Earlier this year I read A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business by Ari Weinzweig. In addition to writing about 10 books, Ari is one of the co-founders of a food business in Ann Arbor called Zingerman’s. Zingerman’s makes about $60 million annually, has served sandwiches to Oprah and President Obama, and was called “The Coolest Small Company in America” by Bo Burlingham. All in all, a pretty good guy to take advice from in my opinion. Yet, despite all this success, Ari’s humility and anarchistic principles of human equality showed through brilliantly when I visited him recently to talk about business and anarchism. We met at Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor where he treated me to a kale salad and some pierogies. He greeted every Roadhouse staff member we saw by name and was obviously a beloved and personally known figure there. When I called him recently to pick his brain on organizational charts he prefaced his comments with “I’m not sure that I have all the answers or anything…” What a refreshingly humble and inspiring person to interact with!
Several of Weinzweig’s chapters in A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business are on the power of visioning. The idea is to write down a vision of what you want something to be like at a certain point in the future and then to work toward that vision. In the context of a business or organization, having a vision helps to direct and guide action as well as make sure everyone is on board with where the organization is headed. I was inspired by the potential power of visioning and set out to write one for Southtown Guitar. It’s still not quite finalized but I’m sharing it here as a way to invite discussion about it which I hope may make it better. While reading it, keep in mind that a vision is not a strategic plan — it’s not telling us how we’ll get to the destination, it’s simply mapping the destination out for us. One of Weinzweig’s pieces of advice about visioning is that if there is nothing in the vision that causes some people to question it, it’s probably not quite bold enough. I’ve challenged myself in writing this vision to include everything I’d dream about Southtown Guitar becoming. Let me know what you think!
Southtown Guitar Vision 2027
Overview
It’s a hot July day in 2027 and the sun is shining in through the skylight. The day is just beginning here at Southtown Guitar and Paul Armes is getting started down in our workshop in the basement. He will be supervising the luthier apprentices as they work on some set ups and then he will be checking on the production schedule for some of the items we make in-house including strings and guitars. In the classroom the teachers for the day (including two youth apprentices) are having their weekly meeting which includes a short teaching on the “Song of the Season” and an inspirational meditation. Lessons will be starting at 10am and the schedule for our 8 lesson rooms is at 90% capacity all day until 9pm. The lesson rooms are in the basement and are very cheery with live plants, unique instruments and a nice sound system in each.
Upstairs the look is very clean with exposed brick on the walls, beautiful wood floors and plenty of natural light from the windows and skylights. A staircase leads to roof access and teachers often head up there with students for a rooftop lesson amidst the rooftop garden. There is also a separate outside lounge / dining area on the roof where staff take breaks and where meetings are held. The walls of the sales floor are lined with instruments that we make in-house and order from quality suppliers who make their own products. Some of the oddities you’ll find in our shop are an appalachian dulcimer from the early 1900s, a double neck electric guitar and our own handmade open back banjos. Three people will be working the sales floor today — one manager and two youth apprentices from an underserved neighborhood who came to us through our strategic partnership in that neighborhood. Our online sales manager is at her desk in the shipping and receiving area processing today’s orders and our studio manager is getting his day going reviewing all of the day’s lessons and correspondence from students.
Tonight in the classroom there will be a lecture on the history of fiddling styles. Our lectures are well attended by our private students as well as local community members and help to provide a holistic, well rounded, thoughtful and thought-provoking approach to learning music. This weekend we’ll be hosting a conversation between Cornel West and Wayne Shorter followed by a performance by Wayne’s quartet.
Southtown Guitar, located in the entire building at 1533 Wealthy St. SE in Eastown in Grand Rapids, is a nationally known employee-owned cooperative that is an industry leader in sustainability. Our work is to equip the people in our community with the knowledge, skills and gear they need to make music and to teach and model a life that is being strengthened and healed daily by humble participation in music-making. We work at de-mystifying and de-celebrity-ifying music and musical equipment by fostering an environment of honesty, humility, continued curiosity and technical knowledge. We are focused on the continued education of our customers and staff, remembering that we all have things left to learn.
