The man who runs the room, on momentum and ads.

0:00ASo what were some of the conversations that you tried to do? Some people like, no, I would never do that, or some people like, yeah, let’s do it.

0:10BI mean, like, well, yeah, that’s not a good idea. And I’d recommend against it mostly, but with this face, it’s kind of like, it’s gorgeous. It’s hard, it’s hard not to do. Now we’re stuck. So I think it’s a very momentum-based business. You can’t really stop.

0:30ABecause you’re a musician, so when you’re playing the music, are you like a little --

0:37BUh, last time I played in front of people was at your place, which is almost exactly about when we opened this place. Yeah, yeah.

0:45CSo you’re in hiding?

0:46BYeah, totally.

0:47CI like that. Now you’re interviewing him.

0:51AI’m interviewing. I just wanted to know, I just wanted to know that as you’re playing the music, do you think about, or do you consider the type of music that you’re playing because you’re in this venue?

1:03CNo.

1:04BI know, but I think the venue does bring out the best in musicians. Ernie Reed from Living Colour played here, and he did a Band of Gypsies Revisited. It was really one of the better shows we’ve had here. And his comment after was, uh, in a room like this, if you don’t sound good, right, that’s on you.

1:29ATotally, totally.

1:33BThat’s a huge thing.

1:35AWow, this is so unique in so many ways. I’ve never seen anything like -- I mean, for you I’m sure you have a lot of first-timers that come in and they’re like, wow.

1:47BYeah, pretty much. Yeah, both from, uh, both from both entrance, both the musicians that come in as well, and then, yeah, and then the, uh, audience when they come.

1:57AI love it.

1:59BWhat a wonder. Our one problem is there’s not a lot of people that are very close to here. Uh-huh. Yeah, so it’s just, it’s a It’s a challenge because you’re always, you know, you’re always trying to pull people from a large radius because there’s, there’s more and more different types of music, genres, and bands. So the audiences are all more spread out, and like this area is very spread out, and there’s a lot of competing interests. So it’s a challenge always to like get enough people in, but when they do, they usually like it.

2:35CI can imagine.

2:36BHow do I do it? Uh, I don’t know, like random, like burning money on like Facebook and Instagram, just giving them a credit card and like begging for them to like show our shows to people. And then people still are like, oh man, this just popped up and it happened 2 days ago.

2:56CWow. But now they can follow you and be more in the know, right?

2:59BSo is that true? Yeah, we’ve got, we got a good following now. We got like 11,000 Instagram followers, more than that on Facebook.

3:07CThat’s cool. So your Meta ads have paid off?

3:09BYeah, yeah, there’s definitely like --

3:12CI mean, people want to hear that. Good testimonial.

3:14BIt’s frustrating, but it does work better than anything else that’s going on. That’s what -- that’s the frustrating part.

3:21CThey got a chokehold on us.

3:22BYeah, they kind of like into the, you know, move fast and break things. Yeah, they like -- they broke it. And now they’re the only, like, their only hope for getting to people.

3:33CYeah, yeah.

3:33BThere’s other stuff now. Email, big email lists are good, and text is helping. Like, more people are answering or like buying through text.

3:42ASo I wonder, do you, do you think about creating your own music given the venue?

3:47BI mean, I should probably play music again sometime.

3:55CWe’re waiting on you.

3:57AYeah, yeah.

3:59BUm, yeah, I mean, I think the the space is very. It affects people’s performances periodically. It definitely does. Yeah, yeah. It’s very like, but it’s also very adaptive. So we go from. Oh, is this one? Oh, all right. Okay. Look at that. All right.

4:19CWell, can you say the name of the place?

4:20BUh, Stone Church.

4:21CAnd your name?

4:22BRobin Johnson.

4:23COh yeah.