(logo dinging) - [Announcer] Additional funding is provided by the friends of KTWU.

- Thanks for joining us on another episode of Working Capital.

On today's show, we meet a couple gentlemen who are inspired by music and march to the beat of their own drums.

Stay with us as we explore booming businesses.

It's all about business on Working Capital.

(upbeat music) Our first business has been keeping a steady beat in Downtown Topeka.

TreeHouse Drums produces world class instruments straight out of their drum gen under Supersonic Music.

Founded in 2000, they have experienced solid growth from being patient and their attention to detail.

Today we welcome founder, Derek Sharp.

Derek, welcome to Working Capital.

- Thanks, thanks for having me.

- So, TreeHouse Drums, where did this idea come from?

I mean, you're already in the music business, you got Supersonic Music in '98, '97.

'98, somewhere around there.

- Yeah.

- How did you expand into actually making your own instruments?

- Well, we moved to a different space, a much bigger building Downtown Topeka in the year 2000.

I had a customer who wanted a custom drum set.

I knew what he wanted.

And one day he came in and put money on the table and said, "You know what I want," and he left.

So I started making drums.

And it was nine months to make his drum set, just taking notes.

I actually made two drum sets at the same time and experimented.

He actually got the second set; I liked it a little better than the first one.

But the first one's still out there.

- Wow, okay.

So, you start building drums.

Where did the name TreeHouse Drums come from?

And where did you realize this was going to be another branch of your business?

- TreeHouse is a special name in our family.

She was nine and I was 10 when this neighbor girl and I met each other, and now we recently celebrated our 30th anniversary.

We built a tree house for the kids, so it's just kind of something in the family.

And it has to do with wood.

I burn the logos into the shell instead of having a metal plate in that natural wood.

And it was an attractive idea of TreeHouse.

Congratulations on 30 years with the same woman who helped inspire the name of this great business.

It is a little different kind of...

I mean, it's not a factory setting.

I mean, you have a few artisans, I'm guessing all percussionist, mostly, probably building these.

Tell me a little bit about your process and how that works in the drum gym.

- Yeah, I definitely think the word workshop, not factory.

We are in a building that used to be an old photo developing place back in the fifties and sixties.

And so there was this big workspace, about 40 by 25.

And that just became where the tools and the supplies are that we can go under the music store.

There are three of us.

Each of us work about part-time to equal one full-time person.

And it's just another iron in the fire for me in my profession to make a career in music.

- In the early years, I mean, with being kind of a workshop, how do you grow this business?

How did you get word of mouth out there?

I mean, who started coming for these drum sets?

- I'll tell you the eighth year.

Here's a little story.

The drums are sold on the website and in our store, and that's it.

There's no other distribution.

But the eighth year of its existence was the first time somebody I hadn't met walked into the store when I wasn't there and picked a drum set.

And that was when I realized, this is bigger than me.

But before that, it was always a personal relationship.

A conversation with a client to figure out what their needs are, and solve problems and so forth.

But this one day, eight years into it, somebody just came in that I hadn't met, and it's just grown since then.

- So, you're pretty making a lot of sense.

But if you do have a percussionist come in, you can custom-make the set from, I mean, the size of the heads, to the hardware, to... What all can you basically customize on your sets?

- Well, I would say that the pendulum can swing.

We'll have someone at 2:00 a.m. press buy it now, and we'll ship 'em something that was pre-made.

They won't reply to any questions like who are you?

And this is cool.

And how do you use it?

And all the way over to, I think the record is 162 emails with a client going back and forth, cutting every hair.

I've had clients fly in to Kansas City and drive over here and spend a day or days from other states or other countries, that we would host them.

I put the drum here and the guy says, "Well, why do you put it here?"

And say like, "Well, because I put it here."

He's like, "Oh, I wish you could put it here."

I said, "Okay, we could put it here."

You could put it here.

And we would go back and forth and solve their problems, they get excited, everything in between.

- I mean, between all the wood finishes, all your hardware, I mean, you can probably get a million of different choices kind of customizing out of what you're doing in that basement.

- Yeah, I will never in my lifetime produce all the possibilities that I could.

And part of the fun of that is that a customer might say, "Well, could you do it this way and make this unique thing?"

And I'll say, "Well, yeah, I could, I probably wouldn't, but if you paid me, I would."

And so then they'll say yes and I'll make it.

And then I'll have a picture for the website to say, "Well, look, I can do that."

And it wasn't a risk, they'd already paid for it.

- With designing your own, I mean, do you tinker with what's already been done?

Are you trying to make new sounds out of these percussion instruments?

I mean, is there something you're tweaking in it yourself that you're like, well maybe the hardware's in this different spot, or how do you play around down there?

What do you do for fun when you're experimenting?

- Part of what a percussionist does is find sounds.

That might be a bottle with some pills in it that you use as a shaker, or a set of keys you can use as a shaker.

We don't know always what we're gonna get, sonically, if we had a new idea to do something technically, and that's part of the fun, is exploring, what would it sound like if we made it this way?

On the other side, a customer might bring us a CD and say, "Well, here's an artist that has the sound, and I want that sound."

And through experience and years of doing this, I can say, "Well, for it to get that sound, it has to be made this way," and craft something to try to get that color for them.

- That is awesome.

When we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about your early years and some of the other experiences there.

So, it's time for another short break.

Stay with us as we dive deeper into the drum gym.

We'll be right back.

You're watching Working Capital.

(upbeat music) Welcome back.

We're just talking to Derek Sharp from TreeHouse Drums about the business in Downtown Topeka.

Let's talk about kind of the capital involved, the costs, maybe savings of actually making these drums outta Topeka instead of some other larger market on the coast or something.

I mean, how are you able to flex your inventory and deal with ups and downs in a drum gym?

- It's a great question.

I've had a lot of people ask about, how come they're priced where they are.

And some people are referring in their mind to a student drum set, mine are a lot more, or other professional drum sets made worldwide, and mine are often less.

And part of that attribution is that I don't have to deal with the east or west coast taxes and overhead.

This is in a building that I already had a business.

So it's the same address, the same phone number.

I try to overlap things to be as efficient as possible, and running both endeavors at the same time.

- I mean, that way that you have more money coming in per square foot of that space.

So yeah, adding that second business was kind of a easy jump, it seems like.

- [Derek] Exactly.

- Before we get into anything else, I wanna talk about some of the stuff you actually offer and some of the products you're making.

One of the coolest things is you have these nesting kits.

So kinda like a Russian nesting doll.

- [Derek] Exactly.

- So, tell us a little bit about how popular these have been and some of the pluses to, maybe this is your first kit after a starter student kit.

I mean, or it could be your go-to gig kit.

Tell us a little bit about these nesting kits.

- The idea came to us from an artist that lived in New York City on the 17th floor in an apartment building.

So I grew up in Kansas with a backyard and a truck.

If I need to go to the gig, I put my drums in the back.

It never dawned on me; how do you get your drums to the gig if you're in the city using public transportation?

You don't take half of your drum set to the curb and then come back and load out the second half.

Now the first half is gone.

And this guy was sharing his issues.

I said, "All right, go take a tape measure into your world.

Measure the turn style of the subways, measure going onto the bus and turning 90 degrees."

How big do we have?

And I went one notch smaller so it'll fit and made a drum set that Russian dolls.

There were other companies that had done that, but I did it in a way that I think sounds great.

And they're really professional drums.

They've gotten me into US military groups, traveling musicians, US and abroad.

I'm seeing these now being played in six continents.

I haven't sold anything to anybody in Antarctica.

US military groups, touring broadway shows.

So these things are solving lots of problems for folks out there.

- Are these just as customizable as any other drums from colors and finishes, or is it kind of you have a recipe already for 'em?

- They're more customizable.

Some people want... Well, there are different problems that they solve.

Some people want all of their drums to fit on a small footprint on stage.

So we can clamp fixtures to the drums to make it all like go go gadget drum set and be smaller, or other people it's about being light.

We can use material that's really lightweight.

Others it's about not filling up the backseat and the trunk, just the trunk when it's packed up.

Because the whole drum set fits into one case.

That really is a game changer for drummers.

- Explain the way you help these drummers out.

I mean, I'm guessing the sounds coming out depending on what they're made up, whether it's wood or metal.

I mean, do you have some drummers who maybe even drum in five or 10 years but haven't used a metal drum?

