Opening A Storefront for Your Music Teaching Business
Is your music studio running out of your home? Loose acquaintances from your neighborhood entering and exiting your living room, their children leaving footprints in the hallway, the sense that you have no separation between home and work - there’s a reason some music teachers move their businesses into a storefront.
Perhaps you are consistently getting more piano students and you’re ready to scale - a commercial space can certainly help you do that. However, it’s a big decision requiring a tremendous amount of cost, risk, and patience - tread carefully.
In this guide, I’ll discuss:
The Cost/Value Considerations of a Storefront
Costs to keep in mind when you rent a storefront
When is the right time to take the plunge
How to choose the right space
The marketing considerations of a storefront
Firstly, my experience with moving to a storefront.
My wife and I moved our music teaching business, the Philadelphia Piano Institute, into a storefront in January of 2020. Yes, just before Covid! We’ve been fortunate enough to scale consistently since then and are preparing to open our second physical location.
The items mentioned below are things we dealt with specifically. If you have any additional thoughts to add, please feel free to send me an email.
Also, nobody understands your goals and situation as well as you do. If you feel like now’s the time to make the jump (and maybe you’ve found a great deal on a commercial space), don’t let anyone curb your enthusiasm.
Cost+Value: Should your move your music teaching business to a physical location?
If you started your own music teaching business and are teaching from home, you have no expenses whatsoever. An internet connection, an instrument, and rent or mortgage are all things you’d be paying for anyways.
Additionally, many at-home music teachers are paid under the table, and I will certainly not be the one to tell you that’s wrong. If you don’t have to pay taxes, I won’t judge.
So let’s say you teach 30 students per week at an average per-lesson cost of $50. That’s $1,500 per week and $6,000 per month in cash. That’s not a bad living. A storefront siphons your net profit: rent, taxes, insurance, etc. eat away at your income. You will probably need to double your studio’s revenue to maintain your same personal income, and the more your scale, the more work you’ll have with client correspondence, scheduling, and more.
So if you are getting enough leads that you can scale your business to double or triple the amount of current students on your roster, you will be able to make the investment worth it over time.
COSTS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN MOVING TO A STOREFRONT
Keep in mind that this will vary wildly from region to region. The Philadelphia Piano Institute currently runs out of a storefront on a busy street in one of the most affluent neighborhoods of Philadelphia. It’s very expensive compared to a strip mall storefront in Scranton, PA.
Either way, rent-wise, you can prepare for:
A security deposit: possibly first month’s rent, last months’ rent, and one additional chunk equal to one month’s rent. So if your rent is $1,500, expect to pay $4,500 up front
Triple Net Lease (NNN): You have to pay real estate tax, maintenance, and building insurance
A multi-year lease: Many desirable retail spaces will require that you commit to multiple years
Now let’s say that you rented a storefront that you’d like to divide into five studios (great idea). You will need to hire a contractor to “build out” the space. If you are installing non load-bearing walls and generally dressing up the space, you’ll need to have $10K+ in capital set aside. Furthermore, you’ll need to be renting the space while the contractor works, so that’s at least one month of rent that won’t generate additional revenue.
If you run a piano teaching business, you will need to buy more pianos (or keyboards for group classes) - and you don’t need me to tell you what that costs.
You’ll also have to set up a business wifi account, purchase chairs, sound panels and whatnot, and you’ll be nickel and dimed by your city for permits and other legalities.
WHEN IS THE RIGHT TIME TO TAKE THE PLUNGE?
Some items you may want to place on your checklist:
You are operating at capacity or rapidly approaching capacity at your home studio
You enjoy a reliable flow of leads
You have enough capital saved to handle a security deposit, a few month’s rent, and the build-out cost for a commercial space
You prefer the potential of a scalable and lucrative business to the security of a good, static (and maybe tax-free) paycheck from your home studio.
You are ready to hire additional teachers and scale as soon as possible
YOUR MINDSET WILL CHANGE WHEN YOU’RE RENTING
You will have to start thinking like a business owner, not a cash-laden freelancer. Your profitability will plummet at the beginning, and you will have to double your business’s number of students before you start to match your previous personal earnings. In order to start making real money, you may need to triple your student base. Just get comfortable with playing the long game, and don’t expect to make much money for at least a year (if you already have a good lead flow).
