We Started a Guitar Pedal Company!

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I am originally from South Africa and lived and worked in London as a musician for about 19 years. I met my Turkish wife in London 15 years ago. About 6 years ago we left London to live in Spain. After 2 glorious years there we moved to her hometown in Turkey. That history lesson might be boring to you but it is a very important part of the Celebrity Pedals origin story. 

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I am a Bass Player and while in Turkey, I was scanning the second hand market. Turkey has it’s own version of ebay. I was looking for the holy grail of Bass Pedals. The ORIGINAL Boss OC-2 Octaver. After a while i found one that looked like it had been thrown in a fire. That did not deter me. The price was great and if it had any issues I could find someone to fix it.

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I messaged the owner and we met next to a highway. The deal was made and we both went on our merry way. Very soon, i realised that the pedal was broken. That did not deter me and so I scoured the internet looking for a local electrician or luthier that could guide me to the right person. I probably met 3 luthiers who all told me to go to the same person. “You need to see Attila.” Okay, done. I went on Google and searched for his business. I took the ferry across the Bay and when I got to his address I couldn’t see any sign and there was no way to know where he was. I almost went home but decided to walk from the top floor of an old business block all the way down to the basement as that is what showed up on the map. Right in the corner of the basement with no real sign to guide you there was Attila’s workshop.

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Later on he told me that he doesn’t put directions or a sign out because “If you can’t figure out where I am then maybe it’s better that we don’t meet each other.”

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So there I was with my broken pedal. I asked Attila, if he could fix it. He immediately took it out my hand, looked inside and said ‘It’s easy.’ I said, ‘When should I come get it?’ He said, ‘20 minutes.’ This was incredible news. I said ‘How do you know so much about pedals?’ He said ‘I make pedals. I have been making them for over 16 years.’

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This moment on another day might have just elicited a ‘cool’ from me but today was different. I asked him if he could make me an exact copy of that broken Octave and tweak it with my own specifications. He said, ‘That’s easy.’ 

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“Okay, I want the same one octave down circuit, more boost in the dry signal and no second octave. I want it in a smaller pedal because there is no second octave and could you put this picture of Taylor Swift on it and make eyes light up with red LEDs?’’

He said, ‘’Yes, its easy’’ 

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My initial thought was not that this was the start of a pedal company. I just thought that it was really cool to get an octave pedal exactly how I wanted it to be and to look cool. A few days later I picked up both the pedals and posted some photos of my new custom pedal online.

I began using the pedal on gigs and while teaching in London and very soon I was getting comments from students and musicians about the pedal. The same thing happened when I posted about it online. At this point I started to ask people if they wanted me to order one for them.

 

Quite a few people I knew were prepared to pay and so at this point I thought it was cool that I could get Attila more work. 

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Oh I forgot to mention I spend every week hopping between London and Izmir. You might have been confused, which is understandable!

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And so I go back to Attila and say, a few of my friends want to buy one of those pedals. He is okay with making more but now I feel like it deserves a name so I asked my Pun King friend Dean to give me something that could bring Taylor Swift and Octave Pedals together. Within 10 seconds he says ‘Taylor Shift’. Done​​​​​ 

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Attila makes more pedals for the friends that wanted them and I take a cut because I came up with the idea and found the buyers. So now a few friends have them and I decide to make more videos on my very small, personal Instagram page where I use the pedal and say that I’m selling if anyone wants. 

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….and here is the first big hurdle that happens. How do you get your product beyond your friend group? If you have a small following on social media then you have no leverage or influence to get people to buy from you. I had a pretty solid career as a musician so some musicians in London trusted my opinion and wanted to support the idea but beyond that was uncharted territory. So this was when I started to study everything I could about growing on social media in order to sell a product. 

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I committed to posting more and tried to learn to make higher quality videos. Better lighting and better sound. More informative and more interesting. There are so many incredible resources online now that learning about recording, content and finding leads is not as difficult as you might think. You just need to find the people who you resonate with and who give you practical concepts that you can apply to what you’re trying to do. 

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Here is Alex Hormozi’s four points of outreach.

Outbound: Reach out directly (cold calls, emails, DMs).

Inbound: Create content that attracts people (blogs, social media, SEO).

Referrals: Get current customers to refer others.

Paid Ads: Use targeted ads (Facebook, Google, etc.).

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I focused on these areas. At some point I was emailing every guitar shop in Europe, The U.K, The US and Australia. I constantly improved the wording in my emails and eventually out of the hundreds of emails I sent, the pedals were now in 2 shops in the U.S and two shops in the U.K. 

I was creating videos on instagram, tiktok and Facebook every day and finding out what worked best for me and my style. I eventually chose to focus on instagram as I prefer the medium. In terms of my audience, the age and type of musician on instagram is also far more suited to our company. 

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In terms of referals I asked all my friends who had bought a pedal to post about it or to show their friends and this was definitely helpful for moving from the friends group to the coveted, ‘friends of friends’. 

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Next I focused on paid ads and my focus was instagram. Here was something I learnt from Gary Vee about this area: 

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“If a piece of content is performing well organically, it’s a sign that it has value to your audience. That’s when you take that content and turn it into an ad. It’s a much better approach than creating an ad from scratch and hoping it works. Let the audience tell you what they like first.”

I took a lesson I had made where I used the pedal and re-uploaded it. I added DM me to order to the top of the caption. I probably spent about £10 and sold 2 pedals in a few days from that post. I then took Alex Hormozi’s advice on adverts that print money and how if it works then milk it until it stops working. Basically if I inserted £10 in the Instagram machine to sell 2 pedals, then if I insert £20 into the same machine I might sell 4 pedals. It didn’t work this time but later on I will give you an example of where it did!

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At this point, in terms of product design we were sticking to the formula that started it all. I scratch my own itch in terms of what I want the pedal to be and we keep the fun images and puns. We released a Fuzz Pedal next and again this did well amongst the friends and friends of friends. 

I now wanted to see if we could go beyond that circle and so I continued to study how I could do this. The next logical step was to message musicians I loved or that had a larger following than me and ask them if I could send them a pedal. At this point though, due to my Instagram page growing, I was starting to receive messages from some of these musicians as they wanted to try one or wanted to review one for their channel. This was an amazing feeling!

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This part of the journey was a big learning curve as there are quite a few ways this can go down. 

1. They love the pedal. They share a post about it and people who love the sound and respect their opinion buy one or reach out to me.

2. They love the pedal. They tell me they love the pedal. They never post about it and say they are too busy. They keep the pedal.

3. This one was the most eye opening. They love the pedal. They make a video. No one buys. Now there are two ways to take this. One is that their followers don’t like the pedal. The other though, which I have a feeling is more likely the case is that they have a lot of followers but they don’t have influence. For instance, if a bassist who is highly respected and has played on seminal records but has a small following plays your pedal then a lot of people buy the pedal. Their opinion is respected and backed up with a real career in playing on records and high profile gigs. Someone else might have 100,000 followers because they make great content but they have no real influence as they don’t have a real musical track record. You couldn’t name any song or anyone they have played with. 

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Just two more big issues that might be something that resonates with you. As I am a musician and teacher I found it difficult to decide if I should have 3 pages with 3 different brands. I could have a pedal page, a teaching page and a musician page. Ultimately I decided that I would become the brand, (I know it sounds yucky) and I would then guide people through to the 3 elements that I sell. ie. My pedals, My Teaching, My Playing or Recording Bass for their music. I’ll let you know how it works out.

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The second big issue, which I think could be something to think about for anyone getting started is this. I am a bass player. I can play some guitar but I am better at playing and recording bass. So without really being conscious of it I ended up creating a pedal company where 90% of the videos are me playing bass. It was quite surprising to me when I would get messages and comments that would say things like:

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‘Its so awesome there is a pedal company dedicated to bass players!’

‘Thanks for making pedals with bassists in mind!’

Normally when I would read this I would scream ‘NOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!’

I am trying to get more guitarists playing our pedals as our pedals are for guitar and bass! Guitar is a gigantic market that I missed out on without thinking about it. I’m an idiot. So now I will repeat my own steps and focus on guitar. 

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Next thing is patience. Unfortunately I am not patient. I am also easily angered when things go wrong that are out of my control. I know that doesn’t make sense but I think a lot of people can relate? So when the post office loses a pedal, they throw it around and parts come loose, someone uses the wrong power supply and burns the internals etc, I can’t stop thinking about it until it’s resolved. What I have learnt over the past 3 years is that we have resolved every issue and every pedal has been delivered eventually (even if I have had to post the same pedal to the UK, Spain and Argentina! True Story. Not my fault) So I have learned that when I get a message like this, to feel far more relaxed as I have a proven track record and I know the process now. I suppose this is something you learn by doing. 

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At this point there have been many ups and downs and we are still a tiny, two person company. I love having my own company. I love coming up with ideas. I love seeing them in real life. I love getting messages from musicians telling me they love the pedal. 

Thanks to all of you who have supported us! Below is a guide to help you get students or apply it to your service or product to generate leads!

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• If you are someone who wants to use Social Media to find students (or to sell a product) then try this:

  1. Follow Accounts of Educators and Musicians with similar aesthetic and values and comment on their posts and stories.

  2. Follow accounts who follow your favourite educators and musicians. Make sure these followers have a guitar/bass in their profile pic and are musicians who play the same instrument as you.

  3. Comment and engage with their posts. Ask meaningful questions or make positive/valuable remarks.

  4. Consistently create valuable content which showcases your skills as a player and educator. Post play-along videos as well as tutorials. Sometimes the song does the work for you, so play a song you love!

  5. Make sure that your bio reflects your goals as an educator and use keywords to appear in searches for educators.

  6. Once you have begun to engage with your followers and the community, your account will slowly grow.

  7. At this point you need to offer something valuable for free.

  8. Create a PDF with exercises and ideas that you have created and offer it for free along with a free 30-minute introductory lesson where you go through one page of the book with the student. Ask your followers for their email addresses to send to you. This needs to be done in the form of a video with you giving a brief insight into the pdf.

  9. I then suggest boosting this reel using paid advertising with a specific but wide reach.

  10. Create an engaging story which directs people to the reel to ensure as many of your followers see the reel.

  11. Once you have received a few email addresses, send these followers the PDF and your Zoom Link and find a time that suits both of you.

  12. Now you need to deliver an engaging lesson and make a package offer. I.e.4 Half Hour Lessons for £120. This can be done via email after the lesson is finished. If you deliver an outstanding lesson the student may wish to continue with without you needing to follow up!

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