We are moving from a lifestyle of consumption to one of creation and helping our community travel along that same trajectory. We create music, instruments, curriculum and advertisements and we help our students create music for themselves. We are committed to fostering a joyful community (staff, customers, vendors, Eastown residents) in which creativity and craftsmanship thrives.
Process is as important to us as product because we recognize that often process affects people’s lives even more than product. This philosophy guides all of our business practices and we intentionally craft and evaluate each aspect of what we do so as to maximize each activity’s positive human impact. For us, the ends do not automatically justify the means.
Non-Violence, Care for the Poor, and Social Impact
Non-violence has become central to our company culture and way of doing business and is our highest guiding principle. We have developed financial, customer service and marketing policies rooted in non-violence. We encourage and promote non-violence through the songs that we include in our songbook and guitar method and that we teach in our lessons. We are even exploring the idea of creating a non-violent working committee that trains and dispatches people to stage musical non-violent protests in violent and turbulent locations around the country.
We engage our commitment to non-violence in an unpretentious way and communicate this commitment openly and unapologetically but also sensitively and gently to our customers and community so as not to create divisions with people who may disagree with us or who may simply have never encountered the idea of non-violence before. We are not a business with a social ax to grind—we are a business undergirded by a powerful ideal and guiding principle that allows us to approach each interaction with genuine love, care and insight.
From the first days of our beginning back in 2011 we have asked ourselves, “Can we create a business that cares about poor people?” We continue asking ourselves this question and actively look for ways to answer it affirmatively. We have scholarships available both for lessons and gear for customers who need them and have a partnership with World Relief by which we are able to send two staff members overseas once a year to deliver instruments and teach lessons in refugee camps.
We actively engage with struggling communities in our city through a strategic partnership with a church or non-profit that helps connect us with apprentices from those communities. These youth can apply for a paid apprenticeship with us in our repair, lessons or retail departments. We accept 1 – 2 apprentices each year for each department. Apprentices often go on to secure positions with us or other music organizations after their apprenticeship ends.
All of our employee-owners have read the following books that have guided our development as a business and culture and community. Each year we choose 1 new guiding book to add to our list and we host a public book club to discuss the book.
- Anarcho-Syndicalism by Rudolf Rocker
- A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business by Ari Weinzweig
- Gandhi on Non-Violence edited by Thomas Merton
- Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher
- The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
- Community and Growth by Jean Vanier
- Unto This Last by John Ruskin
We make it here!
We value and invest in the creative energies of our staff members and make as many things in-house as we possibly can. This includes artwork for our website and in-store advertising as well as sheet music, instruments and accessories.
We have written and published our own guitar method that we use with 90% of our guitar students and we have also compiled and published our own songbook that we use with 90% of our students of all instruments. The guitar method and the songbook are integrated and were created collaboratively by our staff with Dean as the team leader. Illustrations for both books were done by Erin Dumond. All of the staff collaborators share ownership (and the profits) of both books. Currently we are also developing a beginning piano method that emphasizes protest music of the 1960s.
With Paul Armes as team leader we have developed three instruments that we keep in production: one guitar, one banjo, and one mandolin. We always have one of each of these instruments on the sales floor and one in production. We are also working on our own tube amplifier design. Our instruments are exclusively sold in our store and through our website. As an outgrowth of our commitment to creation over consumption we have chosen to not sell anything under our own brand that we cannot make ourselves.
Lessons
Our lessons are centered on our students and we firmly believe that music’s main value resides in what it can do for the inner life of each unique person. We have a proprietary set of tools and curriculum that we use in the course of each lesson but we use this curriculum in a flexible way depending upon the needs and interests of the student.
Our lessons help our students build technical skills on their instrument and gain technical knowledge of the way music works while also infusing in them a love of and excitement for making music. Students learn songs in their lessons that they will remember and cherish for the rest of their lives. We help to make music-making a regular part of daily life for our students and the families we serve often remark on how nice it is to hear music being played in their homes.
We have a defined set of technical skills that a teacher needs to master before beginning to teach an instrument and all of our teachers are always in the process of becoming certified to teach a new instrument. Having teachers rotate the instruments that they teach helps to keep their teaching fresh. Our teachers regularly learn from each other in both formal and informal settings.
