Musician Bob Weil pinpointed how his business was losing more money than it should have been in taxes.
Bob Weil, owner of Truetone in Spring Hill, Tennessee, now advocates to eliminate regulations and red tape for business owners and considers NFIB to be a strong ally in his mission. He started an initiative called Save American Business to draw attention to a tax and regulatory system he believes is unfair to business owners.
Tell me a little about your business.
The original name of the company when it began in 1995, Visual Sound, was derived from the first product I invented: Visual Volume, a volume pedal with a 10 LED scale to indicate the volume level for electric guitar and bass players. Our company motto was “Real Tone for Real People,” which underscores our approach to making reliable, great-sounding products at a fair price. With this in mind, I think that our new name, Truetone, clearly states our vision.
How did you become a small business owner and why?
I was a guitar player with a sales and marketing background. Although I was pretty good at sales, I guess I had a latent inventor hiding away in my psyche. There came a point where I was playing guitar at a big church in the Los Angeles area, and I got frustrated with the volume pedal I was using. Next thing I know, I’m obsessed with creating my own. After a few years of teaching myself, I learned enough to design my first product, the Visual Volume pedal.
What do you love most about running your own business?
As a creative person, I really enjoy being able to create products from scratch and see them come to fruition. It’s always encouraging to hear directly from musicians who exclaim how they were able to get the sounds they were hearing in their head by using something that I designed; or how our customer service was so much better than what they expected; or how our 1 SPOT power supply saved the day when they were on tour and their other brand power supply died on them.
What could Tennessee do better for small business?
I hear stories all the time about how towns load down local businesses with regulations and red tape. I experienced a bit of that myself. I don’t know if there is a way to do it at the state level, but if towns and counties could get out of the way when a business is trying to set up shop or expand, that would be great. Obviously, there have to be some rules in place, but charging a permitting fee per square foot of signage for a sign that’s mounted on the side of your building, like Spring Hill does, is ridiculous—and that’s a minor example.
What prompted you to start the Save American Business initiative?
I was wondering why we ended up paying more income tax in years when our ending inventory on December 31 was greater than our beginning inventory on January 1, which happened most years because our business was growing. It hit me one day that the [cost of goods sold] equation was the problem that needed to be eliminated. Businesses every year are paying income tax on inventory that was still on the shelves, unsold. It’s a scam that needs to stop. That’s a business killer.
