Transcript: Snapshot 039 – Jenny Townsend
Transcript for Snapshot 030 – Jenny Townsend
[00:00:00] Andrea: Hey, it’s Andrea with Music Studio Startup, the podcast about the business of teaching music. Learn from the startup stories of music teachers who are doing incredible things with their studios. Be inspired by creative musicians who are branching out and thriving as entrepreneurs. Be empowered by the insights of experts who will help you grow your own studio.
Let’s get started.
Welcome back. We are doing a special series on the podcast this summer called Studio Snapshots. Rather than the in-depth process oriented interviews, you’re used to hearing these rapid fire interviews, give us a glimpse into a guest’s studio at a moment in time. They’re part reflection, part anticipation of the future, and fully a celebration of where these teachers are today.
Today I’m talking to Jenny Townsend. Here’s Jenny’s Snapshot.
Hi, Jenny. Welcome to the podcast. Can you introduce yourself and tell us briefly about your studio?
[00:01:04] Jenny Townsend: Yes. Hi, I’m Jenny Townend, owner of Music Compound. It’s located in Sarasota, Florida. We have 10,000 square feet, which includes 23 studios, 32 teachers, over 400 members, and we are very active in our community. And our mission is to inspire, collaborate, and educate.
[00:01:23] Andrea: Amazing. Okay. And these are very quick interviews. Just kind of a check-in what’s going on in your studio right now at this moment. So we’ll jump right in. What are you celebrating from the last school year?
[00:01:35] Jenny Townsend: We are celebrating our big move. So as I mentioned, we are in 10,000 square feet and I took two locations, one that was fifty six hundred and one forty five hundred, and we merged those two together and it was really cool to see the space completely transform.
We did $150,000 build out and an investment, and then we merged both of our teams and both of those communities of families. So it’s been really great to bring everybody together and in this amazing new space. I feel like we’re in the Taj Mahal and everybody that comes in is just, wow. All this is so nice and they’re so excited to be in this space.
And it’s pretty cool. We’re in 10,000 square feet within our 10th year of business, so that’s something to celebrate.
[00:02:13] Andrea: That is a huge celebration. How were you challenged last year?
[00:02:18] Jenny Townsend: I was challenged with the expansion and, uh, based on interest rates and borrowing money, it was super, super high. So I decided to fund the expansion myself by using past company distributions and savings. And that was quite a challenge as well, because I had intended that the company would be able to fund that expansion just based on past summer camps and membership sales and just overall revenue. And with a dip in membership sales and summer camp registrations, and obviously closing one whole location down, the company wasn’t able to fund that expansion.
You work so many years and you save all this money. Luckily I had the nest egg where I could actually just fund the expansion for myself. But it did make me a different leader during that timeframe because I was financially stressed and I was thinking about all the things that was not going right, and I was upset at the time that the company wasn’t able to afford this and that I was having to reinvest money that I’ve already invested and then worked so hard for.
So just personally as a business owner, that was a big challenge for me. And then obviously with transitioning over the locations, you know, it all ended up working out and I’m really grateful that we did make the move. But that was a personal struggle last year, an expansion that was pretty expensive.
[00:03:29] Andrea: Yeah. Yeah, I can see how that would be. Did you take any risks or go outside your comfort zone and what did you take away from that?
[00:03:36] Jenny Townsend: Yeah, so one of my mentors early on said, become your bank as soon as possible, that you don’t have to depend on lenders. You don’t have to pay high interest rate, and that way you can utilize your own funds.
And I am really grateful that I was able to be in that position to become my own bank so that something to celebrate. It did increase the risk a little bit because I was basically using the nest egg that we potentially may need this upcoming year or maybe in the future. So, uh, I have to rebuild that and that’s going to really determine, you know, or be based on like our performance this year, the economy.
Uh, so I would say that it was harder for me to spend my own money than borrow from the bank, but obviously it was a smarter decision long term because based on that, I would’ve been paying anywhere from like 3,500 to $4,000 a month and just a monthly mortgage payment to have borrowed that money for the expansion in addition to our higher rent as well.
So I would say the risk definitely worked out for us, I think long term, but in the short term, it was really challenging.
[00:04:37] Andrea: Mm-hmm. What do summers look like in your studio for you and also your students?
[00:04:42] Jenny Townsend: So the summers are super busy. Not only do we run two summer camps simultaneously, we also do our regular scheduled lessons.