I mean, can you walk them through kind of the differences of the tones and sounds?

I mean, how intricate do you get with your clients?

- Well, a Christmas present I gave to me a few months ago was a better set of microphones.

So we have a photo space where we'll take pictures for our gallery, but we've been able to add to that small video samples with good audio to address that question.

We've done some audio, and then customers will send us their clips of video and audio that we'll put on the website in case a customer can't come in to hear it in-person.

But a lot of folks do come to us because they did hear them.

Like a word of mouth, they saw someone on stage play 'em.

- That's awesome.

How many other employees do you have that are working there?

I mean, you said you kind of mix it to where there's a full-time employee sort of building the drums, but... - Well, what I'm getting at is if you added up the hours of me and the two other guys, it averages about the same as a full-time person, maybe a little more.

And so, think of it as three part-timers who are also doing other things in the music industry.

We're taking it serious, we do it well, it's just not the only thing we do so we can take our time.

- And since you are kind of an artisan, I mean, you don't wanna rush them out.

So, speaking of that though, how much inventory of materials do you keep on hand?

- About as much as that room will hold.

And that's a literal answer because I look for when things might go on sale to bulk up, but then there are limitations.

We can only get so much in the building.

I can make two to four drum sets a month, whereas some other companies, they would do that in a few minutes.

It's just a different scale.

It's a different kind of thing.

- Of course, when you're dealing with a few minutes, you're dealing with imperfections off a factory line and maybe not seeing them 'til later in the run.

You guys are hand where all the holes are going.

You guys are really attention to detail on this.

So, just real quickly, I know we're about outta time, but just tell us how that attention to detail has really made your drum stand out.

- It really makes all the difference.

And I tell people that my tolerance is a fourth of a millimeter because I can still see that.

We make a mark with a pencil on the drum and put a little divot, and that's where the hole goes.

And I think that's actually a lot more accurate than some of the mass produced things out there.

- I could see that.

So, well, thank you again, Derek.

This has been awesome, and good luck in the future with TreeHouse Drums.

We hope to hear them making some awesome noises somewhere near us.

- Thanks.

- It's time for another short break.

When we return, we'll meet boundless entertainer, Eddie Wakes, and learn how to make a living with a booming voice.

Stick around.

You're watching Working Capital.

(upbeat music) Welcome back.

It's our pleasure to have with us today a Topeka native who uses his booming voice to entertain people around the globe.

Making a living as a modern crooner, Eddie Wake's career path has led him from top city, to "La La Land" and on a boundless future.

Welcome to the show, Eddie.

- Thank you, thank you.

It's good to be here.

- So, as a performer, as a musician, as a singer, tell us a little bit about what it takes to kind of sell yourself, to market yourself, even from the earliest days, 'cause you probably didn't have a manager to begin with.

And just tell me kind of your process and where you came from.

- I'm very independent even now.

But I think the orientation I received here with my parents; my father was a pastor here locally.

And so, as I was told someone the other day, we had a drug problem.

We were drugged on church to Sunday.

We drugged to the nursing home.

We were drugged to the hospital, and all kinds of opportunities like that.

That gave us the experience and the orientation to be at least out there in front of people.

So, presenting myself was never as much of a problem, although I'm probably the least likely of all my brothers, kind of humble at first or certainly very timid.

But I think that that orientation gave me the thrust to do that, to put myself out there.

- So you said your father's a pastor, a minister.

So, a lot of singers, I mean, they start out in the church.

So, tell me about the early years, and starting to sing there.

And I mean, from a young age, did you see yourself wanting to be a singer, entertainer, or tell me how you saw yourself?

- It never really occurred to me until I had an opportunity to do my first trip outside of Kansas.

And I was through a group called Up With People.

- [Jay] Okay, yeah.

- I did Up With People for a year.

It gave me a little bit of an appetite for that, exposed me to some of the possibilities of being before audiences, not only in the states, but around the world.

And when I saw that, and that there was at least a response, a general response that was pretty approving for my music, I said, you know what, maybe I should look at that.

Yeah, that was the first experience, you know.

- Do you remember your first paid gig, and how did that come about?

- Wow, that was a good one.

That's a good question.

I have to say, probably my first paid gig was singing on the street in Santa Monica.

