We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Becki Chesnes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Becki below.

Alright, Becki thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

I am in a rare situation where I am a business owner, but also still have a career at another company. I would say both are challenging, but in different ways.

Being a business owner gives me an incredible amount of freedom and being able to guide the direction my company goes is incredibly gratifying. Every sale is like a tiny victory that you can claim for yourself. The ownership of it is my favorite part. However, it’s also a big responsibility; everything rests on your shoulders, both good and bad. It can sometimes make me feel isolated and over burdened. Recently, we exhibited at a national convention for the first time. It was challenging being such a small company competing against much larger entities, and customers really do treat you the same even though the playing field isn’t level! That was a bit of a daunting experience that I had to recover from and remember that my company is just not in the same evolutionary place as others and that’s ok.

In my other corporate environment, I have to remember I’m apart of a larger team and larger infrastructure that fluctuates outside my control. But it’s also an opportunity to feel supported, to collaborate with many people and take advantage of resources I would not otherwise have at my disposal.

Balancing the two is an immense challenge at times. The tradeoff for having the best of both worlds is that I work a lot! As exhausting as it is, I think it’s in my best interest to have both at this stage in my career.

Becki, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My journey with music started with my school music program when I was 12. I was lucky to have teachers who recognized my ability for it, and passed that along to my parents who were also incredibly supportive of my musical development After music school, I had a twisty pathway to starting The Flute Shop. I tried out a lot of different business services – teaching, recording, freelancing, manufacturing. But eventually, musical products in combination with those other services seemed to be the right recipe for success.

The Flute Shop is a boutique flute specialty company offering product sales, instruction, and repair. We provide one-on-one services to help people make music, and flute playing specifically, to enrich their lives. It can take shape in the form of private lessons or group classes, helping find the perfect flute or accessory or keeping the one our clients already have in the best condition possible.

When we have a client approach us about upgrading their flute, I take the time to understand their challenges and wish list to create custom trials with personalized one-on-one feedback during the trial to ensure we find the flute, piccolo or low flute that is the right fit for them. I always get an inkling before a customer has their trial about which flute I think will work best – like a sixth sense for instrument choice!

We also have a commitment for helping flutists develop their craft through lessons, masterclasses and flute choir ensembles. We aim to host a masterclass about once per quarter with expert flutists from all over the country.

And we’re there for flute players when their flutes break! I’m always willing to open up the shop on an off day if needed for a flute repair emergency and travel to studios who have larger flute repair needs. All of the flute repair at the shop is executed by me personally.

The Flute Shop has developed into a great community of musicians who support each other, learn from each other and have a lot of fun doing it! And I look forward to growing into an even larger network in the future.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Having a business in the music industry unto itself is a high risk venture. On top of that, The Flute Shop is very niched, making marketing and sales challenging. On top of all that, we’re very small, which is an additional challenge. Those factors combine for a very unpredictable sales forecast. I think all businesses face those challenges at one time or another. In particular, the COVID years challenged everyone in ways we didn’t prepare for.

The trick for surviving those financial valleys for the shop has been to have investor support and capital to bridge the gap. It’s not that we don’t have the sales to support overhead, but that it doesn’t always occur when we need it to! So you have to plan for cash reserves to help when the money doesn’t come at the needed time.

In addition, I”m pretty careful about our financial commitments. We’re lucky that our suppliers are responsive to short term purchase requests because it’s difficult for us to forecast out months ahead when our sales are volatile.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I think our client growth has come from two main places: referrals and our website. A majority of our referrals come from past clients. They get onto the subject of flutes with their flute playing friends and happen to mention us. That conversation turns into their friends bringing their flutes to us for repair or just checking us out in general out of curiosity! The other source is our website, which is definitely worth the investment. We are constantly evolving our web presence, and it continues to pay off with new clients reaching out to us. Moving forward, I see us expanding into more active traveling sales and social media to expand further.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tfscincy.com
• Instagram: BeckiC10
• Facebook: Facebook.com/tfscincy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-flute-shop/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTI1Eas2ZyUOnQAFef4MPpQ

Image Credits
Lowry Photo Lemon Grenade