We recently connected with Breaux Silcio and have shared our conversation below.

Breaux, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I have a law degree and am a barred attorney. I was working as a solo practitioner while also doing work on large cases as litigation support. I was doing well financially but I was also getting burned out. I’ve been collecting media since I was a kid. I bought everything. Vinyl, Cds, Cassette Tapes, DVDs, you name it. Since I’m in my late 40’s listening to music via some kind of physical format is very normal to me. I was in my mid to late 20’s when the whole downloading music craze hit. Don’t get me wrong I downloaded music, but I also continued to buy media. Mostly CDs because vinyl wasn’t really a thing for newer artists I loved. I would buy the CD, then rip it for my IPod. Was it convenient to have every single album I owned on this tiny device which I could stick in my pocket? Yes! But over time I noticed my listening habits starting to change. I was no longer listening to full records and the beauty of the shuffle mode was ruining my attention span for even just a single song. I was still buying CDs but I was never fully experiencing the album as it was intended. Remember most artists put in a lot of work releasing a record. Everything from the art to the liner notes to the actual sequence of the songs on the record were important. All of this was getting lost. It got even worse once streaming sites started to rise up. I now didn’t even have to buy anything and I had access to everything. This idea was crazy to me. Fast forward to 2013 or so. I noticed that vinyl records were starting to make an appearance in the bigger chain music stores, the ones that were able to survive the transition from CD’s to digital media. The only independent music stores were the ones that had been around for 30 years at that point. All the smaller, more curated shops of the 90s were pretty much all gone once the public at large stopped buying music at all and started downloading or streaming. I was still buying CDs, but was pretty much relegated to buying online because there were really no stores that carried the music I liked. So, I started checking out these stores and noticing that a lot of reissues were coming out and even some current artists were starting to release albums on vinyl. Then a small handful of Independent shops started to pop up. I started taking weekly trips to various shops. This was great. I was tired of shopping online. I missed just browsing and seeing what I can find. Maybe I found a gem, maybe I found something new, maybe not. I missed that experience. Problem was there wasn’t any shops in my area that I was interested in enough to go to on a regular basis. I was tired of driving into Boston every week and dealing with that hassle to buy records and CDs. Move forward about 2 years, a small shop opened in my area by a friend that had more stuff I was into. I was excited that someone actually dared to do this. Well that shop only lasted 4 months. He closed. I was not in any position to open my own business. Trust me I wanted to. I wanted to take over his shop. I just wasn’t there yet. Fast forward to 2018. I was getting burned out at my lawyer job. I needed a change. I knew that there was some market in my area for an independent record shop specializing in underground music, whether it be metal, punk or indie rock. So in May of 2018 I quit my job and Residency Records was born.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Residency Records was originally born out of a need I saw in my area for an independent record store that catered to the underground music scene. Whether that be Metal, Punk or Indie Rock. Vinyl was on the cusp of making a pretty serious comeback and there were many smaller shops opening in Boston but nothing existed on the Northshore. We have one store that been around since the 70’s but they are really only a use shop that carried vintage classic rock, jazz, blues, etc etc. They would get a few select new releases but mostly by the bigger artists of the day. I was tired of driving to the smaller shops in Boston or getting things online. I wanted to be able to walk to my local shop and find the things I wanted.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I was in a unique position in 2018 when i started Residency Records because I had been working as an attorney and making good money and had a lot saved. I didn’t need to take out a business loan to start the business. I took some money out of my savings. Now when we expanded in 2022 into the location we’re in now (we moved from a 400 Sq. Ft. space, to a 2100 Sq. Ft. space), we funded that by tapping into the equity we had in our house. We did look into other ways to finance the expansion like SBA or bank loans to crowd investment options, but we just found the Home Equity path to be the best option for us.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I’m an old dude. The whole social media thing was/is still very confusing to me. I have no idea how brands have hundreds of thousands of followers on facebook, tiktok or instagram. With that said it took me about a year to figure out how to engage with people. I just googled best practices for getting followers and did them. My audience started to grow. I realized it took time and patience. I’m basically the only person who runs the shop day to day. I do everything from ordering to pricing to taking out the trash. I just built in time every day to doing social media stuff and my audience grew and is still growing. Being in a high profile city like Salem doesn’t hurt. Over a million people visit here every year and although i’m a boutique shop I get new likes and follows every day. My advice for new business owners is to be consistent, engage with your community online (I like and comment on other businesses posts and like and comment on tourists post who have geotagged or hash tagged my city), and not be afraid to try different approaches. Instagram is still my most popular social media platform but we have Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Threads and will use other ones that pop up from time to time.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.residency-records.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/residencyrecords
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/residencyrecords
• Twitter: https://x.com/residencysalem
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdVseYH2XzkcXL_bcDQiYww?view_as=subscriber
• Other: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeejUtTe/