The Ledger
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Chuck Surack Criticizes Black Lives Matter Leadership for Divisive Rhetoric
“And I think the Black Lives Matter group, the people behind that were not necessarily good and strong. I believed in the movement. I believed in all bunch of stuff, but not the kind of rhetoric that was being thrown about.”
Sweetwater Requires 13 Weeks of Full-Time Training for Sales Reps
“Unlike myself, most of them come to us with a four year music technology degree, huh? And then we put them through what we call Sweetwater University, and Sweetwater University is 13 weeks of eight hours a day where they're learning all kinds of stuff. You kno…”
Top Sweetwater Sales Engineers Earn Nearly $500,000 Annually
“Frankly, in your first year, you're probably gonna make 75 to 80, 85,000 dollars. In your second or third year, you're well into six figures. You know, we have people that are making nearly a half a million dollars now.”
Chuck Surack Bought Back Sweetwater Using $1M in Local Personal Loans
“And so my best friend, who's an attorney, and I went to about 18 different individuals in Fort Wayne and said, we want to buy the company back. Would you loan me 50? Would you loan me a hundred? One guy loaned me a million dollars.”
Sweetwater Now Sells Over 1,000 Guitars Every Single Day
“We went from no guitars to selling over a thousand guitars every day.”
Stevie Wonder Used Chuck Surack's Custom Brass Sample on Characters Album
“I remember one time I brought in a trombone player, a trumpet player, and I played saxophone, and we made a brass section sound. There was not a section of brass in there. That sound ended up being used by Stevie Wonder on his character's album.”
Sweetwater's Early Customer Sales Calls Averaged 20 to 30 Minutes
“And so we know the first call or two with the customer would be a very long call. Our average talk time was 20 to 30 minutes, because we would start to develop a relationship, understand how they're going to use it, what they're going to use it with”
Sweetwater's Business Grew by 40% During the 2020 Pandemic
“We were selling equipment for streaming church services. We were selling guitars for first-time owners, and our business that year grew by 40%.”
Chuck Surack Quit Touring After Making Only $50 Per Week
“I made about 50 bucks a week. I probably made a little bit more than that, but it barely paid for gas and getting to the next location. And that's why I ultimately quit, because I just, I was a decent musician, but I wasn't going to be good enough to be a trul…”
Most Commercial 1970s Recording Occurred Inside Radio Stations
“Back then, there weren't a lot of standalone recording studios. Most of the recording happened in radio stations, and so we would quite often on Monday morning go to the local radio station and record, you know, this week we're playing at the Holiday Inn or wh…”
Chuck Surack Won GM's Business by Editing CEO's Speech on Tape
“I remember one year I did a, I recorded a speech of the CEO of General Motors. He was down in Defiance, Ohio, and all the way through his speech, he kept referencing the current year, and he meant to reference the next year. So he gets all done with his speech…”