So some of our team members are there as early as 7:30 or eight in the morning, and they go until eight or 8:30 at night. So some of our teachers are working summer camp in the morning, nine to noon, or one to four in the afternoon, and or they’re doing their regular scheduled lessons. We offer an elementary camp, which will have anywhere from 20 to 30 students in them per session.
And then we do our middle school and high school camps, which are really like great workshops. Music production, drum fills, songwriting, vocal performance. And so those individuals have anywhere from six to 12 students in those camps. So it is super busy. We have a lot of campers that return year after year and they come all eight weeks.
So it is definitely very busy during the summer at Music Compound.
[00:05:39] Andrea: Sounds like it. Wow. What are you doing this summer to prep for the next school year?
[00:05:43] Jenny Townsend: So this year we are not only dialing for dollars right now ’cause we had more cancellations this summer than in years prior. Usually a lot of our clients will continue with lessons or they’ll just cancel a couple over the summer that they’re traveling.
This year we received just over 60 cancellations in membership revenue and monthly students. So currently right now I am dialing for dollars every day and trying to recruit some of the students that were with us before, get students back, or individuals that submitted leads through our website that we never really connected with.
So definitely sales focus from my perspective, and then also trying to work on future events for our bands and then back to school nights with different schools as well. So we’re basically prepping for Q3 and making plans for Q4 of the school year as well, and we’ll be kicking a lot of that off with our Back to School Bash in August.
[00:06:38] Andrea: Okay. Sounds like a very focused summer. What app or tool has made the biggest impact in your studio or life management this year?
[00:06:45] Jenny Townsend: So I’m going to give a huge shout out to Opus.io. We switched over to Opus a couple years ago. We were with another provider, and Opus has really streamlined a lot of operations and a lot of communication and the billing and teacher and staff management.
And so I think that that has been one of the best additions that we brought on a couple years ago. We also use Slack. And we use that for internal communication. So we have a, music is life for all of our teachers to post all their funny memes and all that good stuff. And we have an inspired channel. And then we just incorporate just different ways of utilizing that for when we’re celebrating people’s wins and just basically clear communication with just using emojis ’cause it’s super easy, super fun. And training people though to comment in the thread has been a challenge. So let’s go back to that question and add that there. But I would say between Opus and Slack, both of those have been really great for the company.
[00:07:40] Andrea: Okay. What’s one area of your business where you tend to get carried away or go overboard because it’s something you enjoy or nerd out about or just overindulge?
[00:07:51] Jenny Townsend: Yeah, I would think, you know, I love our team members even though they can be a challenge to manage sometimes. I do love our team members, so I love celebrating them and I love doing things that are super, super special. And we have this new program, which I’m super excited about. It’s a parent ambassador program where some of our parents are coming together to help with appreciation with the team, and so just, you know, creating those fun little prizes and signature things for our staff can be really fun and I can kind of go overboard. Or when it comes to executing on our team. So I just bought like this really big calendar and when I come to the planning for the next year, we’ll be using that.
So probably those two things I probably go overboard on a little bit.
[00:08:35] Andrea: Where can listeners get in touch with you and follow along?
[00:08:37] Jenny Townsend: So definitely follow us at Music Compound, whether it’s YouTube, Instagram, or our website or Facebook. I believe we have a TikTok as well, so you can just reach out to us on Music Compound.
We’ve got a lot of great content on our YouTube. We do a lot of educational videos where our teachers are teaching really popular songs. We’re breaking it down on different instruments, and we put a lot of great stuff on our stories to kind of show you behind the scenes of everything that’s happening.
Just posted a sales training with one of my 14 year olds that’s on one of my junior team today. So if you’re looking to be inspired or connect with the community, definitely reach out to us and you can connect with me through our website as well.
[00:09:15] Andrea: All right, Jenny, this has been super fun. Thank you so much.
[00:09:17] Jenny Townsend: Cheers.
[00:09:20] Andrea: Thank you for taking the time to be with us, Jenny. We’ll include a transcript and all the links mentioned in this episode at musicstudiostartup.com/snapshot039. The Music Studio Startup website is also filled with lots of other resources for music teachers just like you who want to set up their studios for success this summer, including our very popular self-paced Business Building 101 course, and our hub and mastermind for studio owners who want to be supported and challenged to grow as entrepreneurs.
If you are ready to dive in the live summer cohort of Business Building 101 is underway. Teachers are actively working on setting up and revamping their studios and it’s not too late to join in. Visit musicstudiostartup.com/businessbuilding101 to enroll. That’s all for today. Thanks for listening.
I’ll be back next week.