So as it has been mentioned, we own an audio reinforcement company. We started our company in 1997 we bought our first piece of equipment when our second daughter was only a month and a half old. My husband had been an audio technician for years, and really had a passion for the industry since he was very young. It had been a dream of his to own a company such as this for some time. Anyway, we saw the need locally and took the leap. It started out as a part time weekend thing, he worked his trucking job for his father during the week, then weekends he would put in many hours doing small sound jobs. With his skills and our customer service, the company began to exceed our expectations. As for myself, being we had two babies at home, I was basically just the bookkeeper (fortunately I took accounting and business classes in college) and office person, taking phone calls and managing the business aspects of owning a company. I recall many times grabbing a ringing phone and our schedule and running off to the bathroom or a closet to take a call in a quiet place. I tell ya, those were the days.
In only a handful of years the business grew and we were presented an opportunity to buy out a existing regional company that was larger than us, we accepted the opportunity and before we knew it we had to make a choice between taking the risk of being only a business owner or having him work for his father. We opted to pursue the dream, at this point the business had become like our 4th child, the thought of giving it up now really didn’t seem like an option no matter how scary it was. I immediately got nervous of not having a paycheck each month and took a part time job at the school. My husband used his home time building the business, and bonding with our youngest daughter being the at home dad part time, as at this time most of the work was on the weekends. We became more known regionally and the business continued to grow. We ultimately made the decision that I would let that job go and we would both make a run at the business full time. This is a decision that we have never regretted, by now all the kids were in school at least part time, there was half of each day that we both could focus on this entity that we called our 4th child. Since we operated this out of our home shop, we were still able to be home for the kids when they were done with school, as well as attend field trips or whatever was necessary. By 2013 the company had grown exponentially, we had basically become the second largest sound provider in the state Washington. By now our kids were teens, I was able to be out on the events more. Some days I am still in disbelief as to what we have done with this company. By 2014 we were growing faster than we were comfortable with, being a technical industry finding qualified help can be challenging, this meant more work landed on us and while there are 24 hours in a day, it becomes a bit exhausting to work 22 of them too many days in row, especially now that we are not in our 20s anymore. In 2015 other life events happened (will cover that in another post) which made us look at everything we were doing. Work became work and we found our passion slipping. We thought it was time to move on. We decided to sell the equipment as we couldn’t find a buyer for the company as a whole. Our customers were not happy with our decision to get out so we agreed to keep working as long as we still owned equipment. By now we had opened a store for vintage audio gear, this was our “retirement job”. So now we were working during the week at the store then doing events from Thursday through Sunday. By 2017 we sold half of the equipment for Ford Audio, our live sound work load became much reduced and we had finally found some good techs that really fit the companies needs. We started to feel the passion we once had for this company return, we are much happier as a smaller company.
In early 2018 we decided to sell the store and continue with the live production business. By mid 2018 we made the transition to only running one business, and we feel we have found our happy place once again. We are excited to see where 2019 will take us as this will be a year we will have less distractions with only one business to really focus on. While the days can be long and not always easy, we are fortunate that we “get” to do what we do. I hope you join me on this blog as I share some of the adventures we get to experience in this thing we call “work”.
