last few months.

Because we are a “listening room” style venue, we offer table service. We can’t have guests milling around the room during a quiet show, so our servers visit the tables. We also have a poorly designed bar that doesn’t allow more than one bartender to work efficiently. Our solution was to make it a service bar, with one bartender making drinks for the entire room and only taking care of the handful of people seated there. When we reopened after COVID, I took over that role. I worked out the kinks, moved the wine over to the service aisle and we figured it all out. Obviously, it saved on payroll, and the servers made more money because as an owner, it’s illegal for me to split tips with them.

The downside was, I didn’t get to interact with our customers much. In fact, sometimes I didn’t even get to say hello. Plus, it’s tough to keep an eye on big-picture issues when you’re in the weeds with your head down trying to pump out dozens of muddled cocktails and martinis.

This year’s growth spurt forced me to increase our staff significantly and with the addition of several seasoned bartenders, I was able to remove myself from the bar and station myself at the door as a hostess. As the owner, it makes WAY more sense – I can greet everyone as they come in and I’m able to connect names and faces.  I can deal with potential problems quicker, and if someone calls off or needs help, it’s easier for me to jump in and cover.

It’s a MASSIVE leap for our business.

Because I’m at the door and can chat with people, I get real-time feedback every night we open. I’ve lost track of how many times a guest has grabbed my hands or hugged me and told me how much the 443 means to them, telling me it’s their happy place or even their therapy. Sometimes they have tears in their eyes because they have just shared a powerful experience with a room full of people; they were able to forget whatever is going on in their lives for a couple of hours.

It’s not just my church… it’s theirs too.

The other big positive change was moving one of the girls into a kind of “personal assistant” role. I used to do a ton of running around locally before heading to the club – picking up printing and trophies, and hitting BJ’s, Wegmans, and Andy’s Produce. We do use a food service vendor that delivers, but there are a lot of items, especially perishables, that we don’t go through fast enough to order in huge quantities. If you ever saw me looking ragged at the end of the night, it was probably because I spent 2 hours doing errands before coming in to work a 12-hour shift. With Kathyrn taking over most of that for me, my life has significantly improved.

Other anecdotal observations –

• We regularly have music fans driving in from all around the state and Canada.
• Agents and artists are seeking us out because they’ve heard rave reviews about the 443.
• I’ve gotten better at knowing which touring bands will be successful at our place, and our lineup is stronger.
• It has always been a battle to get people to show up for local bands, but we’ve turned a corner in that area too. Local music fans have come to appreciate the more civilized experience of a guaranteed seat, table service, and a decent selection of wine, craft beer, and cocktails – even when they can see the band for free in other places. There will always be a place for crowded sweaty rock clubs, but we offer a different environment and it resonates with our overwhelmingly older guests. Local bands we couldn’t get 40 people in the door for a couple of years ago are selling out the room these days.

And then there’s our staff.

We’re still getting several new hires up to speed, but we regularly get RAVE reviews on our crew, both from customers and touring artists. A musician recently commented that they visit other venues and more often than not the staff is “too cool for school”, and they don’t get excited about anything happening on the stage. Our girls dance, sing along with the band, and pose for selfies with our guests  – they are true music lovers and their energy is infectious. Every night someone comments on what an absolute blast our staff seems to be having.

It takes a lot of time and trial and error to cultivate a rockstar team, get the right people into the right positions, and send toxic personalities packing. But the best compliments I get are about my team, and I’m so, so grateful for all their hard work. They are true believers in what we’re doing at the 443.

One of our new hires even said, “I want to be part of something bigger than myself”

After a lot of soul-searching, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not ready to walk away just yet. I’m encouraged by the progress we’ve made and I’ve got a few more ideas I want to try out.

I stumbled on this self-help saying in my feed the other day and it struck me for some reason:

 

When your business journey is difficult and it feels futile, it’s easy to fall into the mindset that it’s inevitably going to fail.

But… what if it doesn’t? What if it all works out?

It feels like we are on the right path, and I like where we’re going. Jimmy and I both know that if I walk away now, I’ll be living with regret for years to come, which won’t be healthy for either of us. I have his blessing to continue trying to make it work for the time being.

So… we’re going to keep on, keepin’ on.

We’re starting to announce fall shows this week, and we’ve got a killer music calendar coming your way. If you have not been to our place yet, I can’t encourage you enough to get yourself to a show – it’s a special experience.

 

CHEERS!