And by that, I mean, I was singing there receiving tips and selling my CDs.

And someone came up to me and said, "Do you sing at weddings?"

I said, "Yeah."

It was a great piece.

It was a great showcase there on Third Street.

And I said, "Yeah, I sing at weddings."

He said, "What's your rate?"

I said, "I really never really thought about that, but let's give it a shot and say 500?"

They said, "No problem, we got you."

I said, "Sure, really?"

I said, "Okay."

So now we have something going here, started getting more invitations.

That's actually where I met the guys from different films, including the "La La Land" film.

David Foster asked me one time, the producer, when we met, finally, he said, "How much were you making down on the" (indistinct) 'cause his studio wasn't far from there at the time.

And I said, "Between 900 and 1500 a weekend."

Still probably one of the best gigs I've had so far.

But those weddings and other private events came from that.

Yeah.

- That's fantastic.

Well, to venture a little bit into that, how starting out, like you say, you just kind of came up with the price there, but a lot of people have problems when they're on their own.

I mean, how do you value yourself?

I mean, how do you find that market worth?

- Very good question.

I think you compare yourself to others in the landscape.

When I started out in 1997, trying to do this in Nashville before I went to LA, I knew Mike Buble at that time, and he was doing same sort of gigs I was doing of hotels, restaurants.

And I think I just watched to see the trajectory of their careers.

I think the more audience you receive and the more affirmation you get from an audience, the more you can accrue to your value.

And if that's garage band singing at weddings or pool parties, or someone singing at a Kardashian wedding, you just kind of make that commence to it with what your exposure and your appeal is.

If people of that level are starting to invite you to their events and to their weddings and whatever, that should give you a general idea.

But then the audience ultimately is the thing.

When you set a ticketed event, this will, by the way, Topeka will be my first official ticketed event tomorrow.

Yeah.

So yeah, that kind of depends on the audience appeal.

The more audience you have, the more you can demand.

That's why people when you see the Adele concert, what is that?

$9,000 for a ticket, I think it was last I heard.

She can fill out the Staples Center in a whole week for seven days in a row.

Well, you gotta give her points for that.

- And with that too, I mean, entertainers like yourself with these golden voices, I mean, the Adele's, the you, a lot of it just being good isn't it, it's finding those breaks and those opportunities still, and you never know where it's gonna happen.

It seems like today's up incomers, it's, can I put out a TikTok?

Can I put out something on Instagram?

And if it doesn't hit... (Jay sighs) And they're dejected.

So, when we come back, let's talk a little bit about how perseverance and kind of looking for the right avenues and keeping going, we'll see how that kind of affected your careers.

- Sure, yeah.

- It's time for another short break.

Stay tuned for more with Eddie Wakes.

We'll be right back.

(upbeat music) Welcome back.

We're again with Eddie Wakes.

So, let's talk again.

What kind of advice would you have for new entertainers, anyone singing, playing, that kind of wants to sell themselves, really, what are some of the key things they need to do to try to fashion a career outta this?

- Yeah.

Yeah, I planned to write, I was telling my mother and others, I plan to write a book called "The Wonderful World of Gigdom."

It's gotta really touch on a lot of my experiences.

But I would say that the key is to really find the signature of your soul, whatever you're expressing.

Just make sure that you have some singularity that has to do with how your approach to the craft is, or your art.

Whether it's the same genre, whether it's hip hop.

Other thing I would say is get a lot of feedback from people that are closest to you.

And even people that you may not know, just test it out to see what people's response is to make sure you're on point.

Sometimes it's hard to be objective.

But there's just no substitute for doing it.

There's no substitute for doing it, you just have to get out there and test the market.

Mine has been very much like a Forrest Gump kind of experience where just having these incidental encounters or serendipitous encounters with people in the landscape of music, and people that have affirmed me in the A-list world of entertainment.

Like you said earlier, I didn't have a manager to script that, for whatever reason, it just fell in place.

But I gradually had to learn from experience and from interfacing with some of those people what the best course would be.

And sometimes you learn by trial and error, sometimes you learn or you win by default; by being the last man standing, which is the other thing.

If you don't love this, you shouldn't do it.

(Eddie laughs) - 'Cause I mean, every city's a little different.

Every audience, the makeup's kind of different.