YOU WILL HAVE EQUITY THOUGH, AND THAT’S A GOOD THING!
You’ll be sacrificing short term cash for long term ownership of a business, and that’s a worthwhile investment in most cases. You could potentially get acquired if you run your business well, and if you don’t go that route, you’ll be able to scale indefinitely until you are making more money than you ever could have as a private at-home teacher. It may take years though.
Choosing the right storefront for your music teaching business.
For the purposes of this article, I’m assuming you have an established presence in your town or city, have a steady flow of leads, and are simply scaling via a storefront. If you are opening a storefront without a pre-existing music student base or lead flow, that’s a different angle - email me.
Start by finding a location where plenty of parents with kids will walk or drive by. Suburban businesses often open storefronts in busy stripmalls with a grocery store nearby, while urban businesses look for sidewalks with lots of foot traffic, proximity to affluent residential neighborhoods, and public transportation. If you run an adult-heavy music teaching business, hip neighborhoods with bars, restaurants, jazz clubs, and luxury apartments are probably a good bet (or, of course, artsy/gentrified neighborhoods that attract musically-inclined adults).
You can do demographic research on a neighborhood with movoto or neighborhood scout, but remember that you know your city and clientele better than a random website.
You’ll also need to decide on how many square feet you can afford, but don’t bother renting a retail space unless you can fit at least three private studios inside. You probably don’t want to go through all of this trouble to only be able to hire one teacher.
Then, use LoopNet, CityFeet, and even Craigslist to start hunting for storefronts in your target areas at your desired price and size. You can’t be in a rush if you want a great deal - you may need to keep looking for a month or three before you find the one. Also, make sure the commercial space is zoned properly - the listing information should mention that.
Marketing Consideration After Launching A Storefront
LOCAL SEO CONSIDERATIONS
If you locate your studio in a densely populated area of relevant people, you will be able to show up in the Google map pack when potential students search for something like “piano lessons near me.” You don’t necessarily need a storefront to harness this visibility, but it certainly helps! When you open your storefront, make sure you change your Google My Business listing information to reflect the new address, and also build lots of local citations (instances of your business name, address, and phone number) online. These are SEO services that I offer, so get in touch if you have questions.
DOES THE VISIBILITY OF THE STOREFRONT INCREASE LEAD VOLUME SIGNIFICANTLY?
If you find a location with lots of vehicle or foot traffic, you should see an increase in leads. Here’s the amount of “branded searches” my piano teaching business has received in the past six months:
We have lots of visibility online as well, but these branded searches are influenced by people who see the storefront and later search for the “Philadelphia Piano Institute” online.
YOUR SIGNAGE AND WINDOW MATERIAL
You aren’t running a speakeasy, so make sure you invest in a nice sign or awning that is easy to read. You want casual passersby to notice it and look you up later.
Also, in the front window or door, make sure your website is prominently displayed. Your website should be your main lead generating mechanism, and you want to encourage people to look it up.
GO AFTER LOCAL PR AND NEIGHBOURHOOD NEWS
If you open a storefront, you should certainly email relevant small business journalists and bloggers in your area with an announcement. People like music, and especially if you do some sort of local grand opening with snacks, music, and art, you have a good chance of getting local coverage. You can also look for local mommy blogs and Facebook pages.
Note - press coverage is not guaranteed. You may email 30 journalists and receive zero responses, and you shouldn’t feel badly if that happens. When we opened our storefront and rebranded to the Philadelphia Piano Institute, Philadelphia was in the middle of the pandemic, George Floyd riots, and other upheaval, so there was no chance that our music studio opening would be considered “newsworthy.”
In Conclusion
Is your solo teaching practice bursting at the seams? Are you flooded with inquiries? Do you have enough cash on hand to pay a security deposit, build-out costs, and a few months of rent? Are you prepared to sacrifice short term earnings for long term income growth and equity?
If the answers to those questions were “yes,” then you should consider scaling with a storefront. If you have any questions, you’re welcome to give me a call - I love chatting with music teachers, whether you are trying to hire me or not.
