Can social media help GROW your business?

Remember, lots of businesses in America didn't make it through the pandemic. This one did, and this is a giant location with all kinds of overhead. Look at how big it was! You're kind of a story of survival, and I'm going across the country trying to find people like you so that others can learn for the next time what you have to do.

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Hey, Mr. Wonderful here in Wynwood, Miami. You know where this is? Center of the arts. Why? Because I dropped my guitar a few months ago, and I had to find a guitar tech to fix it. When I went on the blogs and started searching online, who's the el supremo guitar tech in Miami? Alex, this guy that works out of this shop. This is an incredible place called Wall Grace. Inside of it, you've got cars, bars, and guitars. I'm not kidding, all in one building! So, while you're waiting for your guitar to get fixed or just looking at other guitars, you can have a cappuccino, cruise around some really nice Ferraris, all that kind of stuff. It's just a beautiful, I think, display of art and a celebration of design. So, let's go inside and check it out.

All right.

[Music]

So, Tina, you're the owner of this place?

Yes, I'm one of the unions.

How many owners are there?

There's two of us.

So you're partners?

We're partners, yes.

Is this the only location for now?

It is the only location.

What is, let's call it Wall Grace, what is it like? What was the idea behind this thing?

So, Walt Grace came about; it is a song from John Mayer that inspired Bill, my partner, to be happy.

Just like a husband-wife thing?

Or are you a guy?

It's a boyfriend-girlfriend thing.

Okay, but yeah, that's always tricky in business, of course. Yes, because there's the business and then there's a relationship. Yes, but I think most importantly, our goal is to keep our passion alive, which is vintage cars, guitars, and coffee. As you can see, we're into bars, cars, guitars. Exactly! That's what really knocked me out when I walked in here. I said, "What the [ __ ] is this?" Like, that's because it really is! It's basically Bill's brain exploded and manifested. Everything here is our passion. If it's not, if it's a guitar that we don't particularly like or even a beverage, a cookie, a muffin, we won't sell it. If it's a car that, you know, isn't up to our standards, so to speak, we would never have it.

Is Bill a car guy? Like, where did the cars come from?

Okay, so Bill has always been obsessed with vintage Porsches and vintage guitars. Okay, so that's clearly what's going on here. Because you know the old Porsche ads or the little boys just looking into the car? That was Bill. That is Bill! Okay, so that was his passion. He morphs it into a business.

There's a lot of people interested in how entrepreneurs find their path because this idea wouldn't necessarily work anywhere else. I mean, it's, first of all, the neighborhood. It got a crazy vibe to it, right? This is legendary in terms of art scenes in Miami. The art and epicenter, it is the place to be in Miami, right? But then this, this is a lot of retail space. You've got a lot of space here, a lot of square feet.

So your idea is to put this thing together. How did you get people to find out about it? What did you do?

It's funny because coming from an advertising background, we did not advertise at all. It was all word of mouth. Thankfully for social media, it was, you know, people taking photos, tagging us.

How many years ago was that?

About five, five and a half, yes.

Okay, so you have, you know, I have a rule: if you're not making money by the third year, you take it behind the barn and shoot it, right? So this is actually a business, right?

Yes, it is. Um, but it's, you know, one of the things that we implement is we don't sell to people. We are dream facilitators. This is ultimately a passion project. So when people come into our front door, you know, their mouths drop. I mean, obviously now with our masks, I can't see the mouths dropping, but I see the sparkle in their eyes. Once after they do rounds, spend several hours here, they always tell us how inspired they are because of what we have here.

You can feel our vibe. Everything we do is out of passion and love. There's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears here. So the vision is to get them engrossed in just the vibe of the place—Bill's passion, your passion—but you've got to turn it into a business. You have to actually have revenue unless you're Bill, where his mom calls him a schmuck. He is a schmuck!

So, you know, many kids come in here, and young guys who are obsessed with guitars. A couple of years ago, we had a young man who fell in love with a guitar that we named and called Gator because of the way that it was relict and the way that it was worn. He could not afford it, and we let him go home with it. For years, no, I mean, thinking of him gives me goosebumps. And that same idea is how we treat all our customers.

But clearly, for the—let's be clear—to run a business, employ people. You have employees here. You got to have revenue. You have to make money. Are you achieving success at that level?

We are, of course. We still have our family to feed, and we take care of all of our guys.

So you've got an online presence as well, I assume?

Yeah.

Okay, so you're trying to get the vibe of this place pushed out online. You're doing, obviously, more social media now, right? I found out about this place through social media. That's how nice I dropped a guitar. I said I need a great guitar tech. I went online, and I started seeing all these comments about this jonesified stuff, and I said, "Who the hell's that guy?" And that's kind of word of mouth drew me here. Then I walked in here and said, "No, this isn't right. There are cars here. Where are the guitars?" And you look to the right—oh, guitars!

And so it's okay, but driving the business, would you say, is different now in the fifth year? Do you have like a model in terms of what you want to do to get revenue and grow?

