George Ramsay loves music. You could say that it is his primary passion. But it’s obvious that his secondary passion is teaching music to kids by the effort he puts into delivering music lessons to them.

George and his business partner Dean Williams started Bold Music five years ago with one teacher who taught a handful of students. Bold Music is different from most music schools because there is no physical location – unless you count the cars George, Dean and their teacher drive – because Bold Music provides solely in-home classes.

George and Dean started Bold Music because of their common passion of sharing their love for music as music majors at Davidson University. Bold Music gives them the platform for enjoying their passion and making a living at it.

What Bold Music does.

It’s a pretty simple concept. Bold Music acts as brokers for music teachers. The company does the matching and scheduling of teachers with students, making teaching music easy for their teachers. Teachers provide the lessons. The big difference is that the lessons are in the homes of the students, not in a common facility.

“The challenging part of the business is scheduling teachers with students. Since specific teachers teach specific types of music lessons, they have to be matched to the students who want specifically that. And then there are the levels of skills for each type of music lesson that complicate things further,” George tells us. “As our number of teachers and students grew, I spent more and more of my time being the matchmaker in this process instead of a teacher or business owner.”

Within a four year span, Bold Music grew to help more than 20 teachers provide music lessons of all types to more than 160 students. With growth numbers like that, you can easily see why George spends an inordinate amount of time creating and recreating schedules – and finds it hard to squeeze in time for anything else.

Technology changed things for Bold Music.

During a conversation with a fellow musician interested in Bold Music’s in-home business model, George learned of online class management software – in specific – Jackrabbit Music.

George had tried several different things to run Bold Music, but maybe this was different. He researched Jackrabbit Music online and opted into a live demo and eventually a free trial.

“It was amazing – not simply because of the software’s functionality – but because of the extent to which Jackrabbit support team members go to get free trials set up so that those testing out the software can see exactly how it will work for their company. And for Bold Music, that was a significant effort. Music schools of the traditional type are specialized and require lots of software customization. But a music school offering in-home lessons is even more specialized,” George describes.

Factors that make Bold Music’s software set up a unique challenge:

• The in-home model means that every lesson is a private one.
• The types of music and levels of skills create an exponential number of possibilities for classes.
• Every teacher doesn’t teach every instrument or level, so that variable adds another degree of complicity.

“Jackrabbit’s team worked with me with every specific factor to make sure that using the software would add value to Bold Music and make my business operations more streamlined and organized,” George adds. “Before long, I saw tremendous value that using Jackrabbit was delivering to my business and to my life, really. I wouldn’t have even had an hour to take out of my day to talk to Jackrabbit about how great the software is if I weren’t using it.”

At the 5-year anniversary, Bold Music has 3 shareholders, and has hired the first non-instructor employee so that – for the first time in 5 years – George will be able to turn the administrative tasks of operations over to this new hire (and Jackrabbit Music) and get back to the activities that inspired him to start Bold Music: teaching music and growing his business.

This before and after comparison is a stark illustration of how Bold Music’s operations were simplified with Jackrabbit Music.

“It” is amazing support.

Even with this operational simplification, George notes that Jackrabbit’s support for users is what really sets the company apart.

“What most tips the scales in Jackrabbit Music’s favor? The excellent support that Jackrabbit Music provides to users is “it”! And how knowledgeable those support resources are is impressive. Being able to quickly chat with someone who knows the system to this extent is just huge. Even large companies who tout great support – like Salesforce – don’t even do this,” George describes.

And when asked about any time delay in getting response to questions, George adds, “Jackrabbit Music is immediate. Small business people need help when the problem or confusion arises – not two hours or two days later. Jackrabbit Music’s support team can see my system and they can and will help me when I’m in the moment.”

Uninterrupted business operation.

Jackrabbit Music is robust. Businesses like George’s music school can run everything using one software and that fact alone provides huge cost savings and organizational benefits. Many software companies offer support services to assist clients at an additional cost. Jackrabbit Music’s support is free – not just for a trial or introductory period – but for the client’s lifetime.

According to George, “Robustness brings with it a level of complexity. But that is where Jackrabbit Music’s support team delivers again. Even if you’re not a new user, Jackrabbit Music’s support team is there for you when you have your question. And that keeps my business moving without interruption which is what I need.”

Listen to George’s story.