How does one develop a love for a musical instrument? Many a parent who wants to raise an aspiring Mozart wants the answer to this question. Paul Reed Smith developed a love of guitars by playing the ukulele given to him in kindergarten by his father. In his high school shop class he made his first guitar. Now it is 40 years later, and his company, Paul Reed Smith Guitars, is the third largest manufacturer of electric guitars in the nation with $30 million in sales last year. His company employs 250 people who turn out 15,000 guitars each year at his 100,000-square foot factory in Stevensville, Maryland. Two of his models are featured in the Guitar Hero Smash Hits video game and a giant replica of his McCarty model adorns the top of the Hard Rock Cafe in Baltimore. His business has taken large strides from its beginnings of making sales by pitching roadies at rock concerts.

The following is from an article appearing in the Washington Post by Avis Thomas-Lester

Why he’s successful: Smith, who’s 54 and lives in Annapolis, believed in himself when others didn’t. “I thought I had a lot to offer the world and everybody else thought I didn’t have anything to offer the world, except some of my family and a couple of my friends…It was me sticking to my guns and thinking I could do it and seeing it through. We have the first guitar I made in shop class. It’s pretty much a disaster … People howl laughing when I pull it out, but it was a beginning … I wanted to die thinking that I had given it everything I had and was proud of myself. I didn’t want to die and say, ‘Well, I could have tried.’ ”

Obstacles he’s overcome: Not knowing how to run a business. “The biggest obstacle was learning to do the things I didn’t understand … to make sure the business survived,” said Smith, who briefly attended St. Mary’s College but quit to open a shop in Annapolis making and repairing guitars. “That was true of employee issues, banking issues, investor issues, building issues, guitar-making issues, even fire and building code issues. The amount of things I had to learn to keep the business healthy was staggering. Also, the speed at which we had to learn it. That’s still going on today, right now.”

First job: One of six kids raised by his father, a civilian mathematician for the Navy, and his mother, a teacher, he was an entrepreneur from an early age, “selling flowers in a parking lot next to the movie theater in Bowie and … washing cars.”

Worst job: At 16, “I washed dishes at the Dutch Pantry at the corner of 301 and 50 in Bowie. Quit on Mother’s Day. The guy wasn’t real happy with me. My family had a Mother’s Day event I had to go to, and I hated the job.”

How he defines success: Transforming a tiny company into a music industry force whose guitars, which range in price from $550 to $50,000, are played by superstars from Carlos Santana to the Black Eyed Peas. “We’re the ‘Avis, we try harder’ company … If you wear a PRS T-shirt in Manhattan … someone will stop you and ask you how you are involved with the company … we are a world brand.”

Smartest move: Learning as much as possible from other craftsmen. “Trusting the old guys who proceeded me. Trusting their wood choices, trusting their judgments, going and asking them questions. I made my living interviewing people who had been there before, trying to understand what they did and use it as benchmarks and signposts on where I wanted to go … A lot of those guys never wrote it down and if they did write it down, the books were lost. What they left were their instruments, so I studied the instruments.”

Biggest misstep: Not anticipating the recession and its effect on his business, which was down 12 percent last year. “Not looking at the boom times … and knowing that this [downturn] was coming. All things come in waves, and I should have known that the wave was cresting and the valley was coming.”

What lies ahead: Getting through the tough economic times, which forced him to layoff 35 employees last year. “My only goal is to weave through this economic thing now … We’re not down as much as our competition, actually we’re doing very well, but that we’re not even with last year feels like a failure … I don’t look at it from a victim’s mentality. It’s not the economy’s fault. I look at it from what we could have done to do a better job.”

What inspires him: “Great instruments, remarkable human beings, people who are not remarkable but who do remarkable things … Hearing Jeff Beck or Carlos Santana or David Grissom play is inspiring.”

Advice to the aspiring: “The first would be courage. Being scared” to try something, “and doing it anyway.” He also values “drive, an extraordinary work ethic, going the extra mile …Those are the qualities that are ingrained in success.