Um, yes, I think so. I think that our— you know, the more we grow, the harder it is to—I think personally—to stay focused on why we originally started. And I think that, um, we have to remind ourselves that that despite, you know, all the bills and overhead and everything we have to pay, we still need to keep our focus, which is to keep the dream alive, to keep rock alike, to have investment pieces that people truly love and not just have to have. I think for me that is what is important.

Yeah, I know this is about money and everything, and it's important, but we don't just sell to someone who has the money. If somebody comes in here and is like, "I want the most expensive guitar,” we do not sell that to that person because we know that it needs to go to the right home and to the right person.

Okay, now give some advice to businesses that have survived this pandemic because clearly your business changed last March. I mean, I was here in Miami; this place got shut down. Everything got shut down. It was a ghost town walking around here. So what did you do to survive?

We had our team working from home, as with everybody. We had them pumping out social media posts. I think to keep things alive. I mean, thankfully, being at home and people being quarantined, the guitars really just kept—we kept selling. Everybody was learning to play on YouTube or signing up for guitar lessons online. Um, so thankfully, the good, I believe, that the guitar end is really what kept us afloat.

So online saved your ass, right?

Oh yes!

Who runs online?

Um, well, we do have our main like three people. We have Vince, um, our daughter Haley, and, um, a couple of the other guys. Um, but ultimately, we all—we're shooting the instruments, you're photographing them, you're posting on your site, you're pushing for traffic. I mean, this is a lesson in survival that I'm trying to talk about here because not every business in America made it. And it seems the only ones that did make it figured out a way to directly connect with their customers during a whole year when they were shut down, and those customers responded by buying stuff. That happened here; that happens with us also.

And you know, even just being at home and watching people play and be on Instagram live, just as simple as, you know, making our logo shirts reversible so that way when you're on Instagram live, you can actually read our logo. Um, and that, you know, Harold played the guitar for you, and his shirt you'll see is backwards. So we did little things to tweak and like to keep us relevant and in, you know, speaking in people's mouths.

So, I do feel the community is opening up a little bit now. Things are starting to happen. Vaccines pouring through.

Yes, definitely, especially here in Florida.

Yeah, I know, I know. Well, I noticed that. But, you know, it's amazing. It's only have been the last month where you start to see the foot traffic starting to come back, which is great. But what do you—what, having learned that whole online pivot, you're going to keep that business growing, right? And are you selling guitars to people outside of the geography of Miami?

Uh, yes, we actually ship over to Europe. We're shipping all across the United States, of course. Shipping things gets a little tricky depending on the wood, you know, what woods are allowed to leave the states. But we sell online. Jonathan sells cars online as well. Thankfully in this day and age, everything is online.

You're kind of a story of survival, and I'm going across the country trying to find people like you so that others can learn for the next time what you have to do. Sounds like passion! You got a mission, you got a really good online business, and you have people love to work here. And you got a really crazy chicken space! I mean, it's just—this is nuts!

What is all this stuff?

So we got all your accessories here. Uh, we got strings, we have cables, products to keep your guitar, you know, nice and polished and clean. Uh, stuff for your fretboard, replacement parts in case you need some of that stuff.

People don't buy all the stuff online. You actually have a business selling this out of the store?

Yeah! People want to grab the stuff quick, you know, and you have a gig; you need a pack of strings, you come grab them. Cables? Yeah, we do sell a lot of stuff, and we sell online, obviously.

Actually, this whole concept is in the face of online because you can't experience anything like this online. That's probably why you stay in business, right?

Yeah! And we do try to bring as much of this experience, you know, online to our website. You know, we take photos of everything that we sell here. We take photos in that room, actually, in the vintage room. We don't want to use stock photos. We want to make sure you can see the guitar in our environment, you know?

So you sell it online?

Yeah, we do something, but you try and project this vibe on your online site.

Yeah! And in social media, you know, we want to make sure that people understand what we do here and what we're all about, and we try to showcase that on our website, our social media channels, and on our YouTube channel as well.

So, yeah! Everything, all the photos you'll see of our guitars and amps, we shoot them in that room where you were earlier. Uh, and, yeah, and all the cars we shoot them here too. We want you to get the feel of the gallery, you know? You want to see the cars with the guitars in the background.

Bring you in!

Yeah!

Yeah, remember, lots of businesses in America didn't make it through the pandemic. This one did, and this is a giant location with all kinds of overhead. Look at how big it was, and yet they survived. How? They went direct to consumer. They went online. That was the strategy. I call it the great digital pivot!

What saved America were companies that had passion and a vision about a brand and reached out to their customers right through social media in every way they could direct and sold their products to them, even while they couldn't come to the retail location. That's how Tina kept this business alive, and that's the lesson we've learned here today.

That's what I really wanted to come here for because when I walked through these doors months ago to get my guitar jonesified—remember when I dropped?—well, I saw a beautiful space that was basically empty, and I had to figure out how did they stay alive. Now we know, and this is a lesson for everybody, a very important lesson: when you face adversity, you gotta suck it up, and you gotta figure it out. And you have to do whatever you can to stay alive.

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