So some cities, your set may just go gang busters.

- [Eddie] Yeah.

- But then you're someplace else where they may have enjoyed it, but you didn't hear.

They're just so reserved in the crowd.

So you gotta really be comfortable in your own talents.

- Yes.

- With that too.

One bad night can't break you.

Or like you said, you shouldn't be in this.

- Absolutely.

Your passion and your talents are normally inextricable connected.

You wanna get ahold of that, get a sense of what that is.

Make a list of what they are, what your list of talent and skills are, and your passion as well.

They normally are not too far removed.

And then you just continue to hit that interval.

The heat of experience will add its own fire.

And I slept in my car for months and months and months and months in LA.

But I remember a story by George Cloney who was in his own field.

He said, his father called him one time and said, "Hey, why don't you go back and finish your degree?"

'Cause he was sleeping in cars and on couches and everything.

And he said, "So, have something to fall back on."

He said, "Dad, I can't do that, because if I do, I'll fall back on it."

So at the end of the day, make sure that you love what you do, be willing to suffer for it.

If you love it, you will be willing to suffer for it.

Go through what's necessary.

It's not really suffering if you love it.

May have put it that way too?

- Yeah.

- And I ask people one other thing and I'll shut up.

But the guys would ask me say, oh, or I'll ask them, "How long are you gonna devote to trying?"

"Well, I'll give it about six months."

I said, "Wrong answer."

He said, "What's the right answer?"

As long as it takes.

- That's with any business you got passion for.

That's right.

So, from church to Highland Park, got pulled into a musical, Up With People.

I mean, starting out that is definitely you on your own.

Like you say, and you're still doing a lot of it yourself.

But what kind of team or people kind of helps surround you and helps keep you going at this point?

- One word, millennials.

- Yeah?

(Eddie laughs) - Millennials, man.

I mean, it's technical.

It took me a long time.

When I arrived back from Australia to Los Angeles, people like Morgan Freeman and Jamie Fox and others said, "Get to LA, get to LA."

You get to LA and you realize that, okay, it's definitely heavy in its support for theatrical.

Not so much music anymore with the event of digital, with the loss of the CD.

So I had to learn that social media was just, the dawn of social media was just happening at the time.

And I just had to learn to get my head around it.

But the millennials know that stuff, the younger peoples.

And if they have a passion for what you do, then it's very symbiotic.

And I've got a great team of people to help me do it.

Yeah.

- That's fantastic.

So, you started doing your first ticketed concert.

And I mean, where does Eddie Wakes go from here?

We've seen you on our station.

We had your special, your boundless special.

So I mean, you're getting yourself out in multiple channels.

- Yeah.

- [Jay] What's the next step for you?

- Right.

Well, PBS has really been very helpful and a big part of my model.

A large part of my audience is the PBS audience.

It's a good swath of the population of America supports and loves PBS, some over 215 million, I think, something to that effect.

- Yeah, I mean, PBS loves the arts.

Yeah.

- My whole career is couched within that market.

And I'll be working with them moving forward.

One of the program services that distribute to PBS is working with me now, and we're going to take it to the next level with a few other concerts as we grow.

Joe Bonamassa's, people friends of mine were part of the reason why I had that connection.

And he's done well with his relationship with PBS.

- Yep.

I mean, and to me later in life, I mean, Joe Bonamassa, yeah, I don't wanna call myself oldie, but he wasn't a guy that came out 18, 19 20.

He was playing, but that national spotlight didn't hit, but when it hit, it hit big.

- Yes, yes, absolutely.

- We are looking forward to seeing what more comes from you, Eddie.

- Well, thank you, man.

It's good to be here.

Thank you.

- It's a pleasure having back in town, and having you on the show.

And if you guys need someone to sing a song, or I don't know if you're still doing weddings or not, but if you need a golden voice, Eddie Wakes will have you covered.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Well, that's a wrap for tonight's show.

I'd like to thank Derek Sharp from TreeHouse Drums, along with entertainer, Eddie Wakes.

If you know of an interesting business or management technique, we wanna hear from you.

So give us a call, drop us an email, or send us a letter.

We look forward to hearing from you.

See you next time, and thanks for watching.

It's all about business.

And you've been watching Working Capital.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Additional funding is provided by the friends of KTWU.