Remembering that our lessons are centered on the students we are serving, we are purposeful about the spiritual dimensions of our lessons. We work on identifying the specific inner needs of our students and how we can help them get those needs met in some small or large way through their lessons. We work on things such as “letting go,” “accepting yourself,” “taking chances,” and “giving your gift.” This holistic and spiritual approach to music lessons resonates strongly with our students and their parents and has helped to differentiate our lessons program from any other program in the Grand Rapids area.
We have a new unifying topic for our lessons program for each season (winter, spring, summer, fall) and curate songs to teach our students that have special meaning for our contemporary world. We aren’t focused on musical fads or the latest popular band but we often draw on obscure and decades and centuries old music that we feel can speak to us today in meaningful and important ways.
Instrument Repair
Paul Armes is the director of our repair & build department and luthier training program. We turn around set ups and minor repairs the same day they were dropped off and we maintain excellent communication with customers about the status of more intensive and time-consuming repairs. Our luthier apprentices handle the set ups and minor repairs and Paul’s time is spent supervising those minor repairs, working on more intensive repairs, and also working on the instruments we build in-house. One half of the basement is dedicated to repairs and construction and the space was designed with extensive input from Paul. We also offer weekend courses in instrument building and repair in our workshop.
Rentals
Our rental program has the best reputation of any in the area and we serve 95% of the band and orchestra students in the East Grand Rapids and Grand Rapids Christian Schools. Customers can book and pay for their rental online and 70% of our rental customers become private lesson students. We employ a full time rental manager who manages all aspects of the rental program.
Merchandise Sales
Our merchandise sales are a major source of revenue for us, second only to our private lessons. We focus on carrying products that will be profitable for us and that were made by the people / companies that sell them to us. We partner with small companies run by passionate craftsmen and women who can educate us on the production methods and materials used in their products. Most of our staff have visited at least one of our vendors’ workshops. Customers routinely drive over an hour to visit our shop because of our reputation for carrying inspiring, unique and odd instruments and products. We invite a vendor / craftsman into our space once a month for a lecture and demonstration of their products.
Finance
We use open book finance and all of our employee-owners are aware of the current health of the business’ finances. We view finance, profits and prices as spiritual issues that affect the lives of real people. Our business is financially beneficial to our employee-owners, vendors and Eastown community, providing economic stability and growth. All of our employee-owners regularly participate in continuing education in business finance so that we have a collaborative effort toward profitability in all of our endeavors. We are a certified B-Corporation and operate with a triple bottom line of profit, social impact and environmental impact. In 2026 we had gross revenue of $1.2 million with a 15% net profit of $180,000. We are growing steadily by 25% a year and have projected gross revenue of $1.5 million in 2027.
Epilogue
Back in 2011 when Dean was pushing his son in a stroller around the neighborhood of Southtown, he had no idea that the little 600 square foot shop he was soon to open would blossom into such an amazing place to work, learn and grow as a human being. It’s taken years of dedication by many people to make this dream a reality and through many ups and downs, celebrations and heartaches, the community of people that make up Southtown Guitar that have given birth to a truly transformative organization.
And ultimately isn’t transformation what we’re all looking for? Transformation of our habits, our thoughts, our lifestyles, our very selves; transformation of the myriad of pressures we’re all surrounded with each and every day; transformation of the way the world works, of politics, of economics, of society itself?
We are rooted in the knowledge that we cannot change anyone but ourselves and that is why we take our mission at Southtown Guitar so seriously. We know that the world is us, society is us, politics is us, pressures come from us — and if we don’t change ourselves so we can reflect a new world, who will? If we don’t pursue our calling toward this dream of a reality radically altered by compassion, nonviolence, joy, creation, humility and curiosity, then we have left our world untransformed for the next generation whose work it will be to do what we have left undone instead of building on the work we have started.
We proceed humbly yet courageously, always keeping in mind that none of us will live forever and that we have a responsibility and calling to live in the now in the most loving way we can. At the end of Southtown Guitar (for everything comes to an end), our hope is that it will be said that Southtown Guitar was an organization that helped people to live their dreams, brought joy to a community, modeled a better way of being a business in the world, treated all beings with care and respect and was birthed from a community with an audacious desire to love one another through all aspects of our messy, conflicted lives.